Community mourns slain college student

A convicted sex offender has been charged with kidnapping the student.
CROSSLAKE, Minn. (AP) -- Dru Sjodin's family and friends gathered to remember the slain college student Friday, their cars lining the streets for several blocks around the packed church parking lot.
Car antennas and the church doors were adorned with pink ribbons -- Sjodin's favorite color -- as mourners arrived for the four-hour wake, held about 10 miles from Sjodin's hometown of Pequot Lakes.
Sjodin's body was found in a northwest Minnesota ravine last Saturday, five months after she disappeared from a shopping mall parking lot in Grand Forks, N.D.
Inside Crosslake Lutheran Church, a mound of flowers surrounded the silver coffin of the University of North Dakota student. Above it hung a large photograph of a smiling Sjodin.
"I think everyone wanted Dru to come home and she is home now. That's what is important about today," said Linda Ulland, Sjodin's mother's neighbor.
Ulland said the community has bonded through the search for Sjodin and that the case has sparked interest in searching for other missing people.
"There has been a lot of good that has come out of this evil," she said.
Seed packets
Mourners were offered packets of flower and vegetable seeds that said "Dru Sjodin 1981-2003" and bore a quote from Quaker philosopher Elton Trueblood: "A man has made at least a start on discovering the meaning of human life when he plants shade trees under which he knows full well he will never sit."
Her funeral will be held today.
Sjodin's body was found about a mile outside Crookston, the hometown of the man charged with her kidnapping.
Alfonso Rodriguez Jr., a convicted sex offender, has pleaded not guilty and maintains his innocence. He remains in the Grand Forks County jail.
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