The father of a B.C. model who was killed in China says the family is trying to have her body returned to Canada.

Diana O'Brien, a 22-year-old from B.C.'s Salt Spring Island, was found dead early Monday in the Shanghai apartment building where she lived. Chinese police are investigating her death as a homicide. "We're working on it," said her father, Michael O'Brien, when asked when his daughter's body would be flown home.

An exhausted-sounding O'Brien, reached at his home in Regina, said he had been bombarded with calls from reporters and didn't have anything else to say.

The aspiring model had only recently moved to Shanghai to pursue her modelling career.

Her boyfriend of five years, 32-year-old Joel Berry, said he's been told it appears the young woman's apartment had been robbed before she was killed.

He said even though he lived with O'Brien and assumed they were a common-law couple, he has been unable to get any information directly.

"It's really hard, obviously," he said. "The first day we were on the phone all day just to get official confirmation. The information is slowly coming in."

Canada's Foreign Affairs Department has said very little about the case, citing privacy laws.

Officials have been in contact with Chinese police and O'Brien's family, a department spokesman said in a statement Wednesday.

"We are very saddened to learn of the death of Ms. Diana O'Brien," said Alain Cacchione.

"This is a difficult reminder for all Canadians of the need to be very careful when working and studying abroad.... We will continue to closely monitor all developments with respect to this case."

O'Brien left her home on the picturesque B.C. island last month on a modelling contract with a Chinese company, JH Modelling Agency.

But Berry said O'Brien was homesick and unhappy with the work she was doing, which included promoting whisky in a bar, and had decided to book a ticket home less a month into her three-month contract.

"She had talked about it not being what she wanted to be doing - she doesn't drink, and it didn't really fit into her profile," he said.

"She wanted to come home. We're in the summer here and we're on a dock on the lake and there's a lot of love between us and I guess China is just smoggy all the time.... She was extremely homesick."

The B.C.-based agency that represented O'Brien has contradicted reports that the aspiring model was unhappy.

The office was closed Wednesday, but the Barbara Coultish Agency previously issued a statement insisting O'Brien was living her dream in Shanghai.

The agency stressed that O'Brien wasn't working when she was killed.

JH Modelling Agency appeared to have disappeared as news of O'Brien's death spread.

A young man who answered the door at the company's listed address in Shanghai told a reporter for the Associated Press he didn't know anything about the agency.

Berry said O'Brien had been modelling for about three years, recently travelling to Milan and then Shanghai. But he said she always hoped to return to Salt Spring Island.

"We always talked about going on trips together and possibly living in another country for a while, but she always had this as her home base," he said.

Jessica Kuzmich, who went to high school with O'Brien on the island, said she last saw her friend during a trip home a few months ago.

"It seemed like she was really happy with what she was doing," said Kuzmich, who know lives in Vancouver.

"She always just had so much fun with it and it was always something she wanted to pursue. It just seemed like everything was going to go really well for her."

O'Brien had worked at two Salt Spring restaurants owned by Barry Kazakoff, who said more than half his staff were off work grieving Wednesday.

"I'm going to be the chef at my main restaurant tonight just so I can let people go and grieve in their way," Kazakoff said Wednesday.

"Many of my staff, they can't even function."

He said the only time he saw O'Brien sad was when she was trying to tell her boyfriend that she wanted to work in China.

"She was always happy," he said. "She was always smiling. Going to China was a no-brainer. It was just another stop for her."

- With files from Dirk Meissner on Salt Spring Island