"Just about every picture you see she is smiling that is Mindy full of life and love. Even in darkest moments she could find a smile" says Ty Herndon, country singer and close friend of Mindy McCready

    Those closest to Mindy say there is no denying that much of her short life was filled with mental illness, alcoholism and substance abuse.

"I'm just like everyone else I've been wrong before and I'll be wrong again" says Mindy in file footage from our Fox 17 archives.

    But in all her brokenness, her friends say Mindy had a heart full of love.

"She had a way of reaching out and touching people no matter what she was going through that is one reason I've admired her" says Herndon.

    Herndon was one of Mindy's closest friends.
    Ty says he'll never forget the day they met  back in 1996.

"This lady come running down hall, blonde hair bouncing, gave me a hug and said guess what we are gonna be friends for life and we have been friends for life."

    Ty says that  is how he will remember his dear friend.
    Nashville socialite Brent Young says he too will focus on the way she once lived, not the way she died.

"Mindy did not take her life. It was the disease and illness she coped with on a daily basis. That is what took her life" says Young.

    Brent has shared a lot with Mindy - even her darkness.
     He chatted with me by phone from a long term recovery program, where he is pulling his own life back together.
    Brent says he talked to Mindy just last week when she was actually offering him words of encouragement. "That is how she was. She was always thinking of others." says Young.

    Despite the haunting details of her death. Mindy's friends want people to know she was a good person.

"She always wanted to help everyone else but in the end Mindy could not help herself"

    As they mourn they say they find peace knowing that heaven now has ten thousand and one.

"She was an angel, an angel to me and those that knew her well"
Mindy McCready's Close Friends Reflect on the Mindy They Knew