Emma Hunt was transforming her life.

After battling drug addiction for years, the 32-year-old felt it was time for change, and had been clean for months. Hunt, a mother of two, told her family she planned to enter a residential treatment program on Monday, with plans to move out of San Francisco, where temptation seemingly lurked everywhere.

But those plans ended in the small hours of Sunday morning when a man suspected to be in his 20s opened fire at approximately 3:51 a.m. in the area of Larkin and O’Farrell streets, killing Hunt, according to San Francisco police and the San Francisco Medical Examiner’s Office.

Although authorities have released scant information about the killing, which marked the city’s first homicide this year, they told the family they were investigating a dispute between Hunt and a man she hit with a plastic crate. Police believe the man took out a gun and shot her one time in the neck and three times in the chest, her parents told The Chronicle.

“She was a really nice person. She just had her demons she was fighting, but she was winning this time,” said Sherree DeYoe, who adopted Hunt and her younger sister, Mary, in the 1990s.

San Francisco police said a suspect remained at large, but did not disclose a description or any additional details about the circumstances that led to the shooting, which remained under investigation.

Those who knew Hunt remembered her as a resilient and resourceful woman who once survived on the streets of Ethiopia, caring for herself and her sister for about a year after their mother’s death from starvation. An enthusiastic learner, Hunt read voraciously and had a vibrant smile that seared itself in the memory of anyone she met.

“When you met Emma, you didn’t forget Emma,” said Sherree’s husband, David DeYoe. “She was just one of those people that when you were around her you could sense she was good-hearted.”

Sherree DeYoe adopted Hunt and her sister with her husband at the time and raised the two girls in Manteca (San Joaquin County) among other siblings. Initially communicating through a form of charades, Hunt soon grasped English and started reading whatever sparked her interest.

Around 2005, DeYoe moved to Florida and Hunt moved to Pinole to live with the biological father of her first child, according to her family.

David DeYoe said that’s when Hunt’s struggles with substance abuse began.

She shuffled through treatment programs and stayed in touch with her family, and persisted as a kind and caring individual.

A few months ago, Hunt gave birth to a daughter, Angelica, maintaining sobriety through the pregnancy and since the birth. With a newborn to care for, she started talking about the future with more positivity.

“It was just a healthy change,” David DeYoe said. “She didn’t want Angelica to be brought up in the city. She wanted to start out her life out here.”

Lizzette Dukes-Blake met Hunt through a self-help program, and also had noted the recent change. She witnessed Hunt educate herself and get a job. She was a good friend and a better mother, Dukes-Blake said.

“Anytime you see a mother taking care of her baby, you know the maternal instincts have kicked in,” Dukes-Blake said.

Dukes-Blake last saw Hunt about two weeks ago, and they spoke of where Hunt wanted to take her life. Since the shooting, Dukes-Blake said she has not heard many details about what led to the altercation in the Tenderloin.

Near the scene of the slaying in front of the cocktail lounge 800 Larkin on Monday, a white poster with two pictures of Hunt hung on a concrete wall. More than two dozen candles flickered every time a light gust of wind blew by.

Someone wrote “a real ‘Balla Queen,’” with “real” underscored with two lines across the bottom of the poster.

Sel Negede stopped to light candles on Monday. He said he met Hunt at the club the night of the shooting when she introduced herself to him and his friends.

“She was very bubbly, very happy,” he said.

Negede decided to smoke a cigarette around 4 a.m. Sunday outside of the bar, on the O’Farrell Street side, when a worker from the establishment rushed outside. He told everyone hanging around to get inside because they had heard a person was carrying a gun in the area.

He heard four pops, and thought someone had set off fireworks. Then he saw police rushing to the intersection. The incident disturbed him, he said, though he did not know what led to the killing.

“That’s sick,” Negede said he thought to himself. “Life is too short.”

Alejandro Serrano is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: alejandro.serrano@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @serrano_alej