Kaysi as a baby. (Courtesy of Rob McLeod)

Kaysi McLeod is born in Westminster, Colo., to Rob and Lori McLeod.

She would grow up to love jewelry-making, drawing, dancing and music, especially Sarah McLachlan, said her mother.

“She didn’t ever talk back,” Lori McLeod said. “I got very lucky.”

But Kaysi tested her boundaries like any adolescent. She smoked, pierced her bellybutton, got tattoos — a four-leaf clover with the Virgo sign on her foot and a fairy on the small of her back.

Kaysi at age 6. (Courtesy of Rob McLeod)

Kaysi moved to Phoenix at age 15 because she needed some time away from her parents, who divorced when she was 6 and didn’t agree on how to raise her, said her maternal aunt, Donna Harper.

“I gave her consistency,” Harper said.

In Arizona, Kaysi worked at a skating rink in her spare time, even driving the Zamboni around the ice.

Tabetha Blow, her best friend there, said Kaysi had a “passion for life” but ended up falling in with a bad crowd.

Kaysi and her father, Rob McLeod. (Courtesy of Rob McLeod)

Kaysi McLeod graduates from high school in Phoenix, where she had been living with her aunt.

While she was there, Kaysi started dabbling with prescription drugs, then meth. Friends said she was losing weight fast and “wasn’t herself anymore.”

After graduation, Kaysi returned to Colorado to live with her mother, who’s convinced she was getting off drugs and turning a corner in her life.