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WELD COUNTY, Colo. (KDVR) — FOX31 is hearing from those who knew Weld County Sheriff’s Deputy Alexis Hein-Nutz, from high school friends to coworkers and even a man who says he was locked up at the jail where she worked.

Hein-Nutz was killed in a hit-and-run Sunday in the county she served while riding a motorcycle to the job she so desperately coveted.

Monday night, that intersection was identified by a cross, put there by a friend who said he was her coworker.

“She was a hard worker. She was very bright and outgoing,” the man told us, speaking with FOX31 on the condition of anonymity.

“The law enforcement community is going to be missing out on someone who’s a big bright personality,” he added.

Deputy ‘passionate’ about law enforcement

Those who knew her from her time at Loveland High School said her command as a deputy could only be matched by how she so effortlessly commanded a room and those in it, even without a badge.

“Her smile could brighten up your whole day, no matter what you were going through,” Kristin Kovach said. They were a couple of years apart in high school but got close after their time working at McDonald’s after graduation.

“Even when we worked together fresh out of high school, she really wanted to pursue a career in law enforcement. She knew that’s what she wanted to do. She was very passionate about it, very inspiring,” Kovach said.

But it’s not just friends or coworkers who are remembering her. The same adulation was heard from someone who did not have a choice but to respect her.

“I went to jail this summer to clear up a charge I’d had for a while, and she was one of the SRTs,” the Special Response Teams, Ben Selvey said. He’s a former inmate at the Weld County jail where deputy Hein-Nutz worked.

“Spending 50 days in jail, I saw her probably five days out of the week, every week,” Selvey said, adding: “You would think maybe a female officer might not get the respect that a man does, but there wasn’t a single dude in that jail [who] wasn’t afraid of her.”

The confirmation of her death came on Monday, one week before her 25th birthday.