As friends and family choked back tears remembering a preschool teacher killed in a fire Monday morning, Vanessa DeLaCruz's father explained who she was to him.
"She's everything to me. She's my angel," Vanessa's father, Arnold DeLaCruz said. " I gave her my blessing. I told her I would take care of the baby as well."
Vanessa's older sister Nicole talked about her sister's huge heart, constant smile and how being six weeks pregnant made her mature overnight. She explained Vanessa did everything from reading about what she should eat to listening to Mozart to prepare to be the best mom she could be.
The candlelight vigil was held at Kid's Depot Tuesday night - a place where Vanessa had already made a difference in so many children's lives.
Vanessa died early Monday after a fire swept through her family's Bonita home. Both of Her parents and two of her siblings survived, including her army medic brother, who saved his little brother and attempted to save Vanessa.
He told NBC 7 he put a ladder up to her room and broke her window trying to get to her as she called for help, but the fire was too hot and the smoke too thick. Vanessa never made it outside.
"She was just a little spark, she would always bring joy and life, she would always be happy at all times,” coworker Emma Velazquez said. “I would never see her crying or anything, she was so positive about everything."
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Friends remember Vanessa as a vivacious, kind woman who always had a smile, but after hearing about her final moments - they can't shake the thought of her struggling to escape.
“That makes us more sad to know she was fighting to get out of the house,” Kid’s Depot teacher Delores Lopez told NBC 7. “She was fighting but with all the smoke she didn't make it, so that makes it harder for us, cause we just wished she was in her sleep and that's how she passed."
Vanessa had just completed the credentials she needed to become a preschool teacher earlier this month.
"The kids loved her, there was not a day without a smile, always smiling, in all her pictures she was always smiling, it's so unreal right now,” Lopez explained.
Fire officials have still not determined the cause of the fire, but Sheriff's officials have ruled out arson as a cause.
A GoFundMe page has been set up in her name. It has already raised nearly $9,000 for her family.
