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Emily Moseley, a teenager with the whole world ahead of her and a rough past just behind, handed her father $50.

It was all the money she had, and he was begging for it.

"Here, please, take my last dollar," she told Terry Moseley. "Leave me alone."

The 19-year-old had moved away to start a new life, but she was back at her grandmother's house in Stokesdale on Aug. 16, catching up with family and friends.

That morning, Emily took a short trip to Greensboro with her father; her 16-year-old sister, Taylor; and her ex-boyfriend, Richard Oakley.

Recalling that day, Oakley said they drove to an ABC store where Terry Moseley bought four minibottles of liquor, took one and gave the rest to the teens. Later charged with giving liquor to an underage person, Terry Moseley maintains he bought liquor only for himself.

The group then stopped at a convenience mart, where Oakley, 18, bought smokes and a soda. It was there, Oakley told alcohol enforcement agents, that Emily Moseley met a man and bought Xanax, a prescription anti-anxiety drug that acts as a depressant.

After a quick lunch, the group returned to Stokesdale.

Several lives in that car would irrevocably change by the day's end.

* * *

Just six months earlier, in February, Emily Moseley had started a part-time job as an in-home nurse with Easter Seals in High Point.

Three months later, she left the house she shared with her grandmother, father and sister to move in with her mother, Wendy Moseley, and her mother's fiance, Al Corriher.

Eventually Emily's hard work at Easter Seals led to a full-time job.

"I was very happy about that," Corriher said. "She did really good."

Emily dreamed of becoming a registered nurse, Corriher and others said, and wanted to leave the partying lifestyle in Stokesdale.

It seemed to be working, he said. Emily had been visiting Stokesdale less often.

* * *

The teens took Xanax and drank liquor on the way back from Greensboro, law enforcement officials said.

They got to Stokesdale about 2 p.m., Oakley said, and stopped by the house of Mary Moseley, the family's widowed matriarch.

Dropping off their dad, the girls and Oakley hung around for a while, then left for a party in Mary Moseley's silver 2004 Chevrolet Cavalier. They picked up Oakley's cousin, Justin Malloy, at his house on Lauren Road about 6 p.m.

Malloy, 17, took them to his co-worker's place in Walnut Cove to cool off at a pool party.

* * *

At the start of Emily's senior year at McMichael High School, fall 2004, she took a job at BJ's Grill in Stokesdale.

There, she buddied up with Cassandra Quiroz, an old softball teammate. The girls built on their friendship as they scooped ice cream and sold hot dogs.

After a fight with her dad one night, Emily asked to stay with Quiroz for a week.

That week became six months.

"I think things were a little hard at home," Missy Joyner, Quiroz's mother, said of Emily's life with her dad and sister. "They didn't understand her, and she didn't understand them."

Emily's parents divorced when she was 10. Her mother moved to Salisbury. Terry Moseley retained custody of the girls. Child-support payments came only sporadically, court records show, and he refinanced his home on N.C. 65 in Rockingham County several times.

"I used to go to his house and hang out," Quiroz said. "He was a cool grown-up. He just let you do whatever."

Joyner suspected that Emily needed more structure.

"I think it bothered him because she chose to live here," Joyner said of Terry Moseley, "but he was appreciative that she was happy."

Emily shared a bedroom with Quiroz and focused on studying.

Jeanne Manuel taught her in health occupations classes at McMichael, where senior students interested in becoming certified nursing assistants work with patients at Morehead Memorial Hospital in Eden.

In those sterile hospital rooms, Emily gave human warmth that a blanket alone could not offer.

"And she was a happy person," Manuel said. "She had excellent people skills with her patients."

Emily seemed to be a natural for the job.

* * *

Stephen Dale McBride said he had never met the Moseley sisters or Oakley before Aug. 16, when they showed up at his pool party in Walnut Cove.

While there, the three drank beer and liquor, and took more Xanax, law enforcement officials said. Emily disappeared after a few hours, Oakley said, and he found her lying in the backseat of the car.

"Take me home," she demanded.

Oakley said he was too messed up to drive.

"Fine, I'll drive myself," she said. "I want to go home, so I can go to work tomorrow."

About 11 p.m., Oakley and the girls drove off, leaving Malloy behind. Emily laid down in the backseat.

Oakley was at the wheel.

