Charlotte Baggao Colton, 44, of Santa Barbara died of a gun shot wound in the head two days later at Cottage Hospital.

In 1999, another Filipino postal worker, Joseph Santos Ileto, was also murdered in a racially-motivated attack.

Colton, a mother of three boys, requested that her organs be donated, and arrangements are underway to fulfill those wishes.

Colton was born in Taiwan and lived in Lompoc from 1968 to 1970 when the Air Force brought her family to the city, where she attended La Cañada Elementary School. The family moved to Goleta in 1970.

Colton joined the Postal Service in 1983 and married fellow postal worker James Colton. She is survived by her husband and three young children, ages 8, 11 and 12.

Colton’s mother, Paulina Baggao, said her daughter was deeply involved with the Cub Scouts with her three children.

“She was a loving mother, a loving wife and a loving daughter,” Baggao said. “She was so involved with the community.”

Baggao said the shootings were senseless, and her grandchildren have lost their mother.

“One of the boys, the 8-year-old, said, ‘Gramma, 2006 is a bad year for us,”’ she said. ‘“We lost our mom.”’

Colton’s mother and father, Ambrose, are among the founders of the Lompoc Filipino-American Club.

Investigators tracking the path of an ex-postal worker who carried out the deadly assault on a mail-sorting facility believe a former neighbor found slain at a condominium may have been the first victim of the suicidal rampage, authorities said.

Authorities described past bizarre behavior by Jennifer San Marco, and an ex-colleague said she was prone to racist remarks, but her motive remained a mystery as the death of a woman wounded at the mail facility raised the number of slain postal workers to eight.

Police said San Marco, 44, fired a handgun at workers in a parking lot and inside the Santa Barbara Processing and Distribution Center.

Investigators said San Marco reloaded at least once and ended the carnage by killing herself. It was unclear where she obtained the 9 mm pistol, Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Sgt. Erik Raney said.

However, acquaintances said San Marco sometimes talked to herself and spewed racist comments.

In New Mexico, where she moved in 2004, she once tried to start a publication called The Racist Press but didn’t qualify for a business license, authorities said.

All of the dead were minorities, an acquaintance said.

San Marco’s reputation for bizarre behavior ended her postal career. She worked at the mail sorting plant for nearly six years but left in June 2003.

She was granted early retirement on a medical disability because of psychological problems, the U.S. Postal Service said.

“She went through all the requisite screenings. There were no prior indications” of problems, said Keith Blackman, a media consultant to the Postal Service.

Former plant worker Jeff Tabala said that in 2003 he saw sheriff’s deputies pull San Marco out from under a mail-sorting machine and wheel her away in handcuffs on a mail cart after a disturbance.

She returned several months later but “people started coming to me and saying, ‘she’s acting erratically,”’ Tabala said. “She was screaming, she was saying a lot of racist comments. It was pretty ugly.”

She seemed specifically hostile to Asians, he said.

She was escorted out of the building by management and never returned, Tabala said.

Tabala, who knew the victims, said three of the dead were black, one was Chinese-American, one was Hispanic and one was Filipino.

In addition to Colton, the dead were Ze Fairchild, 37, and Maleka Higgins, 28, both of Santa Barbara; Nicola Grant, 42, and Guadalupe Swartz, 52, both of Lompoc; and Dexter Shannon, 57, of Oxnard.

After moving to New Mexico, San Marco lived in an isolated desert home but had run-ins with local officials.