Every time Monica Madrazo Garcia would call her son Zac Garcia — regardless of the time or place — he would greet her with a chipper, “Hey mama, how are you doing?”

“There was always no shame, no anything, in how he said he loved me. He would go to hug me, and then go ‘I love you’ and then give me a noogie. He was much taller than me,” Madrazo Garcia said. “He was just always loving, in those simple, simplest of ways.”

Garcia, a senior finance major at the University of Maryland, died Sept. 9 in a car crash in Fulton County, Pennsylvania. He was 21.

Garcia and four other students were driving back from Ohio State University, where they’d met up with a friend for the weekend. According to a report from Pennsylvania State Police, the driver of the vehicle lost control while traveling east on Interstate 70 in rainy weather. The car veered up an embankment before tumbling back onto the highway. Garcia, who had been wearing a seatbelt, was pronounced dead at the scene.

All five passengers in the car were members of this university’s chapter of the Phi Gamma Delta fraternity, also known as Fiji. While some of the car’s other passengers sustained serious injuries, all are currently in stable condition.

Garcia, a Cresskill, New Jersey native, is remembered by friends and family as an outgoing, ambitious person who made friends everywhere he went.

Razak Malas, a senior economics major, met Garcia when they were in sixth grade. Garcia introduced him to most of their friends at home, and later convinced him to join the fraternity when he transferred to this university his sophomore year.

“One of his friends would say he’s the glue, and I think that’s a good description,” Madrazo Garcia said.

When they’d run into each other on the campus, Garcia would scream his name in excitement, and Malas would call him “Wacky,” his nickname.

“It’s a clear divider between him as a friend and everyone else. He’d give you this smile and a big hug always,” Malas said. “He’d have small gestures with everyone, each tailored to each individual that was his friend.”

Elysa Zebersky, a senior English major, said she met Garcia on their first day of freshman year, when they were both moving into Elkton Hall.

“Immediately, I recognized how special he was,” Zebersky wrote in a text message. “He was the most selfless, caring person I’ve ever known, willing to drop anything to help the people he loved.”

Ross Brannigan, an alumnus of this university, was president of the university’s Phi Gamma Delta chapter when he met Garcia, who was part of his first pledge class in charge.

“He’s just contagious — he’d just kinda walk in a room and the mood would shift,” Brannigan said. “People would just feed off the energy he’d bring. People would wanna be like that.”

Brannigan said Garcia enjoyed bringing people together and making friends across different chapters. Garcia had acquired a real estate license in New York, and he would ask Brannigan, who works in real estate, for advice on how to break into the industry.

“For real estate, you gotta be personable and meet everyone,” Brannigan said. “And that’s exactly what he wanted to do.”

In his free time, Garcia loved playing sports, whether it was leading his high school basketball team to a state championship, or playing intramural sports with his fraternity.

Garcia spent the spring 2018 semester studying abroad in Barcelona. Madrazo Garcia said he “blossomed” there, traveling everywhere from Ireland to Switzerland to Italy. She even visited her son there for a week.

Garcia had always had a close bond with his mother — he was an only child, and his father died when he was young.

“We were hoping, when he graduated, we would get to go on another trip together,” Madrazo Garcia said.

After Garcia’s death, his fraternity created a GoFundMe to help his family pay for his wake and funeral. As of Sunday, it had garnered more than $125,000 from more than 2,100 donations.

“We didn’t do anything. We just clicked a button, and the world did the rest,” Malas said.

Malas said there would be a vigil later this week, and the fraternity would be making shirts inscribed with a quote Zac had tattooed on his wrist: “If I go before I’m old, oh brother of mine, don’t forget me if I go.” It’s a line from the song “Bartender,” sung by Garcia’s favorite band, the Dave Matthews Band.

Madrazo Garcia said she would use the majority of the funds to start a scholarship fund in her son’s name, and she’s asking for donations to the fund in lieu of flowers. While the fund’s purpose hasn’t yet been established, Madrazo Garcia said, some of her options were using it to help inner-city youth, or children of single mothers.

The fund will help Garcia’s legacy live on, Madrazo Garcia said.

“The one thing I said to his friends is that someone never dies if people still remember. I really think that’s true,” Madrazo Garcia said. “When you think of Zac, you automatically think of his smile, his laugh. That will always bring a smile to people’s faces, and warmth in their heart.”