She loved students more than anything'

Vicki Soto

Teacher Vicki Soto, 27, died a hero on Friday when she was killed protecting her class of first-graders from alleged school shooter Adam Lanza, 20. 

Her family spoke out on Sunday, telling TODAY's Erica Hill about Soto's dedication to the children at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Conn.

“She didn’t call them her students," sister Carlee Soto, 20, told TODAY. "She called them her kids."

James Wiltsie, Soto's cousin and a Fairfield County police officer, said the family was told that Soto died trying to save the lives of her students. “She was found protecting her kids," he said, "doing instinctively what she knew to do.”

While details are still emerging about exactly what happened, Wiltsie was told that Soto hid her first-graders in closets and cabinets once she heard there was a gunman in the school."[She was] huddling in the closet, trying to shield them from the spray of bullets,”  he said. Soto had been teaching at the school for five years. The oldest of four children, she lived with her parents, sisters and a brother, along with her black Labrador, Roxy, in a modest, Cape Cod-style home in Stratford, Conn. When asked what he would miss the most about Soto, her brother Carlos pointed to the mundane daily activities that would no longer happen.