ORLANDO, Fla. — In the five years since the terror attack at the Pulse nightclub, many in the Central Florida community stepped up to find ways to honor the victims and help the community to heal.  

What You Need To Know

  • JordynVictoria Laos is a volunteer for the onPULSE Foundation

  • She said the Pulse nightclub was a source of comfort for many in the LGBTQ+ community

  • Discover more Everyday Heroes right here

The onePULSE Foundation has become a key part in that, creating a memorial surrounding the nightclub to allow those impacted by the shooting to come together and reflect. 

For onePULSE volunteer JordynVictoria Laos, the foundation's mission has allowed her to keep the memory of the 49 who died in the minds of many across Central Florida. 

“They say it gets better over time and I don’t think it does,” said JordynVictoria Laos, a volunteer with onePULSE.

Laos remembers June 2016 well. Prior to the mass shooting that claimed the lives of 49 and injured 68 others, Pulse nightclub was once a source of comfort for Laos and many in the LGBTQ+ community.

“I was just at Pulse a week before celebrating surgery and finally living my authentic life with my family and being proud of that," Laos said. "I lost several friends and my goal has always been to just not let what happened go in vain."

So Laos pushed herself to get involved with onePULSE, helping the foundation wherever she could.

“There was just a lot of events to tend to and nobody really knew how to rally up the volunteers so we were just always there. We were always the first to, you know, whether it was dragging cases of shirts to sell to raise money, that’s just what we did,” Laos said. 

She would come home to her husband of 22 years exhausted but proud that she was able to be a part of creating something positive, helping others to heal.

“Whether they’re survivors or the family of survivors, they’ve become my family and I wouldn’t miss an opportunity to be there for them,” Laos said. 

Her own grief, she said, has not dulled in the five years since. But becoming so entwined with onePULSE’s mission to remember the 49 she says is so important to her, slowly allowing the community to move forward together.

“It’s just about uplifting the community and letting people know that there are people here who care and we’re never going to forget,” she said.