BOULDER - When Gerry Kowalczyk awoke in her Boulder home early Thursday to two military officials knocking at her door, she knew immediately that something had happened to her youngest son.

"I asked them to come in," the 75-year-old woman said Saturday from her home in Gunbarrel. "I knew they had a message for me."

Her son, Army Spc. Stephen M. Kowalczyk, 32, was killed Wednesday in Muqdadiyah, Iraq, by small-arms fire.

The U.S. Department of Defense said he died after his unit came into contact with enemy forces.

Kowalczyk moved to Boulder and worked for a construction company after graduating from high school in Albuquerque, his mother said.

Her son, who she said was always smiling, left Boulder to attend Macalester College in Minnesota but eventually moved back to work for the Sky Chair company on Pearl Street.

"Steve was always a very adventuresome person," she said. "He never waited for someone else to lead him."

After leaving Sky Chair, Kowalczyk visited Europe and the Middle East. He later worked on a pineapple farm in Hawaii.

He moved to California a few years ago, but had a hard time finding a job, so he joined the Army.

"He liked the Army very much," his mother said.

Kowalczyk wrote to his mother and five siblings often from Iraq, describing nights so cool that he could see his breath and rainstorms interrupted by bursts of sun.

In one of his letters, his mother said, he wrote: "I looked up, and I could see a million stars."

"He said, 'You know, I am not very far from where everything started for all us human beings.' He was very poetic in his writing."

Kowalczyk is survived by two sisters in Boulder, a sister in Nashville, Tenn., a sister in Alaska and a brother in San Francisco, his mother said.

He was assigned to the 6th Squadron, 9th Cavalry Regiment, 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division, stationed in Fort Hood, Texas.