Texas Victims: From Smiling Pakistani Girl to Fill-in Teacher with Two Jobs

May 19 (Reuters) - Eight students and two teachers fell victim to gunfire at a high school outside Houston on Friday morning, becoming the latest casualties in a wave of deadly school shootings in the United States in recent years.

Among the fatalities at Santa Fe High School were a Pakistani exchange student and a substitute teacher trying to make ends meet for her family. Here are brief profiles of some of the victims:

Sabika Sheikh

A 17-year-old Pakistani with a bright smile, Sheikh was proud to be studying in the United States as an exchange student. The experience was organized through YES, a program funded by the U.S. State Department, according to a Facebook post by the Pakistan Association of Greater Houston.

Cynthia Tisdale

Tisdale was a substitute teacher at Santa Fe High School. She took on a second job as a server at a local restaurant after she became her family's sole income earner when her husband was diagnosed with an incurable lung disease, her brother-in-law John Tisdale posted on Facebook. The Tisdales have four children.

Christian Riley Garcia

Garcia was remembered on Facebook by the Crosby Church pastor who baptized him years earlier. A photograph of Garcia, 15, taken just days before the shooting, shows him wearing sunglasses, a baseball cap and a slight smile that reveals braces on his teeth.

"Here is Riley about ten days ago writing scripture on the door frame of what was to be his new bedroom," Pastor Keenan Smith wrote. "Riley you are greatly loved and greatly missed."

Kimberly Vaughan

After a desperate search for her missing daughter, U.S. Army veteran Rhonda Hart posted to Facebook that Vaughan had been shot dead in her first-period art class.

"Folks - call your damn senators. Call your congressmen. We need GUN CONTROL. WE NEED TO PROTECT OUR KIDS. #Kimberlyjessica," Hart wrote in a Facebook post.

Shana Fisher

Just one week after she celebrated her 16th birthday, Fisher was killed when the gunman opened fire on the art class, her aunt wrote on Twitter. "She should be getting her first car, not a funeral," tweeted @candithurman.

Chris Stone

Stone, 17, had a passion for adventure and football. The high school junior's Facebook page features photographs of such sports heroes as the Dallas Cowboys and scenic views of breathtaking wilderness.

(Reporting by Barbara Goldberg in New York Editing by Frank McGurty and Matthew Lewis)