Jessica Foshee, 20, courageous heart patient

By her appearance, it was never apparent that Jessica Foshee was born with a congenital heart defect.

That was just fine with the 2008 Roswell High School alumna. She shunned pity and special attention. She wanted to be treated like everybody else. She preferred to live the life of a normal young woman.

"Jessica never used her condition as a crutch," said her mother, Linda Martin Wood, of Alpharetta. "She didn't want special treatment. It actually would make her angry and upset. Her sorority friends knew she'd had heart surgery but they didn't know the weight that she bore. Outwardly, she looked as healthy as the next person."

On Saturday, Jessica Lynn "Tiny" Foshee died of cardiac failure while asleep in a student housing complex near Auburn University. She was 20. A memorial service will be held at 2 p.m. Friday at St. David's Episcopal Church in Roswell. Roswell Funeral Home Green Lawn Cemetery is in charge of arrangements.

Ms. Foshee's cardiac condition was detected when she was 13 months old. She was born with ventricular septal defect (VSD), often referred to as a hole in the heart. Only she had too many holes to document. She also lacked a septal wall.

She underwent a couple of  surgeries before doctors deemed her condition too severe and said they'd done all they could do. Her parents searched the country for additional treatment and found a doctors' team in San Francisco to perform an open-heart surgery and build a septal wall. She was 5 at the time.

In high school, Ms. Foshee served as president of the Interact Club, a branch of the Rotary International service organization. She also belonged to the Atlanta Junior Rowing Association.

In college, she was a junior history major with plans to teach high school. She was a member of Alpha Chi Omega sorority in which she held an office and assisted in recruitment. She volunteered for the local Boys & Girls Club.

For a year, she dated Troy Braswell, an Auburn junior. On Saturday, he found her unconscious in her off-campus townhouse.

"One of her favorite quotes was, ‘Be joyful always,'" said Mr. Braswell of Richmond, Va. "The only reason I knew about her condition was because, when we first started hanging out, she'd have to stop a couple of times while walking. She never complained about it and never used it as a way out of anything."

JoAnn Foshee, an older sister, is pursuing a medical career because of her sibling; she's a first-year nursing student at Mercer University.

"I saw what the doctors and nurses did to help her out, and it made me want to do that for other people," she said. "People told her she would die at whatever age, but she kept going."