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Michael Dunne: I'm Michael Dunne. Yesterday, on part one of our series about the aftermath of the shooting at Silver Rail Elementary School in Bend, we talked with key leaders in the community about how people are both processing and coping with this horrific act. Today, we'll finish out the series talking to the observers of this tragedy, members of the media, as well as a therapist who is observing the nightmare up close and helping those trying to process the trauma. We'll talk with a reporter at the Bend Bulletin who's been covering the story since the first frantic 911 call, and we'll talk to part of the OPB team that was the only media outlet to talk with the father who entered the school to shoot the suspect. And we'll hear from that therapist about the long road ahead for the many people suffering from PTSD. I'm back today in front of Silver Rail Elementary School. Today is part two of our series talking to local community leaders about how Bend is recovering from the horrible school shooting on Oct. 15. Today we talk with members of the local media and a mental health specialist about how Bend, one of Oregon's most beloved cities, is trying to get back to normal. If you want to know what's going on in a city, it's still a good idea to talk with the local paper, and that's where we head now. Emily Rogers, reporter with the Bend Bulletin, thanks so much for talking with us.
Emily Rogers: Yeah, thank you.
Dunne: So, maybe you could take us to when this happened. What were your thoughts and feelings in the newsroom? How did you realize, OK, this is happening, we have to go? Take us through when you first heard about it.
Rogers: On Oct. 15, we started hearing sirens from all sides of town, just going and going for at least 30 minutes, and everyone was like, "What's going on? Where is it? What's happening?" We got on PulsePoint. We overheard some of what medics were saying, and actually our sports reporter was the first on the scene because he was the closest. We're a pretty small newsroom. It takes a village, so everyone was out there doing different things, like being at the pickup for parents. I was desking that day, so I was ready to write anything that was coming in, and I was doing the background of the shooter and all of that.
Dunne: What's that like? Obviously you're a reporter, you're a professional, and you have to do your job. But what's it like delving into someone who both did a terrible thing and is also deceased himself?
Rogers: Hard. Yeah, very hard. I had to visit the apartment of the mom to see if she was there and if she would want to talk to us. I went through court records to see what his past may have been like, and I talked to people from Astoria who had known his dad and described their interactions with him. There were times that it felt a little invasive, but there were times that it felt like this is what the people want to know, and I can give it to them as accurately as possible.
Dunne: I always think local newspapers are great resources for the mood, or the temperature, of the community. I know it's only been a couple of weeks, but as far as you can tell, how are Bend and Central Oregon doing? How are they recovering from this?
Rogers: We actually just did a story today, which I finished up, on how the community is feeling. A lot of people want to get together and come together, but you can tell that it's a very solemn, sad feeling around town. I do weekend coverage, and it's usually fun, live events. Just walking around, people are trying to have fun, but it's really hard. It's still sitting with everyone.
Dunne: Talk about the importance of being the local paper in town: the sources, the trust that you've established and just knowing where stuff is. Talk about how important that is.
Rogers: It's felt even more important during this. As a courts and crime reporter, I have a good relationship with the police and the sheriff's office. I know who to go to for those answers the fastest, and what those people usually respond to. We had multiple people who said, "I'll only talk to you guys," or, "I'll give you things first, because I know who you are and I trust the reporting that you do."
Dunne: Yeah, that makes sense. My last question for you is this, and be as general as you want or need to be: What are some of the comments from people you've interviewed about this story that stick with you, whether it's incredibly sad or maybe uplifting or emboldening somehow?
Rogers: I actually just spoke with a Silver Rail mom the other day who started a nonprofit to get kids out and together again. She was telling me how her fourth-grade daughter was in the classroom above the special education classroom and heard just about everything. Her daughter came up to her the other day and said, "Mommy, I just feel like I'm sinking. I'm so sad." That just really stuck with me, because you never think that someone who's 9 years old is going to have to deal with that in a space where they thought they should have been safe.
Dunne: Well, excellent reporting. It's an amazing job you're all doing. Emily Rogers, reporter with the Bend Bulletin, thank you so much for talking with us.
Rogers: Yeah, and thank you as well.
Dunne: Now you'll hear from a therapist in Bend who is treating the survivors, first responders and others who are processing this act of violence. Suzy Rosen is a therapist at Thrive Mental Health in Bend. Suzy, thanks so much for coming on and talking to us.
Suzy Rosen: Absolutely.
Dunne: So, in general terms, what are some of the coping mechanisms? Obviously there's talking to a professional such as yourself, but what are some strategies for people, especially in the immediate aftermath of something like this?
Rosen: Immediately, I think, paying attention to what's going on in the body and then interrupting that. It happens first in the body, then there's an emotion of anger, fury, being scared, terrified, whatever, and then there's a thought. So the thought is the last part of it. If you interrupt the physiological state of panic, then you can think, what am I telling myself? I can't control this. I'm hopeless. This is not fair. All the things. Then you can think about a more helpful thought, like, it's not happening now. That already happened. My body thinks it's happening now, but it's not.
