Rita said Alexa was riding “an old kind of cruiser bike with a wicker basket” and was about five minutes away from home when she was hit.

Alexa worked at Seven Sushi, a restaurant in Bozeman’s Cannery District, for two years. The restaurant said in a Facebook post it closed on Sunday to grieve the death of an adored team member.

“We’d like to express our heartfelt condolences and request respect for her family’s privacy at this time,” the post read.

Senai Doss met Alexa in 2014 and later roomed with her and two other girls in the Pi Beta Phi sorority house at MSU.

Doss said Alexa was the “most colorful person” and that she often pulled off eccentric outfits — like a black dress with a long, rainbow polka-dotted train. Doss said Alexa was always working on something, and that everything in her life was about color and aesthetics

“I was always blown away by the things she created,” Doss said.

Alyssa Lynch, another sorority sister, described Alexa as “a beautiful soul” who wanted to make everyone happy. Lynch said Alexa was quirky, and that she could walk into a room and make everyone laugh.

Lynch said she is devastated because Alexa meant so much to her.

“She was absolutely one-of-a-kind and I will never experience the friendship that I had with her again,” Lynch said.

By Tuesday afternoon, a silver bike had been placed where Alexa was hit and killed. Flowers had been leaned against the bike’s kickstand.

Rita said Alexa got her bike about eight years ago, when she moved to Bozeman from Rapid City, South Dakota, to attend Montana State University. She loved hiking, skiing and the mountains, and grew fond of Bozeman as she was “on the edge of trying to figure things out.”

Alexa originally wanted to be a doctor and follow in her father’s footsteps. She started out college studying science, but her parents tried to convince her to go into art because a high school teacher had said she had a “soul of an artist.”

A few years later, she switched her major to art.

“We just knew that’s who she is,” Rita said. “It took her a while to figure that out.”

She said Alexa was a pretty quiet person and had a few loyal friends. Her mission in life was to make things beautiful, Rita said.

“She’s always kind of been that way, even as a little person,” she said.

Alexa taught herself how to do all sorts of “crafty-type” things.

She wasn’t a photographer, Rita said, but would often make collages from photographs she had taken. She said one year Alexa went water skiing in Rapid City and photographed every sunset she saw while on the lake. She later surprised her father with the collage as a Christmas gift.

“She liked to do collages a lot — she was good at that,” Rita said.

Rita said Alexa rode her bike the night of the incident because she was having car trouble. She said Alexa had lights on her bike and followed the rules that night.

“We just feel as a family that this was a tragedy on both sides,” Rita said. “We just need to do a better job as a society to prevent this kind of thing from happening.”

Alexa was the youngest of Rita’s four daughters. Rita said her family won’t be complete without her.

“She’s our special angel,” Rita said. “And she’ll forever be our Christmas angel.”