few of nathan s friends, like his roommate, daniel willyam. reporter: you were a little older than the other kids? i was reporter: i mean, they were all kind of 18, 19 and you were yes, i was 26 years old. reporter: hadn t always been easy for daniel. he, too, was a little different. for one thing, he d been born in indonesia and struggled with some rude culture shocks when his family moved to america. still, he put on a brave face, served in the navy, and then signed up to study interactive media at the art institute. if anybody knew what nathan was up to, it would be daniel whose role in the student apartment was, well, almost like a den mother. i became a big brother to him, you know? it was like, do your homework, take him to school, pick him up from school and things like that. reporter: well, yes. i mean, you were. you were helping him with his homework, you were making his lunches, you were, you know, cleaning up after him. you were driving him to school.
overstatement, at least as the term is generally used in the 21st century. his name was nathan shuck. he was a classmate at the art institute 20 years old, like shelley, and from a dallas suburb, where he grew up with his mom and grandmother. like shelley, he seemed reserved, at least to most people. but in class and with close friends, he was energetic. shelley and nathan had been going out if you could call it that for a couple of months. i didn t even find out till the summer, i think it was like july of 2009, that she had a boyfriend. she said, by the way, mom, i ve got a boyfriend. i m like, you do? she said, yeah, and and dad probably wouldn t like him too much, cause he s got, like, a lip piercing and some tattoos. reporter: but, she told her mom, they hadn t even kissed yet. she, as far as i know, had only held his hand like once. she s just naive that way. i sheltered her. reporter: sister shauna was the only one in the family who d
reporter: the first thing the next morning, cynthia called the art institute. to find out if shelley was in class. and actually, they well, they wouldn t go check on her. they said they can t leave the office alone and go check on a class. they ll have her call us when she gets a break. as soon as she has a break, they ll have her call us. reporter: then they phoned shelley s sister shauna. i told her really, i was like, stop worrying about it. she s 20 years old. she doesn t want to talk to her mom. you know. i really didn t think anything bad would ever happen to her, so i just kind of brushed it off. reporter: so they kept driving. by now they were almost a thousand miles from dallas. that s when the school called back. when they finally sent somebody to the classroom, and she wasn t there, well, i was ready to turn around right there cause i knew something was wrong. reporter: then relief. someone from the school ran into shelley s roommate, ashley olvera.
to you, this one? well, you know, i ve got two daughters. and yeah, it s it s hard. reporter: shelley died here, in the falls , a large housing complex where the art institute arranged for some of its students to live. seemed like a perfectly reasonable place, looked quite safe, when we stopped by to take some pictures one sunny afternoon. about you, i wouldn t let my daughter live there. reporter: really? absolutely not. reporter: dallas, like any big american city, suffers from its share of crime. and the falls? you go there during the daytime, it looks very nice. but at nighttime, totally different story. reporter: innocent 20-year-old girl out on the street in that neighborhood at night, you d worry about her? no way would i let my daughter walk that neighborhood at night, no way. reporter: the nances didn t know any better. little italy, after all,
she avoided the majority of everything that could ve got her into trouble, and i was so happy because of that. reporter: and then when shelley was a senior in the italy high school, her teacher suggested she enter an art contest sponsored by the art institute of dallas. and she s like, well, you know, i m not that good. and the art teacher said, no, i think you are, shelley. reporter: and she won. that same piece of art they took and put in the national competition. and it won her fourth place there. so she got a total of $13,000 to a scholarship toward the art institute of dallas. reporter: that s quite markable. so she this is an a major talent. and she was so excited about getting to go. reporter: the art institute of dallas is an urban school. everything about it and around it as different as can be from little italy, 45 miles and a whole world away. but here, finally, was a world in which shelley felt like she belonged.