Video Transcript

HEATHER MARTIN: I still don't think that the impact of what happened like hit me. I was still completely in shock. Those are gunshots in my school. 
 
FRANK DEANGELIS: I run out of my office and my worst nightmare becomes a reality. 
How am I going to be able to get through this? 
 
SCARLETT LEWIS: There was so much chaos. There were people yelling and upset and crying. 
 
AJ DEANDREA: You had parents there that began to ask, "Where's my child? 
 
MICHELE GAY: It was a very traumatic place to be. 
 
JOE SAMAHA: It was the traumatized trying to help the traumatized. 
 
TERRI DAVIE: And we're trained on responding, taking care of the situation, stopping the threat, getting victims medical help, and then we're done. But the reality is it doesn't stop there. Reunification is where recovery begins.  There's a right way to manage recovery. The first 24 hours are critical. You know that you are getting ready to meet a family on one of the worst days of their lives.  
 
MELISSA SNOW: There's a searching for answers that sometimes may never come. 
 
SEAN GRAVES: Columbine was the first of its scale. Nobody was trained for this. Even the aftermath, nobody knew what to do. 
 
[music] 
 
JOE SAMAHA: Well, my wife and daughter collapsed in grief. 
 
SCARLETT LEWIS: He put his hand on my knee and said, "There's no easy way to tell you this your kid's dead." What do you do after that, right? 
 
MICHELE GAY: That day at Sandy Hook something that we never imagined, still really can't believe happened. Tragedies like this they affect so many people in so many different ways. 
 
JOHN-MICHAEL KEYES: I can tell you that when we lost Emily at Platte Canyon High School, every student in that school was impacted by that. 
 
HEATHER MARTIN: Nobody in my class knew what I had been through, so, I just looked like some person who had lost their mind. I was still feeling the effects of trauma. 
 
FRANK DEANGELIS: I'm struggling with that now. It happened on my watch. And I have that guilt. And it's taken its toll. 
 
VANESSA BECKER: What people are experiencing post-violent event is just as important to focus on and plan for as preventing it. 
 
MICHELE GAY: You will never return to life as you knew it, to school as you knew it.  
 
JOE SAMAHA: Families of victims and survivors, many of them suffer from PTSD. We understand what that is, we feel it. 
 
JOHN-MICHAEL KEYES: Siblings are impacted. The communities are impacted by these life changing experiences. 
 
SCARLETT LEWIS: Realizing that what happened at Sandy Hook was 100% preventable.  I had to be a part of the solution because people don't have to suffer like we do. 
 
SEAN GRAVES: For whatever reason, I'm still here, and I've gone through this, and I've experienced this, or I continue to go through this. If I can just reach out and help one person, then it's all worth it.