Who are the Characters in your life?

Ever meet people- you know,those exuberant, enjoy life (or hate life) , type of folks who you'll always remember-and then find them in your book?
Sometimes when I look back over my work I recognise people, or at least, pieces of people who I know in real life. Their personalities have worked their way into my writing and turned into characters. Maybe they're not exactly like the real life person but their spirit is there, dancing on my pages. And I never saw it happen.
I didn't sit down at my keyboard and say I'm going to put Kevin in here, or I'll make Scott into this tall, suave executive or hey, Sean would make a great artist type...
No, I didn't see them hop between the pages and come to life. But I guess the essence of their life has so impacted me that a part of my subconscious built entire characters around them.
My latest WIP (or at least one of them) started with a car accident. My car got hit from behind. I drive a bright yellow car and never thought anyone would hit me....how do they not see me? The car practically glows in the dark! But they did, slammed me good. So this made me think...what if someone hit someone from behind on purpose? Motivation? Other motivation? Ultimate outcome? Who's the winner here? What if the tables turned suddenly and the hittee becomes the winner? Or the hittee planned all this from the start?
So guess who's in my WIP now? Or at least a piece of him.
Do you see real peeps in your characters? Or at least a little bit of them?

Characters. Where do they come from?

Ever meet someone on the street and think; Now, there's a character. Someone to build around.

Once I was writing a story and in this work was a man, named Willy, who had been in prison, now out and trying to be a better person. He's young, toughened by life and back living with his mom. He knows what he did broke his mother's heart and he tries to keep his cool under pressure mostly for her. He made promises and he'll put up with a lot not to hurt her again.

So, I'm grocery shopping with my daughter. There behind the deli counter is Willy. Almost the perfect Willy. Even his language was Willy.

So, where do your characters come from? Are they people you know?

And what about the people in your life you don't like? Do you take their uglier traits and put them into your bad guys?

Secret; I use the first names of those nasty girls from high school for the ugly characters in my stories. Am I evil for doing this?