Police in Vt. Find Body Of Student

Gardner-Quinn, a senior majoring in Latin American studies and environmental science, was reported missing after she failed to show up for a planned dinner with her parents last Saturday. They had traveled to Burlington for parents' weekend at the college.

Gardner-Quinn was a 2003 graduate of H-B Woodlawn Secondary Program, an academically rigorous magnet school at which students have a large say in the curriculum.

Tommy Lang, 21, a University of Vermont senior who grew up with Gardner-Quinn, told the Associated Press yesterday that nothing seemed amiss when she called him from Rooney's cellphone just before her disappearance.

"She sounded completely fine and normal and exactly the way she did when she left us," said Lang, who had been hanging out with Gardner-Quinn and others for a friend's 21st birthday celebration. "There wasn't anything that made me worry or made me suspicious that anything was going on."

Yesterday, after posting numerous optimistic messages online praying for Gardner-Quinn's safe return, friends began leaving messages of mourning.

"Michelle you were one-in-a-million," wrote her friend Elizabeth Oliphant on Facebook.com, a social networking site popular among college students. "I am heartbroken for your family -- they will stay in my thoughts and prayers for a long time. You will be missed dearly."

Gail Fendley, a longtime family friend, said in a telephone interview yesterday that she considered Gardner-Quinn a part of her family. Her son, Ian Willson, 22, had grown up with Gardner-Quinn, and the two had dated in recent years. Yesterday, Fendley sat sobbing inside her vehicle, parked on a street in Richmond, Va., where her son attends college.

"It's not that every life doesn't matter, but this is one who would've made the world a better place," Fendley said. "I just can't imagine how someone could hurt our Michelle."