Sandra Gallagher enjoyed brightening people’s day so much, she used to buy a flower to hand to a random stranger whenever she was out shopping.

It was usually a rose or a carnation.

“She’d just stop and say, ‘There’s the one,’ and she’d walk over and give somebody the flower and you’d watch their face light up,” Gallagher’s sister, Jerri Vallicella, recently told USA TODAY. “She wanted everyone to smile and be happy.”

Vallicella sometimes wonders if her sister’s trusting and sweet nature was partly why she became the target of a burgeoning serial killer 30 years ago

Gallagher eventually joined the Navy and served for a number of years across the U.S. She also used to visit death row inmates in Leavenworth, Kansas, as part of a military program, Vallicella said, adding that her sister thought she might be able to help some of the men.

Gallagher was on the cusp of divorcing her husband and relocating her life to where her mother and oldest son were living in the town of Paradise when she was killed, Vallicella said.

“She was an amazing person,” Vallicella said. “I could never, never put into words how beautiful she was. She just wanted to help people.”