Maxine Shelly Turner

• Age: 22
• Class: Senior
• Major: Chemical engineering
• Hometown: Vienna, Va.
• High school: James Madison
• Parents: Paul and Susan Turner

Related

• Sign Maxine's guest book
• Virginia Tech shooting victims

Maxine Turner was accustomed to capitalizing the word “awesome” to describe the job she had lined up after graduating from college and taking some time off this summer.

Less than a month before graduating with a degree in chemical engineering, she was poised to join the Elkton, Md., office of W.L. Gore & Associates, the maker of Gore-Tex, a waterproof, breathable fabric popular in outerwear.

“Not sure what I’ll be doing yet, but they are AWESOME,” Turner wrote of her future employer on her Facebook site. Jane Gardner, a human resources administrator at Gore who was involved with hiring Turner, said, “There are students that have kind of a twinkle in their eye, and she was one of them. She was a bright young woman with a lot of potential.”

In the close-knit cul-de-sac where her parents live in Vienna, Va., two police officers visited the home of her mother, Susan, on Monday night. Her father, Paul, was traveling in the Mideast. He was due in late Tuesday night from Jordan to join Susan Turner and Maxine’s brother, who is in eighth grade.

— Jeff Sturgeon and Rob Johnson