By Rachel Zarrell

Every day, Matthew Cooper would take a homeless man he had befriended into 7-Eleven and tell him to get whatever he wanted.

“All he wanted was cigarettes and candy, so that’s what Matt bought him,” said Megan Lynch, a friend of Mr. Cooper’s since their freshman year.

Friends and family describe Mr. Cooper as being loyal and genuine, and as “always having a smile on his face.”

“He was unbelievably attentive,” Lynch said. “You could be sitting in a bar with hundreds of people around you and he would make you feel like you were the only person in the room.”

Mr. Cooper died Saturday, March 29 in his Boston apartment of unknown causes. He was 23.

Autopsy results on his death were inconclusive, and toxicology results have not been submitted, Mr. Cooper’s family said.

A senior economics major, Mr. Cooper was scheduled to graduate in May. In his time at Northeastern he completed co-ops at John Hancock and at Oppenheimer ‘ Co. He was looking forward to becoming a broker and was interviewing with Edward Jones Investments, his family said.

“He loved that last co-op. That was his dream job,” said Joelle Cooper, Mr. Cooper’s mother.

He also had a great love for Northeastern, and was a member of the Economics Club on campus.

“We came for the first parents’ weekend and he told us that he had made the right decision, that [Northeastern] was the place for him,” his mother said.

Mr. Cooper was a bartender at Artu’s Restaurant in the North End for about a year, and at Anchovies restaurant on Columbus Avenue prior.

“The [memorial] service was full of people from that neighborhood who just knew him from going into the restaurant,” Lynch said, referring to an April 5 memorial at St. Leonard Church in the North End.

Mr. Cooper was born in Syracuse, N.Y. on Jan. 23, 1985 and was raised in Cleveland, N.Y. He attended Paul V. Moore High School, where he was a member of the National Honor Society. He was co-president of the student government his senior year.

Teachers at Mr. Cooper’s high school are assembling a scholarship in his honor.

With a sincere generosity and love for everyone he met, Mr. Cooper had many friends from different facets of his life, those close to him said. Co-workers and patrons from both of his jobs, friends from college and people he had met in Boston attended his memorial service, his mother said.

Last year, Mr. Cooper took a trip to Las Vegas to be the ring-bearer at a friend’s wedding. With a knack for gambling, Mr. Cooper won enough money to upgrade his newly married friends to a honeymoon suite.

Friends said you “couldn’t help but feel at home with him.”

“He had so much love,” Lynch said. “He really believed the more you loved other people, the more love you were able to receive.”

In addition to his parents, Joe and Joelle of Cleveland, N.Y., Mr. Cooper is survived by his sisters, Jodie Uhrick of Orlando, Fla. and Traci Skinner of Tampa, Fla.