Uvalde, Santa Fe shooting families team up on Texas gun reform

Hart’s 14-year-old daughter, Kimberly Vaughan, was one of 10 people who were killed at Santa Fe High School on May 18, 2018. 

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Cross’ 10-year-old nephew, Uziyah Garcia, was one of the 21 victims of the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde on May 24, 2022. Cross was Uziyah’s guardian and calls him his son.

RELATED: Santa Fe school shooting survivors feel betrayed by state’s response, want more after Uvalde

Uvalde and Santa Fe are about 315 miles from each other, but these residents are like family.  Cross and Hart have spent long nights together trading stories, sharing meals and advocating at the Texas Capitol. They comment on each other’s social media posts and text each other memes. 

They are part of a growing group of Texans touched by gun violence, connected by trauma, grief and, in some cases, a new calling to advocate for change.

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“Unfortunately, we’re a part of this club that nobody wants to be a part of,” Cross said. “When you have a grief like this, the average person doesn’t understand. You can’t grasp the notion of how much pain that is.”

Santa Fe survivors don’t know everyone in Uvalde, and the same is true in reverse. There’s no “mass shooting phonebook,” Hart said — and she sometimes wishes there was a better way to connect with others across Texas who have been in their shoes: families in El Paso, Sutherland Springs, Midland-Odessa, and now Allen.

It’s a network established by meeting at political events or asking around for someone’s number after seeing them in the news, Hart said.

She first connected with Brett and his wife, Nikki, over the phone in June of last year, and they met in person for the first time in August at an Astros game in Houston. The team had invited the Uvalde families out for “Uvalde Strong Day,” so Hart bought a ticket.

Hart met some of the other Uvalde parents that day, too. She talked to Kimberly Garcia, the mother of 10-year-old Amerie Jo Garza, and “instantly connected” with her. Amerie was a Girl Scout, just like Hart’s daughter.

When Hart first saw the news of the Uvalde massacre, her heart dropped. 

She’d been saying for years there would be another Texas school shooting if the state’s leaders didn’t take action on gun safety laws. Her worst fears were coming true, and she knew exactly what the Uvalde parents were about to experience.

After her daughter died, Hart felt like she had a “brick in my chest.” Kimberly loved Harry Potter and trips to the library. They said “I love you” to each other using sign language.

THE VICTIMS: Remembering those lost in the Santa Fe shooting

For months, Hart couldn’t sleep. She barely ate. Her hair fell out. She was grieving, intensely, but there were still so many things she had to do — sign legal papers, arrange a funeral, meet with the district attorney, talk to the National Compassion Fund, which helps provide financial assistance to victims of mass casualty events. Journalists were calling.

Hart still tries to avoid media interviews in May. The month is full of heartache and unanswered questions about what happened to Kimberly. But on May 24 last year, Hart wanted to do what she could to ease the Uvalde families’ pain. She wanted to “protect them.”

She broke her no-media rule in the hope that fewer reporters would reach out to the Uvalde relatives.

“I was like, ‘I’m not letting those people go on camera. … They don’t need to talk to anybody,’” she recalled.

Meanwhile, Scot and Flo Rice were vacationing in Big Bend. They always leave Santa Fe that time of year.

Flo, a substitute teacher at Santa Fe High School, was shot six times in her leg, breaking her femur. She played dead outside as police officers swarmed the school in search of the killer.

They, too, were horrified as news of the Uvalde shooting spread. 

Texas’ GOP leaders “promised us Uvalde would not happen,” Scot Rice said at a February news conference. “They said they fixed the problem. And when Uvalde happened, it broke us.”

They drove through Uvalde on the way back from West Texas, stopping to offer assistance where they could. They would later come to know dozens of the Uvalde family members and spend hours with them in Austin.

The Rices are off again, out of Santa Fe this week. The Crosses are traveling to Santa Fe on Thursday to attend a vigil outside Santa Fe High School. Hart will attend another in Uvalde next week.

“They’re there for us, and we’re there for them,” Brett Cross said.

