"She was a fashionista. She liked to look good and she wanted my girls – her girls - to look good," Brian Alvear said after he told the website that she had spent time with his eight and 12-year-old daughters. "She liked to make them look very good."

He described how she was the life and soul of the party: "People got caught in her wake. Whatever she was doing, that's what they were going to do and have fun doing it."

Mercedez Marisol Flores

Mercedez Marisol Flores went to Pulse nightclub almost every weekend, Flores' sister-in-law said on Monday, often with her best friend Amanda Alvear.

"She was very outgoing," Nancy Flores said of Mercedez Flores. "She had lots of friends. They used to always meet up at Pulse."

Born in Queens, New York, the 26-year-old Flores moved to Florida when she was a child, her sister-in-law said. She worked at Target and studied at Valencia College, a local community college. She wanted to become a party planner so she could coordinate events with her two older brothers, who are both DJs.

Flores' family spent hours waiting at Orlando Regional Medical Center, then a staging area at a nearby hotel.

Someone came to read the names of victims still hospitalised or being released. Mercedez Flores' name wasn't on the list.