While riding on the T one day, Matthew William Tasker was holding a giant bag of Swedish Fish. A homeless woman also riding the T longingly eyed the candy for a few seconds, then asked Tasker if she could have one. With everyone around him expecting him to ignore the woman’s request, Mr. Tasker instead chose to get up and place the entire bag of candy in the woman’s rugged hands.

“He always put other people before himself,” said Erin Barnett, his girlfriend of six months, a sophomore at NU. “He would give anything to anybody. He was one of a kind.”

Tasker, a sophomore engineering major, died on Aug. 17 from injuries sustained in a car crash. He was 19.

Tasker was a graduate of Lafayette Junior Senior High School in New York, and was entering his second year at Northeastern, where he was a percussionist in the NU Orchestra and an avid Red Sox fan.

“He was a great kid, he was always willing to help out others,” said his mother, Corinne Tasker. “He loved the drums and he loved baseball – he played that all through high school – and he was a big time Red Sox fan.”

After spending the summer at home working as a waiter and bartender in Tully, N.Y., Tasker was looking forward to returning to Boston, his mother said.

“He loved Boston and he loved Northeastern. He had a really great group of friends up there,” she said.

Before attending Northeastern, Tasker was somewhat reserved, Barnett said.

“He loved his friends here, and being at NU just opened him up – he had the greatest friends,” she said.

Tasker was a pitcher on his high school baseball team and served as captain his senior year. He was also the co-editor of the Lafayette High School Lancer yearbook.

Due to his small-town roots, friends called him “Big Country,” said Paula Cowling, Tasker’s high school principal.

Barnett said Tasker loved swimming, jetskiing and canoeing in the lake behind his house.

“One time, he sunk the canoe, and the funniest thing I have ever seen was Matt standing knee-deep in lake muck and trying to pull the canoe out,” she said. “He just loved life, he lived it to the fullest, he made mistakes and learned from them and he never regretted anything.”

Cowling said Tasker was a multi-talented student with a promising future.

“He was an award-winning percussionist in the New York State music association, was very active in his senior class, he was on the baseball team and was just an excellent student all-around – he had it all going on,” she said. “He was a phenomenal young man, we all just adored him.”

Tasker was known for his selflessness and willingness to help others.

“He always wanted to look over everyone and make sure everyone was okay,” Barnett said.

In addition to his mother, Tasker leaves his father, Steven and his brother Bryan, both of Tully, N.Y.; his maternal grandparents, Martha and Cortland Parsons of Coral Springs, Fla., and Bridgeport, N.Y.; and his paternal grandmother Shirley of Pleasant Valley, N.Y.

A funeral service was held Aug. 21 at Columbian Prebysterian Church in Lafayette, N.Y.