BELLEVUE, NEB. - She'd feared suicide.

Nothing like this.

Deb Maruca-Kovac had tried her best to be a mother figure to 19-year-old Robert Hawkins - "Robbie" to friends - taking him in a little over a year ago after he dropped out of Papillion-La Vista High School and was kicked out of his family's home.

Though Hawkins had long struggled with depression and had been treated for attention deficit disorder/hyperactivity disorder, he seemed to have gotten back on his feet since moving in with Maruca-Kovac, her husband, Kerry Kovac, and their two sons, ages 17 and 19.

Hawkins had earned his GED. He'd bought himself a car, a green Jeep Cherokee. And he had a small circle of friends he enjoyed spending time with.

"He always tried to help people," said Maruca-Kovac, a nurse at the University of Nebraska Medical Center.

But his life seemed to have taken a recent downward turn. He was fired from his job at McDonald's and ended a relationship with a longtime girlfriend.

The firing, Maruca-Kovac believes, may have been the tipping point.

Wednesday afternoon, she said, Hawkins called her to tell her he'd left her a note in his bedroom.

She found it on the floor next to his bed.

The handwritten note thanked the family for everything they'd done, said he didn't want to be a burden and apologized, Maruca-Kovac said.

It also instructed that his Jeep go to his mother, Maribel Rodriguez of Bellevue, and that his friends "could have everything they wanted."

Maruca-Kovac tried to phone Hawkins. He hung up.

Hours later, nine were dead, Hawkins included.

"He was like a lost little puppy that nobody wanted," Maruca-Kovac said Wednesday evening, parked outside her Bellevue home while officers prepared to conduct a search.

Shawn Saunders, 18, was in shock he'll never "pal around" with his friend again.

Hawkins was an introvert, Saunders said, preferring to stay inside and play video games. He sometimes drank alcohol and smoked marijuana.

"But I always thought all in all, he was a good kid," Saunders said.

Officers were parked in the driveway of Rodriguez's empty house Wednesday night. Hawkins' father, Ronald Hawkins of LaVista, did not return a phone message.

Now the woman who tried to help Hawkins find the right path is left with only questions.

Outside her home in the cold, with her sister-in-law, Kathy Kovac, by her side, Maruca-Kovac, had no answers.

"Who knows?" she said. "He felt helpless."

Contact Melissa Lee at 473-2682 or mlee@journalstar.com.