By COLLEEN SLEVIN (Associated Press)
DENVER (AP) — Shortly after she got away from the Columbine High School shooting, 14-year-old Missy Mendo slept with her parents, still in the shoes she wore when she ran from her math class, to be ready to run again.
Twenty-five years later, and now a mother herself, Mendo still feels the trauma from that terrible day.
It caught up to her when 60 people were shot dead at a country music festival in Las Vegas, a city she visited often while working in the casino industry. Then again in 2022, when 19 students and two teachers were shot and killed in Uvalde, Texas.
Mendo was filling out her daughter’s pre-kindergarten application when news of the elementary school shooting broke. She read a few lines of a news story about Uvalde, then put her head down and cried.
“It felt like nothing changed,” she recalls thinking.
In the quarter-century since two gunmen at Columbine shot and killed 12 classmates and a teacher in suburban Denver — an attack shown on live TV that marked the start of the modern era of school shootings — the traumas of that day have continued to affect Mendo and others who were there.
Some required years to see themselves as Columbine survivors even though they weren't physically wounded. However, things like fireworks could still bring back upsetting memories. The aftershocks, often ignored before mental health struggles were more widely recognized, caused some survivors to experience insomnia, drop out of school, or distance themselves from their spouses or families.
Survivors and other community members plan to attend a candlelight vigil on the steps of the state’s capitol Friday night, the eve of the shooting’s anniversary.
April is particularly difficult for Mendo, 39, who struggles each year. She arrives early to dentist appointments, misplaces her keys, and forgets to close the refrigerator door.
She relies on therapy and the support of an expanding group of shooting survivors she met through The Rebels Project, a support group started by other Columbine survivors following a 2012 shooting when a gunman killed 12 people at a movie theater in the nearby suburb of Aurora. Mendo began seeing a therapist after her child’s first birthday, at the suggestion of fellow survivor moms.
After she broke down over Uvalde, Mendo, a single parent, spoke to her mom, took a walk for fresh air, then finished her daughter’s pre-kindergarten application.
“Was I afraid of her going into the public school system? Absolutely,” Mendo said of her daughter. “I wanted her to have as normal of a life as possible.”
Researchers who’ve studied the long-term effects of gun violence in schools have measured sustained challenges among survivors, such as long-term academic effects like absenteeism and reduced college enrollment, and lower earnings later in life.
“Simply counting lives lost doesn't fully capture the total cost of these tragedies,” said Maya Rossin-Slater, an associate professor in the Stanford University School of Medicine’s Department of Health Policy.
There have been many mass killings happening very often. with an overwhelming amount of regularity since the Columbine shooting in the past few years, almost 600 attacks have happened in which at least four people died, not counting the person who did it, since 2006, according to information gathered by The Associated Press The information was collected by The Associated Press, which shows that since 2006, there have been nearly 600 attacks where at least four people have died, not including the person who did it..
More than 80% of the 3,045 victims in those attacks were killed by a firearm.
Across the country, hundreds of thousands of individuals have been present at school shootings that are often not events with many casualties but are still very distressing, Rossin-Slater mentioned. The effects can last a very long time, she added, leading to a long-term decrease in potential for people who survive.
People who were there during the Columbine shooting say that the years since then have given them the opportunity to understand more about what happened to them and how to deal with it.
Now 42, Heather Martin was a senior at Columbine in 1999. During college, she started crying during a fire drill, realizing later that a fire alarm had gone off for three hours while she and 60 other students hid in a barricaded office during the high school shooting. She couldn’t return to that class and was marked absent each time. She says she failed it after refusing to write a final paper on school violence, even after telling her professor about her experience at Columbine.
She saw fellow classmates facing similar difficulties and quickly decided to return to college to become a teacher after being invited back with the rest of the class of 1999 for an anniversary event. It took her 10 years to see herself as a survivor.
Co-founder of The Rebels Project, which is named after Columbine’s mascot, Martin mentioned that 25 years allowed her the time to face difficulties and figure out how to overcome them.
“I just know myself so well now and know how I respond to things and what might activate me and how I can bounce back and be OK. And most importantly I think I can recognize when I am not OK and when I do need to seek help,” she said.
After being diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder soon after the shooting, Kiki Leyba, a first-year teacher at Columbine in 1999, felt a strong dedication to go back to the school and put all his effort into his work. However, he continued to have panic attacks.
He used sleeping pills and some Xanax for anxiety to help him cope, Leyba mentioned. One therapist suggested chamomile tea.
It became more difficult for him after the 2002 graduation of Mendo’s class, the last group of students who lived through the shooting, since they had gone through a lot together.
By 2005, after years of neglecting himself and suffering from lack of sleep, Leyba said he would often disengage from family life, sleeping in on the weekends and becoming a “blob on the couch.” Finally, his wife Kallie enrolled him in a one-week trauma treatment program, arranging for him to take the time off from work without telling him.
Leyba mentioned that exercises to control breathing, writing in a journal, meditation and anti-depressants have helped him, saying, “Thankfully that really gave me a kind of a foothold … to do the work to climb out of that.”
Like Mendo and Martin, he has traveled around the country to work with survivors of shootings.
“The worst day has changed into something I can offer to others,” said Leyba, who is in Washington, D.C. this week meeting with officials about gun violence and promoting a cause about his trauma journey. new film about his trauma journey.
Mendo still lives in the area, and her 5-year-old daughter attends school near Columbine. When her daughter’s school locked down last year as police swarmed the neighborhood during a hostage situation, Mendo remembered worrying things like: What if my child is in danger? What if there is another school shooting like Columbine?
When Mendo picked up her daughter, she seemed a little scared, and she hugged her mom a little tighter. Mendo took deep breaths to stay calm, a technique she had learned in therapy, and put on a brave face.
“If I was feeling fearful, she would feel it too,” she said. “I didn’t want that for her.”
____
