By: Washington Post
For 4 young men, June 11 was a day for fun and friends. They didn't know it would be their last day alive.
On the last day of his life, Juan Guerrero rises soon after the sun and heads out for a jog. Twenty-two and devout in his fitness, he isn't going to miss a morning workout just because he stayed up late.
His boyfriend, Christopher "Drew" Leinonen — a charismatic Star Wars nerd — is still in bed, but not for long.
The two have a full weekend planned.
"Seize the day" is Drew's mantra. Though he is nine years older than Juan, Drew has a boyish face and enormous energy that makes them seem the same age.
"Romeo and Romeo," friends call them.
It is Saturday, June 11.
SeaWorld has just opened its new 73-mph roller coaster, Mako, and Drew — who had boycotted the theme park after seeing the documentary "Blackfish" — decides the park has sufficiently rehabilitated itself by ending the captive breeding of orcas.
"They've fixed things," he tells his mom.
By 10 a.m., the men are at SeaWorld and snapping selfies.
"How are you already there?" a friend texts. Brittany Sted, 28, a mental health therapist like Drew, had been up with them, dancing and talking, until well past 3 a.m.
"Juan was the first boyfriend who could keep up with Drew," she says later. "They were sort of like little Swiss Army knives, always balancing each other out and pulling out whatever they needed."
Life filled with music
Shortly after 7 a.m., Shane Tomlinson, 34, wakes to news that leaves him shaken.
Christina Grimmie, a contestant on TV's "The Voice," was meeting fans after her show at Orlando's The Plaza Live the night before when a disturbed admirer shot and killed her, then killed himself.
Shane — personable, energetic, ambitious — is a singer, too, and he likes to spend time with the crowd after his performances.
"As a stage performer, you can't help but keep questioning … how did this get past security?" he writes on Facebook at 7:24 a.m. Then, a moment later: "The only complete protection we have is God, and sometimes he needs you more than this evil world."
Music has always been a big part of Shane's life. He grew up in a church-going family, and as a young boy he would climb onstage and join his grandmother in the choir. In college at East Carolina University, he sang in a gospel choir and took part in a student modeling group while earning his degree in communications.
He moved to Orlando six years ago and in 2012 co-founded Frequency Band, which has a loyal following at Blue Martini locations throughout the state — when it isn't doing weddings and corporate gigs. Shane is band manager and lead male vocalist.
At 6 feet tall and a muscular 202 pounds, he is beautifully sculpted. His hair is always perfectly cut — short, with a razor-thin part — and he sports a precise, narrow beard rimming his face, connected to a pencil mustache. When people describe him, they invariably use the word "hot."
With a standing Saturday show at Blue Martini in Orlando, Shane plans to spend the day preparing: get a haircut, make a song list, shop for a new outfit — either at the mall or by raiding the closet of a close friend.
He doesn't like to wear the same thing twice, and he doesn't want to clash with the lead female vocalist, Ginelle Morales.
In the afternoon, he sends her a text: "Girl, what are you wearing [tonight]?"
Day at the beach
About 9 a.m., Peter O. Gonzalez Cruz — Ommy to his friends — catches a ride to the beach. He's 22, extroverted, the life of the party.
Darian Rivera, his best friend since Liberty Middle School in Orlando, picks him up at the apartment he shares with his mom and two brothers. Her boyfriend at the time is driving, and Ommy climbs into the back seat.
In typical Ommy fashion, he wears a pink hat, pink shorts, navy blue Tom's shoes and a navy T-shirt that reads: "Let's play a game."
He and Darian have been through a lot together. When she got pregnant at 18, Ommy was there to support her, even standing behind a curtain in the delivery room to cheer her on.
And as her daughter, Miah, grows up, Ommy is the one who plans the birthday parties and makes the decorations. The last one had an Alice-in-Wonderland theme. Miah would turn 5 in a few months.
Maybe a Peter Pan party, Ommy offers as they drive. Maybe different areas of the house could be different parts of Neverland …
But he is also thinking about his own future, talking about enrolling in a class for first-time homebuyers. He works in customer service at a UPS Store, a job Darian helped him get. But perhaps he should go back to school for business, he muses. He tells Darian she should consider going back to school, too. He wants them both to be successful.