Dunne: OK. Does time and distance from a tragedy heal all wounds, like the cliche goes?
Rosen: It doesn't make it go away, because the really bad thing really did happen. It really is true. But it does shift over time. The intensity goes down. For folks who already have a previous trauma, that can get triggered and reactivated, and it becomes more complex.
Dunne: OK. I imagine with something like this, there are maybe concentric circles. Obviously there are the people who are directly involved, and then staff who maybe weren't in the room but were there, and then it keeps going out. I'm wondering, are people thinking to themselves, "I wasn't involved at all, so why is this impacting me?" Talk about that.
Rosen: Yes, you're absolutely right. There are concentric circles. And I think even the people it happened to, the people in the inner circle, might think, someone who doesn't even have kids at the school, what are they getting upset about? They don't have the right to be upset. It sort of becomes, I don't know, territorial. But it affects everybody, because it has such a profound effect on the idea of: Are our schools safe? Are my kids safe? I think this is a lot of people's worst nightmare. They hear about it and think, this is the worst thing I've always worried about.
Dunne: I'm wondering, from a therapy perspective, when the worst thing happens and you make it out the other side, is that helpful at all? I guess you know what I mean.
Rosen: Yeah. It can really build resiliency, and there really can be a sense of, OK, I have faced the worst thing, and I'm OK. I'm not scared anymore of the dark, or whatever.
Dunne: When you're working with patients, are there moments when they express to you that they're starting to get to the other side? What does that look like?
Rosen: Yeah, and that's what we want to jump on. The same goes for parents watching their kids or family members. First, they tell just the story of the horrific stuff, and then they start saying, "And so-and-so was OK, and so-and-so helped me and made sure I was OK." They get the whole context of it. It wasn't all bad. There was some safety. There were some people who were helpful. Those are the things we really want to help them see. That's right. People did help you, and you are safe now.
Dunne: There's a famous phrase from Fred Rogers: Always look to the helpers in a crisis. But helpers are human too. Talk about the first responders, the teachers, people in your profession. How do you help yourself? Because obviously you're absorbing trauma as well.
Rosen: Yes. We have been working with first responders and people who were in the building, teachers and other adults. I think it's really important to take care of your own nervous system when you're with a child who's talking about it, or someone else who's processing it. Really taking care of things like: Am I breathing? Do I have pictures in my head that are not helpful? What am I telling myself? Just really making sure. And when we can, we try to be mindful and intentional about it: OK, we're talking about this, and now we're not talking about this. There's a beginning, middle and end. With trauma, when it happens, there's no beginning, middle and end. There's no past, present and future. So when people are talking about it, we want to help them identify that there actually is a past, present and future, and it's not happening in the present.
Dunne: Suzy, my last question for you: Can that be expanded community-wide? Can this idea of past, present and future help all of Bend get through this?
Rosen: Yes. Everyone is thinking about where Silver Rail's kids will go and what happens next. There's been such a great outpouring from this community. It's been phenomenal, people stepping up to support in whatever way they can. And I think, yes, healing as a community is part of it.
Dunne: Suzy Rosen, a therapist at Thrive Mental Health. Suzy, thank you so much for talking to us.
Rosen: Absolutely.
Dunne: You're about to hear a clip from the OPB interview with Kaylub Giamanco, the man who shot the armed intruder. He talks about the phone call he had with his mother immediately afterward, describing what he did.
Kaylub Giamanco: I called my mom, and I told her, I was like, "Mom, I just had to take the life of what I think might be a child, because he went into my daughter's school with a gun." And she was just like, "OK, baby, calm down. You did the right thing. You're a hero. You saved lives."
Dunne: We talk now with my colleague at OPB who interviewed him, Jen Baires, who covers Central Oregon for OPB. Jen, it's great to talk to you as always. I wish it were under different circumstances, but thank you so much for sitting down with me.
Jen Baires: Yeah, thank you for having me.
Dunne: How did you get the interview with Kaylub? And I hope I'm pronouncing his last name right, Giamanco.
Baires: Giamanco.
Dunne: Yeah. How did you get that interview? That was an amazing coup, but also a really important story to be told.
Baires: Since Oct. 15, when the shooting happened, everybody was knocking on Kaylub's door to get this interview, and we made a really conscious choice not to be one of the reporters hounding him. It got so bad that he and his family moved into a hotel just to get away from it. I'm a local reporter, a mom who lives here and has kids in the district, and Emily is also a mother here, so we approached it with more sensitivity and care, just authentically coming from a place of, we are hurting too. Emily, who is my editor, has been a reporter here in Bend for, I think, over a decade. She had that really great track record for his family to look at and say, "We've seen your work. We respect you as a journalist here." So when we approached them, and she sent that initial email, it was with that care, that understanding and that really strong reporting history here, which I think spoke to their family.
