SALISBURY — William Jacobs walked into the newsroom the other day with an obituary in his hand.

The death notice was handwritten, and it was more like a farewell letter. It was pretty standard, until he reached the end and wrote, “Cindy, you did not leave this world unnoticed. Your friend, William Jacobs.”

Years ago at Knox Junior High, Jacobs knew her as Cindy Chapman. They were sweethearts, or what passes for that in junior high. Jacobs said Cindy had long, luxurious red hair and eyes that glistened as though they were constantly catching the reflection of water.

“A smile that would light up a room,” Jacobs said. As he recalled, Cindy lived with her grandmother in a brick house at the edge of Salisbury, next to the Spencer line. Maybe that’s why she decided to attend North Rowan High School, while Jacobs went on to Salisbury High.

“We went in different directions,” said Jacobs, who had a a bit of adventurer in him. After high school, he left Salisbury to work with a traveling carnival. Later, he moved to Lenoir, where his brother, the manager of a Hardees, offered him a job.

Over time, Jacobs married, had a child and moved back to Rowan County. He started his own business, Superior Services, which does parking lot maintenance and landscaping. He spent time looking after his parents and, in recent years, his son, Josh, who was seriously hurt in an accident but has managed to live independently and pay his bills.

As for Cindy, Jacobs remembers bumping into her many years ago when they both were probably in their late 20s. Nothing was wrong then, as far as Jacobs could tell. He said Cindy married a guy named Hanson, and she had three children — a girl and two boys.

It was not until this year that Jacobs saw her again. From what he could tell, she might have been homeless, though he also heard she had a place in the Park Avenue neighborhood.

“I would see her walking the street,” he said. Jacobs sometimes would pick up one of his workers at the Park Avenue convenience store across from Johnson Concrete, and he would see Cindy at the store and speak with her.

He also had a conversation with her once at Taco Bell.

“I could see the deterioration,” Jacobs said. “It was obvious she had problems.”

Sometime this summer, things became worse for Cindy. She ended up going to a local nursing home, and she died Aug. 26. A required time period elapsed, and after no one claimed the body, Cindy Chapman Hanson was cremated last Friday.

Jacobs learned of Cindy’s death a few days after it happened, and with the encouragement of his partner, Brenda Butler, he tried to find family members to claim Cindy’s body or to pay for her burial or cremation.

“She saw how moved I was,” Jacobs said of Brenda. “It just seemed so unfair.”

Jacobs investigated several leads into where Cindy’s children might be — her husband had died previously — but he kept running into dead ends. He told Carla Johnson, a Department of Social Services caseworker handling the case, that he would like to take Cindy’s ashes to the beach, a place he knew she enjoyed.

It wasn’t allowed, but Johnson told Jacobs that Cindy’s ashes would be sent to the coast at the end of the year and scattered in the ocean, with a few other unclaimed souls. Jacobs found comfort in knowing that.

Cindy Chapman Hanson was 57.

Why did Jacobs go to the trouble of looking for her children and fashioning an obituary for her?

“Because nobody deserves to die unnoticed,” he said. “I just want her to know she didn’t leave this earth unnoticed — that somebody cared. If I were in the same situation, I would want someone to do the same for me.”

Besides, Cindy had a smile that would light up a room.

Contact Mark Wineka at 704-797-4263, or mark.wineka@salisburypost.com.