CHAPEL HILL - Rudy Tempesta stood outside the Estes Drive Post Office as customers slipped mail into slots beside a wreath of flowers in the lobby.

"I used to call her 'Julie, Julie, Julie.' I got that out of the movies: 'Judy, Judy, Judy,' " the 83-year-old letter carrier said. "She got a laugh out of it."

No one was laughing last week, as coworkers of Julie Hatch, 31, mourned the young woman's death and learned her partner, Jonel Hoogterp, 26, was being taken off life support in a Michigan Hospital.

The couple were attending Hoogterp's family reunion last weekend when police say a driver crossed the center line and hit a group walking along the road from behind. Hatch and another woman died in the crash. Hoogterp suffered critical injuries.

"They were just such a loving couple," said Anne Watson, who got to know Hoogterp at Sunset Grille in Durham, where Hoogterp tended bar. The couple attended Watson's 40th birthday party and one day hoped to get married and have children, she said.

"Their love for each other was just obvious," Watson said. "They just extended that love to all their friends. They had a lot of friends."

Hoogterp is a paramedic with the Parkwood Volunteer Fire Department, where two coworkers died after heart attacks in December and March.

"It's been a pretty rough eight months around here," Parkwood Fire Chief Billy Colley said.

"I just remember her smiling face always around here," he said. "She was very energetic, enjoyed being here and volunteering her time helping people and being around our people as a team."

In Chapel Hill, Tempesta, the U.S. Postal Service's longest-serving letter carrier, said Hatch "was a baby to me."

When Hatch's father was dying over several months in Buffalo, N.Y., Tempesta said the young woman came and asked what she could do for her father.

"The only thing you can do is call up your dad every other day and tell him you love him," Tempesta said he told her. "And she did that."

Hatch, just over 5 feet tall, was "an adorable little rogue," said carrier Ariel Bassett, 57, who said her coworker had already survived one car accident.

Hatch delivered mail in Glen Lennox, a community of small brick homes, where carrier Deryl Copeland remembered Hatch's run-in with the neighborhood "attack cat."

"That [cat] got her and several other carriers," he said. "She came back in one afternoon mad. Usually it's a dog that gets you."

Postal workers get in about 7 a.m. and spend about two hours sorting mail for delivery before they head out on their routes. That's when they get to know one another.

Hatch was just full of life, Bassett said.

"She was funny, she was sarcastic," she said. "She loved her job."

"One of the biggest things I reget is not to know her in the fullness of time. We get to know each other over time. She really was taken away too early."

The crash July 25 happened during the Hoogterp family reunion, a decades-long event that draws family and friends from across the country, according to the Grand Rapids Press.

Just before the crash, participants had gathered around a campfire, sharing laughs and tears in an informal memorial for a family member who recently died, the Press reported. Then, 23 people left for a walk along South Gould City Road in Newton Township near Gould City in western Mackinac County about 9:30 p.m. A pickup truck or SUV crossed the center line, drove into the oncoming lane and hit the walkers from behind.

Police say Dustan Lyle Bowen, 28, was driving a 1994 Ford Explorer when he struck five pedestrians around 10 p.m. killing Hatch and Sara Dobbrastine, 24, of Kent City, Mich.

Bowen has been charged with two counts of second-degree murder, failure to stop at the scene of an accident resulting in a death, failure to stop at the scene of an accident resulting in serious impairment, killing animals (dogs hit and killed in the crash) and driving outside license restrictions. Bowen is being held on $1 million bail and could face life in prison if convicted.

Bowen has two previous convictions for operating while intoxicated in Midland County since 2000. In May, police sought a felony warrant against him for dangerous drugs, Michigan State Police records showed.