Scott Gregory Hawkins, 23, will always be remembered as the friend everyone would love to have had.

Hawkins, the student killed Wednesday in his Sacramento State residence hall, the American River Courtyard, was a quiet man who loved his studies and the peace and safety he felt at Sac State, said his father Gerald Hawkins.

“He liked how peaceful it was, how safe he felt there,” Gerald Hawkins said. “It is just so hard to say this now; he also just loved the new dorms.”

Elizabeth Hawkins, Scott Hawkins’ mother, remembered her son as the pizza-loving, loyal man he grew up to be.

She added her son dealt with Asperger syndrome during his life, and that made school difficult. However, it didn’t stop him from being kind-hearted and filled with love.

She said he was always willing to help other people and had always been there for her if she needed anything.

“I’m his mother and all I had to do was say ‘Can you do this for me?’ and he would do it,” Elizabeth Hawkins said. “He was never disrespectful; he would go out of his way for anybody.”

But Scott Hawkins didn’t just help out around the home. In high school, he went on a mission trip to Chile. It was always his goal to reach out to as many people. Before attending Sac State, he came to the area on a mission trip with the group Urban Emersion and enjoyed his time working here.

Elizabeth Hawkins said her son started attending East Valley Church in Orangevale just a few weeks ago.

Scott Hawkins’ roommate Spencer Dirrim, sophomore computer science major, said Scott Hawkins usually kept to himself, but the two of them got along relatively well and he was upset by what happened.

“I am kind of in shock, and a little disbelief,” Dirrim said.

In addition to his love for serving, Scott Hawkins enjoyed studying the past.

His love for history gained his parents’ and other people’s respect.

Gerald Hawkins said his son would often watch historical films and point out the inaccuracies he saw.

“He would say things like, ‘That can’t be true, they didn’t have those sorts of things back then,'” Gerald Hawkins said.

Scott Hawkins came to Sac State this semester after transferring from West Valley College in the Bay Area. He was majoring in history and was pursuing a minor in Islamic studies. He would write historical fiction in his spare time and was looking to publish stories on the website fanfiction.com.

For now, his parents are trying to cope with their loss and find out where to go from here.

“We have to deal with the nightmare of the horrifying facts,” Gerald Hawkins said. “We always hoped we would never be the parents who had to deal with this.”

For now, Dirrim is just trying to understand what happened and what is next for himself and the other three men in his room.

And, he said, there was no way for him to prepare for any such sort of incident, and that makes it harder.

“Scott was such a nice person; I’m going to miss him.” Dirrim said. “And this is the type of thing that you never expect to ever happen to you, it always happens to the other guy … so, I don’t know, I’m just going to miss him.”

Natalie Flynn can be reached at [email protected].