Kathleen Ann (Bradley) Torres — “Kathy” to everyone who knew her — went home on September 10, 2026 at the age of 66, in the care of AdventHealth hospice, after a long and courageous journey with cerebrovascular disease. “Going home” was how she spoke of it all along — and in the end, she did.

Kathy spent her working life as a paramedic, and the work fit her exactly. When something went wrong — a wreck, a code, the worst moment of a stranger’s life — she was the calm, capable person who came. She did it with skill and nerve and a quiet, fierce care for people she would never see again. That was true of her long before it was her job, and it never left her.

The work cost her, too. An injury on the job left her with pain she would carry the rest of her life — but she refused to let it win. Through every surgery, every setback, every hard year that came after, she never stopped fighting.

She was a force. Anyone who knew her knew the size of her personality — and the grin that always gave away her jokes.

One of the great comforts of her later years was her niece, Leanne Cotner, who called her Mama and meant it. The two of them talked every day. She had a gift for steadying Kathy — for making a hard day lighter — and she kept her calm and happy to the end.

Kathy’s faith anchored her, and it carried her through more loss than most people are ever asked to hold. She was preceded in death by her husband, Ernesto Torres III, in October 2024; by two of her children, Tracy Bradley and Maggie Torres — each just 29, each taken far too young; and by her mother, Ann Lagenar, whose photograph, along with theirs, stayed near her to the end.

She is survived by her sons, Chris and Michael Shannon; her grandchildren and great-grandchildren; and by all the people whose worst day she made survivable somewhere along the way.

In her final years, Kathy was cared for at home by her sons, with the same steadiness she once brought to strangers in crisis — a debt of love repaid daily.

She will be laid to rest at Glen Haven Memorial Park in Winter Park, FL, alongside her husband and the children who went before her.