LANGLEY — Pastor Matt Chambers held the small, battered box up high for all to see.

It was an old music box, one that had been dropped and dinged too many times to remember. Glue, tape and a rubber band held it together.

It didn’t matter that it no longer worked. What was important, Chambers said, was the message on the lid to her great-grandmother’s music box — a poem so important to Tonya Scriven that she memorized it and recited it whenever she got the chance in Sunday school.

Scriven was killed when she was struck by a car on Highway 525 near Greenbank Farm on Dec. 15.

The South Whidbey High School student was on her way home from Christmas shopping when she died, just two weeks before her 16th birthday.

Before a large crowd gathered at South Whidbey Assembly of God on Thursday, Chambers recounted the teen’s path through life, and shared the poem she cherished called “Footprints in the Sand.”

“You promised me Lord, that if

I followed you, you would walk with me always. But I have noticed that during the most trying periods of my life there has only been one set of footprints in the sand. Why, when I needed you most, have you not been there for me?” Chambers asked.

“The Lord replied, ‘The times when you have seen only one set of footprints in the sand is when

I carried you.’”

He then read a letter written by her father, Tim Scriven.

“You were always ready to stand up for someone smaller or different; you were not judgmental.”

Her father also noted her great love of books, and how that led to his past apologies to the staff at the Freeland Library.

“Tonya wasn’t supposed to have more than five books checked out at a time. We just returned two shopping bags full, and I’m sure

I will find more in her room.”

Chambers continued, reading how the teen’s father said she had a newfound habit of saying hello every time he walked into the room.

“Sometimes she would greet me five times in 10 minutes; ‘Hi, patro.’ ‘Hi, Tonya.’ ‘Hi, patro. ‘Hi, Tonya.’ Of course, you can’t get mad at someone for saying hello. But it can get annoying after the fifth time.

“Now I think she was getting them in while she still had the chance,” her father wrote.

More than 240 people crowded into the church to remember the teenager who loved books, Scooby Doo and being a volunteer Big Sister.

The church stage was lined with more than a dozen large flower arrangements. The backdrop: two Christmas trees, and hundreds of tiny white lights on icicle strands hanging above the place where she was baptized in October.

In one of the front-row seats: a large pink teddy bear.

“How do bad things like this happen to such sweet person?” asked Roland Capes, her great-grandfather.

“It’s a wake-up call for a lot of us. We never know; our life can be taken away from us in the next minute,” Capes said.

Her great-grandfather said he has struggled with her passing in the nights since her death. Then, he said, the Lord came to him.

“She was home with him. I’m just so blessed to be able to stand here and say, ‘She’s with the Lord.’”

Many stepped forward to share stories of “a little person with big thoughts.”

“Inside of her, she was just bigger than a lot of people.

Her thoughts were bigger,” said Dr. Bob Wagner.

Wagner said she was just one of two kids who came into his office in the past 18 years who needed a really big piece of paper for drawing while waiting for the doctor.

He told the audience how one picture that Scriven made — a big drawing of a chocolate sundae with a cherry on top — was so special he kept it. It’s now hanging up amid the photos of his children.

“It inspires me every day,” he said.

Greg Ballog, Scriven’s

10th-grade biology teacher, said the teen would come by his room every day to make sure the animals were fed and that his calendar was correct. She also took time to hide his stuffed microbes somewhere.

Every day after class, Ballog said, she would also give him a grade.

“She would really seriously look at me and say, ‘Now, young man, I’m ashamed of you today.’ Or, ‘I’m very pleased with how you did,’” he recalled. “Then she would write the grade up on the board.

“The last grade I got from her was a D,” he said as the church echoed with laughter.

For all the moments of sweet memories during the memorial service, there were many more tears to share.

“Life’s not going to be the same without her,” said her sister Rashelle Scriven, 9.

“God knows we love you so much. We miss you so very much,” said her stepfather, Pete Rowberry.

“But you’re walking with angels. And maybe some day we will also be lucky enough to walk with the angels with you.”