Artistic, caring and loads of fun, India Escobar and Tristan Ryng drew others to them, their friends and relatives said.

Escobar, 18, loved animals so much, her friends joked she''d wind up an old lady with a house full of cats. Ryng, 20, has been known to climb trees on a whim or do a flip while walking down the street. They both were aspiring artists and very much in love.

"Tristan loved, adored and worshipped India," their mutual friend, D.J. DeMarce, said Monday. "He had been talking about proposing."

His decision to take drugs and drive ended all that, authorities contend.

High on LSD, Ryng drove a car into a tree in Tacoma''s North End about 8 p.m. Saturday, police reported. Escobar, riding in the seat beside him, suffered a ruptured aorta and later died.

Police arrested Ryng early Sunday morning and booked him into jail, according to court records. On Monday, prosecutors charged him with a single count of vehicular homicide.

Ryng pleaded not guilty as teary-eyed teens, young adults and his mother looked on. Superior Court Judge Frederick Fleming ordered him jailed in lieu of $50,000 bail.

Friends and relatives grieved for both Escobar and Ryng. "We''re losing two of our good friends," said Heather DeMarce, D.J.''s sister.

Escobar was a student at the Tacoma School of the Arts.

"She was a good student and was well-loved and respected by her peers," the school''s director, Jonathan Ketler, said in a statement released by the Tacoma School District.

D.J. DeMarce said Escobar took her art seriously.

"I think the biggest part of India''s life was she was an artist," he said. "She was always doodling and sketching and working to improve her art.

"Like too many young people, she died too soon and didn''t get the opportunity to let her star shine as brightly as it could."

Escobar planned to turn her talent into a career, according to her page on the social networking site MySpace.

"I plan to travel and become a tattoo artist," she wrote. "Nothing big and fancy but just what I need to get by."

Ryng is a talented artist in his own right, working in sculpture and glass.

In 2005, he was one of 37 winners of the Boys & Girls Clubs of America''s National Fine Arts Competition.

His sculpture "The Rose" toured the nation and was displayed at the Boys & Girls Club''s national convention that year.

He later took up glass blowing and was interviewed as part of The News Tribune''s Labor Day feature in 2006.

"I love to glass-blow," he said. "It gives me a sense of really accomplishing something."

The two met through mutual friends and began a relationship about two years ago, said Beverly Ryng, Tristan''s mother.

"I began to consider her my daughter-in-law. She was just so fantastic," said Beverly Ryng, who works in the circulation department at The News Tribune.

A witness whose name was not released told police that Escobar and Ryng took drugs together Saturday in an apartment on North Pearl Street.

They "were acting strangely," according to court records, and the person who rents the apartment asked them to leave.

A few minutes later, two men saw Ryng walking around the parking lot without his pants on, the records state. They told him to put them on.

Instead, Ryng and Escobar got into a car, with Ryng behind the wheel.

The men told authorities Ryng drove at them at high speed before swerving and hitting the tree.

Ryng got out of the car, and one of the men held him until police arrived, according to the charging papers.

Ryng later admitted he''d taken LSD, the documents state.

Escobar lived long enough after the wreck to tell a woman who tried to help her that she and Ryng had been "doing acid," according to the charging papers.