They arrive in Melbourne after 10, and Ommy finds a pair of Hawaiian leis, one pink, one blue. He drapes them around his neck and snaps a selfie.
'In their own world'
By noon, Juan and Drew have done the first of many coaster rides and are nearing the penguin exhibit.
The flightless birds have a special draw.
In December of last year, the couple bought a little ornament featuring a pair of penguins wearing Santa caps and holding a star between them: "Our First Christmas," it reads.
Penguins, after all, are said to mate for life. And after a string of pretty but mostly short-lived boyfriends, Drew has met the man he expects to marry. Juan has only had one previous relationship, and it had ended badly not long before he met Drew. He wasn't particularly looking for a replacement.
But Drew surprised him.
"The first time you saw them together, you just kind of knew that they would end up together forever," says their friend Brandon Wolf, 28. "They never fought. They never had issues. When they were together, there might be 50 people in the room, but Juan and Drew were in their own world."
Drew was a love child, born to a maverick of a woman — a pipefitter turned state trooper who went to law school when Drew was in sixth grade. Drew's father was a Detroit police officer whose Japanese-American parents had been forced into an internment camp during World War II.
The two never married, but Christine Leinonen, now 59, built her world around her son. When he was 8, she moved to Florida to keep him away from the anti-Asian sentiment festering in Detroit, the nation's struggling automotive capital, where many resented the intrusion of Japanese and Korean imports.
Leinonen settled in the community of Seminole, in Pinellas County, and Christopher, as she calls him, seemed to thrive. Quirky, funny, intelligent and extroverted, he was entirely comfortable with himself, even as the only openly gay student in a school of 2,500 at Seminole High. There, he launched one of the state's first gay-straight alliance clubs, despite hate-laced name-calling and having the club's posters ripped down.
For his activism, he was given the Anne Frank Humanitarian Award from the Florida Holocaust Museum in 2002, its inaugural year. It was an honor created in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks "as a way to move our community's eyes and hearts away from the violence that had sprung out of insensible hatred, and to focus on the good that was being done."
The words would later hold a certain irony.
When it was time for college, Drew picked the University of Central Florida and moved to Orlando, eventually earning a master's degree in clinical psychology.
He met Juan at a gym.
The son of immigrants from the Dominican Republic, Juan is the youngest of four kids. They call him El Bebé — The Baby — though he is mature beyond his years. Kind, smart, sensitive and dutiful, he excels in school but can seem reserved, until he gets to know you.
He adores his mother, often taking time between his job at a bank call center and his studies in finance at UCF to chauffeur her to appointments. If she wants to get her nails done, he sits quietly in the salon and waits.
"He is the best thing God ever brought to this life," his mother says.
Juan realized he was gay in 10th grade. But he was afraid his family might not understand. In the Dominican Republic, gay men and women often face violence, discrimination, arbitrary arrests and even extortion by police.
"When I found out, I was, like, 'Oh, OK,'" says his aunt, Lourdes Morales. "And his mother was the same. She just told him, 'Well, we love you, and we just want you to be happy. You are our son.' Nobody made a big deal out of it."
Kimberly Schottborgh Mendez, 22, Juan's best friend since they met at Hunter's Creek Middle School a decade ago, used to tease him about being a virgin, though he dated girls.
When he finally told her the truth about himself, she only wished he had confided sooner.
The two talk almost daily, though she is in the Army now, stationed in Texas.
Sometime Saturday afternoon, Juan sends her a series of photos, mostly of himself and Drew on the SeaWorld roller coasters, making silly faces.
"Oh, my God, you're so beautiful!" she replies, teasing.
Then he sends a final text: "Please come back."
"I'm going to," Kimberly answers. "I want to get out of the Army, and I want to go back to school, and we're going to live close to one another again."
