ROCHESTER — In a lot of ways, Olivia Flores was a typical teenager. She loved time with friends, frustrated her parents, snuck out and got tattoos, argued with her brother — and she left dishes everywhere.

So, it wasn’t a surprise when Olivia left for the weekend to celebrate a friend’s birthday that her parents needed to remind their daughter to clean her room when she got back.

“One of the last things Liv said to us was, ‘I will see you Sunday,’ ” said Carlos Flores, her father. “Because she had until Sunday to clean her room. And because she was supposed to come back.”

She didn’t. Olivia, 18, was heading to a Rochester mall with friends when a state trooper, going 83 mph with no siren or flashing light, crashed into their car. Both arteries in her heart were severed and her skull was fractured. Carlos and his wife, Steph, watched as surgeon after surgeon attended to her. On Sunday, May 19, at 2:57 p.m., Olivia was pronounced dead with her family by her side.

“I felt her heart stop and I told her we would be OK,” Carlos said. “I told her she was good, that she was the best time. And that in the past 18 years, she had fit in an entire lifetime into those years … and that I was proud of her.”

Trooper Shane Roper, who makes his first court appearance Thursday, has been charged with second-degree manslaughter and criminal vehicular homicide in Flores’ death and faces a total of nine charges related to the three-car crash that left five others seriously injured.

The investigation revealed that Roper had engaged in high-speed driving multiple times earlier in the day, at point reaching 135 mph without his emergency signals activated. He also had a history of reckless driving, including four driving incidents that led to disciplinary action.

“You hear the information and you know it, but it doesn’t fully compute,” Steph said. “Everything is so unbelievable; the speeding, no lights, no sirens, four past incidents. How do you let somebody like that still drive a vehicle? … Where were the safeguards?”

The Flores family has kept a low profile since their daughter’s death as they have struggled to cope with the loss and the daily reminders of everything she was and everything she was going to be.

“I have a delusional hope that I am going to wake up from a nightmare, or that I am going to go into her room and she’s going to be on her phone, saying ‘get out,’” Carlos said, fighting through tears to get out a laugh.

The couple said they were uneasy about opening up about Olivia’s story until recently when someone told them what they thought Olivia would do in the situation: “She would blow it up.”

Now, as Roper’s court proceedings begin, they want the world to know who their daughter was — a kind soul with a bubbly personality who wasn’t afraid to stand up for others.

“She loved misfits. She was drawn to those,” Carlos said. “She didn’t play the popularity game. She didn’t like all that that entailed … She didn’t care if you had a past or if you struggled with mental health. She saw a lot of herself in people.”

Olivia’s parents say she was a shy child — curious but reserved. She started coming out of her shell when she found the camaraderie of cheerleading, which became a central focus for her.

By her senior year she was elected a captain of the Owatonna High School squad.

“Just walking into practice was the highlight of my day, just to see her smile,” said Jenna Compton, head coach of Owatonna’s cheer squad. “She just knew how to bring joy and fun into everything that she did.”

At Olivia’s funeral, the team wore their uniforms to show their love for their former captain. They will carry a poster of Olivia with angel wings to every game this year. They also hope to set up scholarships and an award for kindness in her name.

“She was a leader for all of those girls,” said Chelsea Wendel, an assistant coach. “So, yeah, practice has been a little lonely without her there.”

“She just wasn’t scared to help out, and she always wanted what was best for others,” said Addie Krenzelok, a cheer teammate and friend. “We want our team to carry on that positivity that she had.”

Attorneys for the Flores family have said they plan to file a wrongful death suit against Roper, though they declined to offer a timeline.

Carlos said Roper should not have been on the road.

“I was prepared to forgive someone for an accident,” Carlos said. “But as more and more information came out, that forgiveness meter went lower and lower. And I struggled with it a lot because we always tried to teach our kids to forgive.”

The loss of Olivia has been especially hard on her younger brother, Christian, now a junior at Owatonna High School. Since Olivia’s death, Christian has struggled to sleep in the room that once shared a wall with his sister.

“They were old enough now that they liked hanging out with each other,” Carlos said. “He wanted to see her go on and do things. And he loved that she was there for everything for him.”

The Flores family has received an outpouring of support from the community. A fundraiser held in July was attended by hundreds while an online campaign has raised more than $40,000. But it has been the little things, like families offering a place for their son to stay or writing cards with stories about Olivia, that have touched them the most.

“It’s overwhelming but in the best way possible,” Steph said. “And it’s also very humbling to know you are a part of a community. … They have had our backs in every sense of the way.”

By telling Olivia’s story, her parents say the hope is that her legacy is not one of loss, but one of courage and caring. And it starts with a simple message that was tattooed on Olivia’s hip: “TPWK,” or “Treat People with Kindness.”

“Liv belonged to Owatonna,” Carlos said. “She belongs to the world now.”