Family was everything. She rose early to help them when she was killed in University City.

Karen Lynn Gaskill Baker was an early bird who always took care of others.

Both qualities brought her to an ATM in the University City area last week where her life was taken in what police are calling a “heinous” act of violence.

Baker, 48, left her Charlotte home early on Wednesday, July 13, to get some cash to help her father-in-law pay a bill, said her son, William McClure.

Before the sun came up, she withdrew money from the Bank of America ATM on University City Boulevard, just across the street from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Police are still investigating what exactly happened next, but Baker was shot and killed in what appears to be a random robbery.

McClure called the violence “evil and senseless.”

“So giving, selfless, is the biggest thing I would say to describe my mom,” he said. “Most of her life she spent most of her time making other people whole.

“Those people who robbed her, my mom would have given them money. She would have given them her last dollar if they needed it.”

READ MORE: CMPD releases photos of suspect, vehicle in woman’s shooting death in University City

Baker was born on Dec. 8, 1973 in Vineland, New Jersey. When she was a toddler, her family moved to western North Carolina, where many of her relatives still live. She spent most of the rest of her life in Haywood County, visiting New Jersey in the summers.

Friends and family describe her as always putting others’ needs before her own.

“She was always caring, always willing to help anybody out, always had her door open, it didn’t matter who it was,” said Baker’s sister-in-law Jenny Gaskill. “Karen’s always been there for me.”

Gaskill recalls fond memories of family trips when their kids were younger, saying that Baker’s love for children was not limited to her own.

“All my kids loved her to death,” Gaskill said. “Any of the four of mine could always go to her, and my niece and my nephews.”

Baker had four kids — three sons and a daughter — and eventually added two step-children. She married Justin Baker in 2011, and four years ago moved to Charlotte with her husband to help take care of his father. But the move did not keep her from her three grandchildren: 7-year-old Harlan, 6-year-old Huxton, and 2-year-old Camila.

Two or three times a month Baker would make the three-hour trip between Charlotte and Canton to see her grandkids, McClure said.

They had plans next month to head down to Hilton Head Island, South Carolina, to continue a family tradition started a couple of years ago.

“That was her favorite place to be, at the beach, hearing the waves crashing, hearing the birds and feeling the still air at night,” McClure said, adding that being with her grandchildren made it even better. “They would run out to the ocean together, they would swim together, they would play with monster trucks in the sand together.”

McClure said his mother had recently decided that weekends and beach trips weren’t allowing enough time with family and was planning a change.

“My mom had plans to move back to Haywood County to be reunited full time with her children and grandchildren, and they took that chance from all of us,” he said.

Baker’s murder comes amid a spate of gun violence in the Charlotte area. Hers was at least the 57th homicide in Mecklenburg County this year, according at a Charlotte Observer count, and there have been at least six more in the week since Baker was killed, including another homicide just blocks from where Baker was killed.

So far in 2022, there have been 63 homicides, compared with 52 at this time last year, a 21% jump.

“It’s heinous, it is disgusting, and it pains me to have to come up and stand here in front of people and talk about that. But we want to find justice, we want to find people that killed this poor woman,” CMPD Maj. Brian Foley said at a news conference last week.

On Thursday, CMPD released photos of the suspect in Baker’s shooting.

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“We’re hopeful that justice will be served,” McClure said.

A GoFundMe has been set up for Baker’s grandchildren so that they “may continue to feel their Nana’s love” as they grow up.

“They’re just shattered without her,” McClure said about his three kids. “And of course it’s even harder as her son because I have to carry on and make sure my kids are OK and make sure they know they’re loved and make sure they know their Nana will always be with them.”