Karla Jean Bagtaz appreciated things that were big and noisy -- like rock concerts and monster trucks.

"Anything that was large and loud," said her close friend Natalia Vargas, of Stoughton, Mass. "She liked people and things that were larger than life."

Friends remember the 41-year-old Randolph, Mass., woman as someone with a rascally nature.

Last summer, she gave Vargas's son $100 on his birthday, but she made him work for it.

She folded up each $1 bill in a tiny capsule, like the plastic containers you get in vending machines for children's toys. "She was always up to something," Vargas told The Providence Journal.

Bagtaz lived most of her life in Stoughton. In recent years, she worked as a legal assistant for an attorney in Randolph and had just started a new job for Miracle Mortgage in Dedham, Mass.

She also sold Avon fragrances and spent several nights a week waiting tables at Latoria Italian Bar and Grill in Stoughton.