Rachael Elizabeth Hill, 18, was a freshman interested in biology who lived on the second floor of West Ambler Johnston Hall. She graduated from Grove Avenue Christian Academy and lived with her parents, Alan and Tammy Hill, in Glen Allen.

"When you talk to a parent who's just lost a child over something as violent or tragic as this, you just don't know how you will be to comfort them," said Mark Becton, senior pastor of Grove Avenue Baptist Church, who spoke with Hill's mother yesterday morning. "But the first words out of her mouth were, 'We want all the glory to go to God, because that's the way Rachael would have wanted it.'"

School officials said Hill was an only child and had attended the 261-student academy since kindergarten. She was captain of the volleyball team and known for spicing up her conservative school uniform with colorful pairs of Converse high-top sneakers.

"Rachael had a wonderful, close, loving relationship with her parents," School Superintendent Clay Fogler wrote in a letter to the church community yesterday. "Any parent would have counted it a privilege to have called her their daughter."

Fogler said Hill was an excellent piano player and enjoyed curling up on the sofa with her mother and watching movies such as "Pride and Prejudice."

"It is difficult to capture the beauty, intelligence, poise, leadership and other wonderful traits that Rachael possessed," Fogler said.

Now, when he reads the C.S. Lewis quotation that Hill chose to appear under her yearbook photo, he sees it as almost prophetic: "God, who foresaw your tribulation, has specially armed you to go through it, not without pain but without stain."

Hill was interested in biology but had not decided on an academic major to pursue at Virginia Tech, school officials said.

Her roommate at Tech was a classmate from Grove Avenue, and the two lived on the second floor of West Ambler Johnston Hall. That's two floors below where authorities said Cho Seung-Hui, a 22-year-old English major, began his rampage Monday at 7:15 a.m.

"We have several students who go there, so we began calling," said Becton, recalling the anxious moments Monday as word of the shootings spread beyond the campus. "And all were accounted for, except for Rachael. We didn't find out until 11:15 that night."

Yesterday, the church opened its doors to offer a place to grieve and pray, a gesture repeated at many churches and schools throughout the state and in the hometowns of the victims.

Inside the lobby of the house of worship was a colorful poster on a bulletin board devoted to Hill and signed by her former classmates and teachers.

"The Lord Gives Strength To His People. The Lord Blesses His People With Peace," it reads.