Dunne: Yeah, and I'm going to link to the interview, and I encourage everybody to watch it and listen to it, because it's quite powerful. As you were putting it together, what was your hope? This is such an interesting perspective. It's someone who's done something that very few people have done, and hopefully no one ever has to do again, and I'm sure he shares that sentiment. But it was incredibly important. What was your hope in providing him with that venue to tell his story?
Baires: I think the first thing we really hoped was to create an environment where he wouldn't be retraumatized by telling his story because, as you're saying, it is so incredibly rare and very powerful. So our hope was not to hurt him, and also to give him the space to tell it the way he wanted, in as much depth as he wanted to go into, and to feel heard in his retelling of it. We created that environment, and he spent a week thinking about what he wanted to share, so when we started the interview, he just really flowed. He was able to provide details in a clear way. It didn't require a lot of guiding. It was really just an open-ended question, and then letting him speak.
Dunne: Yeah. In fact, as I was watching it and listening to it, I was thinking, you've talked to lots of people who are very familiar and very comfortable in front of the media, maybe politicians, elected officials, that sort of thing. And the way he spoke and the way he told his story, it was amazing. I'm not saying he's a natural, but he had a story to tell, and he told it.
Baires: Yes, I think you're absolutely right.
Dunne: It was amazing. So, obviously, you put it up. What kind of comments have you heard from people in the community about his story and about the telling of it?
Baires: You know, they always say don't read the comments. I will say I have been looking at these ones, partially because, in a different way, we really care about him. We see how much he is hurting from what he had to do that day and how everything played out. The comments have been, by and large, supportive. People are really grateful for him. We've had a lot of positive comments about how we approached the story, that people felt we did it with respect. There were some who were happy to see him go to OPB, a community-supported news organization, rather than maybe going somewhere that would pay for his story. But mostly, I think the community here is trying to wrap their arms around him and say, we see you did something you shouldn't have had to do, and yet we're also grateful that you were there that day.
Dunne: Speaking of the community, you've been immersed in this since the very beginning. What's your sense, a couple of weeks on, of how the community is coming together, maybe finding a sense of normalcy? Give us the temperature reading from your perspective on Bend and Central Oregon.
Baires: I think we're at a really weird place right now, two weeks in. Some people are returning to their usual routines. You see kids are back in school, except for at Silver Rail. Kids are playing sports again. Those were canceled for a little while. But now we have the families at Silver Rail Elementary School who I think are starting to feel like they're ready to talk and share what they are going through, in ways they weren't initially, because they kind of drew in. So there's a bit of a push and pull: We want to embrace the things that make us feel good, our routines and what we care about, and also, we live in a world that's forever changed.
Dunne: The news business is a very competitive business, and there's been a lot of national media attention on this. You got this amazing scoop, but I'm also wondering, how has it been to cover the story when the CNNs and The New York Times of the world are also focused on the exact same thing?
Baires: I was really struggling with that at first, because this is my town. This is where I live and raise my kids, and I am a journalist. Then we really came together and realized we are going to keep doing what we do best. We don't have to be first. We need to be right. We need to be accurate. Everything has to be vetted to our standard, no matter who else is running with a name or any other information. The second part is that we are here for the long term, and I think that has really made a difference in how we approach sources and the community. It's not, I need to get this story, I need to get it out. It's, I'm here with you, and I want to tell stories that will help us as a community move through this.
Dunne: Jen, my last question for you is this: You live in this community, and you have kids. This is obviously every parent's worst nightmare. How difficult is it to do your job, and do it very well, while also knowing you've got to process all this as well?
Baires: It's been really difficult. I will say that's where having a newsroom with other reporters has been amazing. A lot of reporters from Portland came to help us. I had to be really honest about what I could and couldn't cover. Everything we're talking about, like how parents are talking to kids at home and how kids are returning to school, I'm doing those things at my home. I'm bringing my kids back to school too. So while it makes me a better reporter in a lot of ways, because I can be more sensitive and truly understand what people are going through, there were times when I was so grateful to have other people to help carry that storytelling burden.
Dunne: Yeah, absolutely. Jen Baires, who covers Bend and all of Central Oregon for OPB. Jen, it's always great to talk to you. Thank you so much for spending some time with us.
Baires: Yeah, you're welcome.
Dunne: That's the show for today. All episodes of Oregon on the Record are available as a podcast at klcc.org. Tomorrow on the show, we'll get a recap of the midterm elections from our news reporters at KLCC. I'm Michael Dunne, host of Oregon on the Record. Thanks for listening.
