On one of her last days alive, Michelle McGrath was walking with her mom to get lunch in downtown Orlando when they passed by a homeless man on the sidewalk.
"Hi, Michelle," he told the 27-year-old former homecoming queen, who was known to hand out blankets to those in need and let them bend her ear. She'd even invite some to dinner and share her phone number with others, three of McGrath's siblings and her sister-in-law recalled in an interview with USA TODAY.
"It was a firsthand experience for our mother to see how much she touched other people," younger sister Kerry McGrath said. Another younger sister, Patty Milam, added: "She never met a stranger."
On those same streets where McGrath spread kindness, her life came to a terrible end. On May 24, 1994, Thomas Lee Gudinas attacked her as she walked to her car after a fun night on the town. He raped her, killed her and left her nude body in a darkened alley.
Now more than 30 years later, Gudinas is set to be executed by lethal injection on Tuesday, June 24. That would make him the 24th inmate executed in the U.S. this year and the seventh in Florida.
