Even as a 20-year-old young woman living and working on her own, Dowagiac’s Kylie Benkert could still rely on her dad, Chad, for a favor now and then.

Not that long ago, Chad received a text from Kylie after she had gone into work, at Faith Plastics in Marcellus, stating simply, “Hey Dad, can you bring me a drink?”

Grabbing a cup of her favorite beverage — a raspberry white chocolate latte from The Baker’s Rhapsody — Chad hurried over that morning to deliver the piping hot drink. When he arrived, he found Kylie standing by the door with her friend, pointing toward him as if to say, “See, told you he would come,” Chad said.

“As silly as it sounded, it was one those special moments between us,” Chad said. “Those are the moments I will remember most.”

Last week, Chad stopped by the downtown bakery to order another raspberry white chocolate latte — this time, to drink himself in memory of his beloved daughter.

Kylie, alongside her longtime boyfriend Jaylen Weller, died on Dec. 4 from injuries sustained in a car accident in Van Buren County. The two were on their way back home from the Marcellus factory, where they both worked, when Weller lost control of the vehicle and collided with an oncoming truck.

Kylie was laid to rest in Riverside Cemetery Saturday, with many of her friends dying their hair purple in her memory, as she was fond of coloring her hair, Chad said.

Born in Paw Paw, Kylie grew up in the Dowagiac area for most of her early life before she and her family moved to Winter Garden, Florida, Chad said.

On top of getting heavily involved with the junior baseball team, Kylie and her dad frequented nearby Universal Studios theme park. Their favorite ride was the “Men in Black” shooting gallery, where they would almost always get the highest score out of anyone else riding at the time, Chad said.

“Her favorite part was listening to other people say, ‘What the heck?’ after seeing our score on the leaderboard,” Chad said.

The Benkerts moved back to Dowagiac when Kylie was 14, enrolling in Dowagiac Union High School after spending years being home schooled, where she quickly stood out from the pack — in part due to her habit of changing her hair color, Chad said.

“She had her own style,” he said. “She did not care what anyone else was doing. In fact, many people began to copy her style.”

She continued to shift around her hair colors after graduating, always asking her mom, Dana, to dye it for her. The routine coloring sessions became a sort of special bonding time between the two, where they would watch movies and talk, Dana said.

Kylie and her mom also shared a deep love of art, with Kylie spending much of her free time drawing, painting or playing guitar, a passion she shared with her boyfriend.

She cared deeply for animals, with she and Jaylen raising multiple pets at their apartment, Chad said.

Besides her energy and sense of humor, the thing Dana said she will remember most about Kylie was her rare, genuine smile, she said.

“You had to earn it, you really did,” Dana said. “When you did get it, you really felt it.”