Aleena Jimenez was the apple of her grandfather's eye.

The only grandchild of former San Antonio Sen. Frank Madla, the 5-year-old spent countless days with him at the Capitol while the Legislature was in session, brightening committee meetings when she wasn't skipping down the hallway or munching on candy.

Even when she wasn't around, her face was everywhere — pictures of her plastered Madla's office and a smiling Aleena made up his laptop's screensaver.

"She brought joy to us in the Senate," said Sen. Leticia Van de Putte, D-San Antonio. "She was his little princess."

A day after a brutal fire ravaged Madla's South Side home, fellow lawmakers and friends said Aleena was now where she most loved to be — with her grandfather.

"Frank got his little angel and Aleena got her popo," Van de Putte said. "They were the closest anybody could be."

Saturday, University Hospital officials confirmed Aleena had died, a day after doctors had declared her brain-dead. The fire killed Madla, 69, a stalwart South Side politico who had served Bexar County in the Legislature for 33 years before losing re-election this year.

Firefighters said his wife, Helen Madla, her mother, 81-year-old Mary Cruz, and Aleena were all without a pulse when they pulled them from the downstairs floor of Madla's home on the 6000 block of Reefridge around 2 a.m. Friday. Madla, who was asleep upstairs, had tried to escape through the bedroom window but succumbed to the smoke and flames.

Cruz died hours later at Brooke Army Medical Center. Aleena and Helen Madla were taken to University Hospital, where Helen Madla is in stable condition.

Helen Madla, who had learned earlier of her mother and husband's death, still didn't know about Aleena, friends said. Scribbling furiously on a note pad, she kept asking about her granddaughter, but family members deflected the questions, hoping to wait until she was removed from her respirators today.

"It is a terrible, terrible loss," said an emotional Sen. Eddie Lucio, D-Brownsville, Madla's closest friend in the Senate. "Maybe she'll never be able to get over it."

Lucio said he was still reeling from the tragedy, calling it "a truly low point in my life."

"My only consolation is knowing Aleena is now with her grandpa," he said, adding that Aleena's parents had decided to donate her organs so that she could "live in another child."

Lucio remembered peeling Aleena her first grapefruit when she was still barely able to talk, and from then on, it was "just grapefruit, grapefruit, grapefruit," he said. Calling him "Uncle Eddie," Aleena would clutch his leg when he came to visit Madla's Austin apartment, begging for him not to go just yet.

One year, Madla took Aleena with him to the end-of-session dinner of the Senate's Intergovernmental Relations committee.

"She could do no wrong, even when she was acting up," recalled Sen. Jeff Wentworth, R-San Antonio, who was on that committee. "She was the center of attention and just an adorable little girl. It was easy to see why she was so loved."

Investigators had still not determined the cause of the fire, although they declared it accidental and said it had started in the living room, District Fire Chief Randy Jenkins said. Dozens of candles had been lit in the living room and in the backyard during the Madla's Thanksgiving celebration and, although they had been blown out, they had likely caused the fire, Jenkins said.

But it would be some time before investigators would know for sure, he said, noting, "It's a difficult thing sometimes. The thing that causes the fire is burned up in the fire."

As the tragedy cemented into reality, Madla's friends and colleagues mourned the loss of a gentle statesman and devout Catholic, one whose greatest legacy would likely be the creation of a Texas A&M campus on the South Side.

"This is a tragedy of immense proportions to Frank's family, friends and to our entire community," said U.S. Congressman Charlie Gonzalez, D-San Antonio. "It is still difficult to comprehend and accept what happened."

"To lose three people at one time, plus all of the precious memories gone up in smoke," said Rep. Ruth Jones McClendon, D-San Antonio. "This is something that no family has to go through."

Father Eddie Bernal, pastor of St. Benedict's Catholic Church, remembered Madla as "a real champion of the Gospel," adding the lawmaker often helped the poor, the imprisoned and others in need.

"He never got credit for a lot of things he did because he wanted to do things anonymously," Bernal said. "Even his family didn't know about some of them."

Sen.-elect Carlos Uresti, a Democrat who now holds Madla's seat, said the tragedy, what he called a "bad dream," had put some things in perspective.

Uresti and Madla had waged a bitter campaign for the March primary elections and Uresti expressed some regret, saying, "I wish some of the things that had gone on hadn't happened but that's the campaign world."

"We will miss Frank," he said, noting the irony of the deaths coming the day after Thanksgiving.

"It's hard to make sense of any of this," he said. "I think all that we have been asking ourselves the last two days is 'Why?'"