Five years later, few answers

On Valentine’s Day 2018, a teenage gunman murdered 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.

In the days after, Christina Delgado’s daughter was nervous. At their home in Santa Fe, she would ask her mother what they would do if it happened to them. Delgado told her it wouldn’t. Things like that didn’t happen in Texas.

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Three months later, their lives were turned upside down. Delgado didn’t lose a child, but she knew people who did. Her community was forever changed. So was she.

Delgado has taken the six-hour roundtrip drive to Austin every legislative session since, pushing for gun safety laws that she believes could prevent future shootings. She is now the ​​Texas advocacy associate for the Community Justice Action Fund, an organization that aims to reduce gun violence in Black and Brown communities.

She usually travels to Austin with a handful of Santa Fe relatives: Hart; the Rice family; and Rosie Yanas Stone, who lost her son Chris. They usually have support from national gun violence prevention groups, like Moms Demand Action.

But this year, their survivor-led group grew.

Dozens of family members from Uvalde jumped into action after May 24. At the federal level, they demanded a ban on assault rifles. In Austin, they asked lawmakers to raise the age to purchase assault-style weapons from 18 to 21.

Stone met them for the first time on one of those advocacy trips in February. State Sen. Roland Gutierrez, a San Antonio Democrat who represents Uvalde, was hosting weekly press conferences with the families touting gun control laws. He invited the Santa Fe relatives to join them.

“Just seeing them walk in with their shirts — you just see these little kids,” Stone said. “It’s no different, what happened to our kids and what happened to their kids, but at least mine was 17. They have a little bit of knowledge. But when you put a 10 year old, a 9 year old — they had no knowledge, like zero. They have no idea what to do. So that’s what made it harder.”

Stone’s son died a hero, using his body as a human shield to stop the shooter from entering his classroom.

Delgado said the relationship with the Uvalde families was a natural one. She met some of them for the first time in the Rio Grande Valley last fall, where Republican Gov. Greg Abbott and Democrat Beto O’Rourke were having their only debate of the election cycle.

She circled up to Uvalde on the way back, where the Crosses were hosting a sit-in outside the Uvalde school district’s administrative office. They were demanding the district suspend all school police officers who were present on May 24 and did not take action to save their children.

“It is very emotional to have to go and meet these families that we didn’t fight hard enough to prevent from joining us,” she said.

Nikki Cross gave Delgado a bracelet with Uziyah’s name on it. He was a jokester who loved Spider-Man and playing video games. Delgado still keeps the bracelet in her living room.

Throughout late spring, Delgado shared many long days and late nights with the Uvalde families, helping to strategize their visits to lawmakers at their Capitol offices. After a Texas House committee heard a bill on raising the age to purchase assault-style weapons, she joined Hart and the Crosses to pass out cookies to members of the committee.

Eventually, the committee passed the bill by a vote of 8 to 5, with two Republicans joining Democrats to advance the measure. It never got a vote on the House floor, but it was a victory for the families nevertheless.

READ MORE: Bill to raise the age for AR-15 rifle purchases advances in Texas House

Working with the Uvalde families “changed so many outcomes,” Delgado said. “I have learned so much from these families — strength, wisdom, perseverance.”

They have learned a lot from her, too. Velma Lisa Duran, whose sister Irma Garcia was one of the teachers killed in Uvalde, has looked to Delgado and the other Santa Fe advocates for guidance as she navigates the legislative process for the first time.

She admires the way they speak, how passionate they are. But connecting with them scares her, too: Is this what she will still be doing four years from now?

“They’re coming up on five years this May,” Duran said, “and our journey is just beginning.”

Her sister Irma was charismatic and loving, a devoted teacher who died protecting her students. Irma’s husband, Joe Garcia, died two days after May 24 of a heart attack. Family say the true cause was a broken heart.

Duran likes to think that Irma and Joe, high school sweethearts, are dancing together in heaven.

“My sister was ripped from our lives, and now we have to be an advocate for other families,” Duran said. “This cannot be the American life. It’s actually the American nightmare.”

cayla.harris@hearst.com