CHICAGO – Hundreds of mourners and dignitaries including first lady Michelle Obama packed the funeral Saturday for a Chicago honor student whose killing catapulted her into the nation's debate over gun violence.

Yet one speaker after another remembered 15-year-old Hadiya Pendleton not so much as a symbol but as a best friend, an excellent student with dreams of going to college and a sometimes goofy girl with a bright smile and big personality. They said she was a typical teen who wanted to borrow her friends' clothes and who never left home without her lip gloss.

And to her mother, Pendleton was the daughter she tried to keep busy so she'd be beyond the reach of the seemingly endless gang violence in the nation's third-largest city.