Family and Friends Remember Slain Girl’s Zest for Life : Tribute: Hundreds watch video projects by Melissa Austin, a Mission Viejo student who dreamed of working in TV. An ex-boyfriend is charged with murder.

More than any words spoken Saturday during the memorial service for slain Mission Viejo High School student Melissa Allyson Austin, her own work served as a tribute to her life.

With the lights dimmed in the Shepherd of the Hills United Methodist Church, hundreds of family members, classmates and teachers viewed on television screens the two videotapes produced by Austin and her best friend shortly before Austin’s death.

Initially produced as class projects, Austin’s video productions now represented her unfulfilled dream of becoming a television producer.

That dream was cut short last week when Austin, 16, was shot to death. Her former boyfriend, Richard Kenneth Nunno, 20, of Anaheim has been charged with murder.

Austin had met Nunno, a grocery store clerk, at Knott’s Berry Farm. She had been forbidden to see him by her parents.

While her life ended tragically, mourners remembered Austin during happier times, as a person who was a team player and always willing to give of herself.

“I will always remember her as a shining light,” said her television production teacher, Terrance J. Sheppard, who delivered the eulogy. “I was a teacher who went to school and learned from his student. I will always remember Melissa as a dear, sensitive, wonderful, loving young lady. She will be deeply missed.”

The soft visual images on the television screens also seemed to symbolize what friends described as her zest for life.

With a piano and woodwind instruments serving as the background music, killer whales and dolphins are shown swimming and leaping out of the water toward a bright orange sun.

In her last term paper, written for science teacher Chuck Drinkworth, Austin stated that she hoped people would learn how mankind has harmed the dolphin population and “how wonderful these creatures are.”

During the eulogy, something Drinkworth had said about Austin was remembered: “I believe the dolphin here was Melissa.”

Her uncle, the Rev. Bill Rushing, led the prayer service and offered a poem written by Austin’s aunt. “There never was a girl so full of life as Melissa,” the poem read. “She didn’t walk through life, she bounced.”