* * *

On weekends, Emily, Quiroz and their sisters shopped at Four Seasons Town Centre or drove down to Concord Mills.

Rocking down the road in Emily's used Honda Civic, they'd blast music ranging from Nelly to Kenny Chesney.

"She was a T-shirt and jeans kinda girl," Quiroz said. "She didn't wear makeup; that wasn't her personality. She had straight brown hair. No fancy haircuts."

In February 2005, after a spat with Quiroz, Emily moved out. They fell out of touch. Emily lived with her dad some and with Oakley. After graduating from high school that spring, Emily found work in Stokesdale nursing homes.

Quiroz was surprised when she saw Emily again in fall 2006.

"Emily used to be a lot bigger. She had gotten real skinny," Quiroz said. "She was getting real bad."

They started hanging out again, and in early 2007, Emily confided in Quiroz.

"Emily had started doing cocaine, and she was doing too much," Quiroz said, "and she didn't want that to be how people knew her."

After landing the Easter Seals job, Emily dug in and earned full-time work caring for a mentally handicapped adult woman in Lexington, Shelia Tucker.

Tucker loved to play with Emily's long brown hair.

Amy Mitchem, a nurse with Alpha Healthcare, worked alongside Emily, caring for Tucker's elderly mother, Annie Mock. "She was just good at what she did," Mitchem said about Emily, who planned to start night classes this fall to become a registered nurse.

* * *

Richard Oakley got lost on the drive back from Walnut Cove. Wrong turns doubled the half-hour drive.

The three decided to sleep at Malloy's house — it was closer than Mary Moseley's home. Oakley could pass out on a sofa, he said, and the girls would share a bed.

Nearly there, Oakley turned south onto Lauren Road. Taylor and Emily were asleep.

Oakley blacked out.

State troopers estimate the car was traveling 80 mph when it ran off the left edge of the road. Oakley woke when Taylor screamed his name.

"Dick! Slow down!"

He slung the wheel to the right. The car shot toward an embankment beyond the right shoulder, where a metal pole crushed the front bumper.

Momentum propelled the Chevy as it ricocheted off the hill and back across the road, flipping several times before crashing in a ditch.

Oakley woke up in the middle of the road. Taylor Moseley, who suffered cuts and bruises, climbed out of the car's smashed back window.

Emily was thrown from that window when the car flipped. Authorities later discovered her body in a ditch.

A Rockingham County sheriff's deputy found Oakley near the wreck after midnight

Aug. 17 and took him to jail.

* * *

Members of Gideon Grove United Methodist Church in Stokesdale took up a special offering to pay for Emily's funeral on Aug. 20.

About 90 people came to the service, many of them young, pastor Wanda Lancaster said.

Meanwhile, state investigators considered filing charges linked to the fatal wreck.

All except Oakley claimed they weren't involved. He cried for weeks and considered suicide. But he won't take full responsibility for Emily's death.

"He don't want to blame himself," Oakley said of Terry Moseley, "and he had a whole lot to do with it."

Terry Moseley is fighting unrelated drug charges in Guilford County. At a Sept. 24 court hearing, Moseley said he didn't have a lawyer.

"My daughter died last month, and all my money was spent on the funeral," he told the judge.

His comments for this story came from an interview with the News & Record shortly after state officials announced alcohol-related charges connected to Emily's death. He has since declined interview requests.

Emily's mother did not want to talk about her daughter.

"I know who she was, myself, and I don't feel like I have to tell everybody," Wendy Moseley said.

"I've got that. I know her."

* * *

Red clay colors Emily Susan Moseley's grave, marked by a bronze placard stuck in the earth.

A bouquet of plastic roses sits at the head of her burial site in the Gideon Grove church cemetery. Several generations of Moseleys are buried there.

Two white angel statues, each about 16 inches high, stand over Emily's grave.

One has purple wings. The other holds a bowl with a bird.

In that tiny dish is a bronze Alcoholics Anonymous medallion commemorating one year of sobriety. "To thine own self be true," is stamped on one side. On the other side, the Serenity Prayer:

God grant me the serenity to accept things I cannot change

courage to change things I can

and wisdom to know the difference.

News researchers David Bulgin and Diane Lamb contributed to this report.

Contact Gerald Witt at 382-8522, or gwitt @news-record.com