A place to unwind
At 7 p.m. Shane arrives at the Blue Martini, the upscale lounge at Pointe Orlando crowded with tourists and young professionals. He sets up the stage and instruments, does a sound check and makes some final adjustments to the song list.
He drinks water to keep hydrated during the three-hour show, slathers ChapStick on his lips and sprays peppermint oil on his throat to ward off hoarseness.
He is still unnerved by the Grimmie shooting, he tells Ginelle, the woman who sings with him. How could someone do that, he wonders, especially here in Orlando, his adopted hometown. Orlando is supposed to be the place where dreams come true.
But he can't hold onto the fear and perform at the same time, so he pushes it back. He is never more alive than when he's in front of an audience, and for the next few hours he is nonstop motion, mesmerizing the crowd, with covers of Top 40, pop, R&B and even a few '70s classics sprinkled into the mix.
Most people would be exhausted by such a night. But Shane is exhilarated. He hangs out with Ginelle until she kisses him goodbye at 1 a.m.
Koreen Green, a 32-year-old hairstylist and friend, stops by Blue Martini to have a drink with him.
Shane tells her he is bored and wants to go somewhere else to unwind. Some friends are already at Pulse, where it's Latin night, and later, when Koreen heads to the bathroom, Shane leaves.
She figures she'll speak to him tomorrow.
'I love you'
At the beach, the sun is beginning to sink, and Ommy's piña coladas — heavy on the alcohol and a little light on the pineapple juice — have left the friends especially affectionate.
"I love you," Ommy says to Darian.
Darian's mother has agreed to babysit her granddaughter so Darian will be free to go out to Pulse. Nobody else in their group of friends has to work that night — an occasion rare enough to celebrate.
But then Darian's mother changes her mind. The friends drive back to Orlando, Miah in tow, dropping Ommy off at his apartment near midnight.
"OK, I'm going to sleep," he says. He tells Darian to call in the morning.
"I love you," Darian says.
"I love you, too," Ommy yells back.
Maybe it's a text from a friend. Maybe it's restlessness. Maybe he just has his heart set on dancing. But Ommy doesn't go to bed. Instead, sometime after midnight, he changes into a white T-shirt, blue jeans and a pair of shiny black sneakers and heads out the door to Pulse.
Plans for quiet night
A little after 6, Juan and Drew head home from SeaWorld. Juan had moved into Drew's apartment, about a mile from downtown Orlando, only a few months earlier.
The two are meticulous — Drew even alphabetizes their extensive film collection, and they hang their shirts by color and type. Both are small and slightly built. Juan pushes Drew to go to the gym more and Drew persuades Juan to become a vegetarian. Their lives are an intricate balance of work, study, friends and travel.
Saturday, though, is supposed to be a quiet night at home: a simple meal, maybe a little wine, a movie.
But at 10 p.m., friend Brandon Wolf sends a text. Earlier in the week, Brandon and his boyfriend had split up, but now Brandon's ex was texting him, wanting to go out. Brandon wants to see him — but he also wants moral support.
"Hey, know you went to SeaWorld. What do you think about going out tonight?" he messages Drew.
"Wasn't really planning on it. What are you thinking?" Drew answers.
Brandon explains. "I don't really want to be alone with him. Can I get your support and we just all go out?"
"Yeah, I guess we can do that," Drew says — but there is never really any doubt. Whenever his friends need him, Drew is there.
The four of them meet at Brandon's apartment, call Uber and plan to go to Parliament House. But by the time the car picks them up, it is well past midnight and Pulse is closer, so they head there instead.
They arrive to find the place mobbed. They can barely hear each other talk. Drew, sensing the tension and awkwardness between Brandon and his ex, motions for them to go out on the patio.
Stop letting all the little things get in the way and just be your true selves, he tells them. You can't get caught up in your insecurities.
"Look, we never say enough how much we love each other," Drew offers finally. "So I'm going to be the kind-of-cheesy one for the moment and tell you that I love all of you very much."
The men hug. The tension breaks. Moments later, they all head back inside the club, where Shane and Ommy have already met up with their own friends.
At 2:02 a.m., a gunman begins firing on the crowd.
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