Column: Three years after being shot at school, this teen has made our survival her fight

Earlier than she was shot within the abdomen at Saugus Excessive College, Mia Tretta volunteered at a Los Angeles meals financial institution yearly round Thanksgiving.

On Nov. 14, 2019, within the minutes earlier than a bullet from a ghost gun hit her, Mia was on the telephone along with her mother, Tiffany Shepis-Tretta. They had been attempting to determine a day Mia might skip faculty to pack packing containers of meals with out lacking a take a look at. She was strolling into class after being dropped off by her grandmother on the Santa Clarita campus.

So carefree, Tiffany thinks now, remembering her daughter as a freshman. So onerous to suppose how small the issues had been.

Seconds after Mia hung up, a fellow scholar pulled a .45 caliber semiautomatic — produced from a package offered by a still-operating web enterprise in Chula Vista — and fired into the quad.

He killed two college students, together with Mia’s greatest buddy Dominic Blackwell, and wounded three earlier than taking his personal life. Damage and dazed, Mia ran right into a classroom.

Most of us barely keep in mind the Saugus Excessive capturing, headline information when it occurred three years in the past. And why would we? There have been many extra faculty shootings since, and lots of of acts of gun violence in California and throughout the nation this 12 months alone. The Gun Violence Archive places the quantity at greater than 600 to this point in 2022 — together with 21 lifeless in Uvalde, Texas, and 10 gunned down in a grocery retailer in Buffalo, N.Y.

Colorado Springs, Colo., was the brand new headline, 5 lifeless Saturday night time in an LGBTQ membership. Then Tuesday night time introduced one other horror. Seven folks lifeless in a Virginia Walmart, together with the gunman, who used his last shot on himself.

Are you able to even title any of the others? Do you keep in mind in April when a gunman wounded 10 in a New York subway automotive? Or Could when an indignant man killed one and wounded 4 on the Irvine Taiwanese Presbyterian Church in Laguna Woods?

Or June in Oklahoma when yet one more armed man killed 5 at a medical heart and left extra with “non-life threatening accidents,” which is absolutely only a chilly and careless approach of claiming welcome to a lifetime of trauma, each for the victims and those that love them.

“You’ll be able to’t wait to care till it occurs to you,” Mia advised me Tuesday. And if telling her story, driving that time dwelling, will get the eye of only one particular person, it’s well worth the salt-in-the-wound ache of digging up the main points, she mentioned.

“On the fee that gun violence is occurring now, everybody goes to know any person, all people goes to have gun violence contact them,” she mentioned. “The entire world is hurting. All of those shootings occurring over and again and again is tough for me. However its additionally so extremely onerous for our complete nation.”

Gov. Gavin Newsom wipes a tear after considering of his personal daughter when gun violence survivor Mia Tretta, left, advised her story beforehe signed Senate Invoice 1327, gun laws modeled after Texas’ abortion ban, into regulation at Santa Monica School on July 22. Tretta was wounded and her greatest buddy was killed within the 2019 capturing at Saugus Excessive College.

(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Instances)

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She’s a senior now, nonetheless at Saugus Excessive, however spends a lot of her time as a gun-sense advocate with organizations together with College students Demand Motion. These previous few weeks, with the shootings in Colorado and Virginia, the strain of a vacation meant to underscore gratefulness and the three-year anniversary of the Saugus capturing, have been onerous — for Mia’s complete household.

“At the start within the grand scheme of something like this, we’re fortunate as a result of she’s right here. She’s with us,” Tiffany mentioned. “These are the issues you concentrate on when the vacations come. I take into consideration [Dominic’s] household.”

Mia worries folks don’t even keep in mind him — the 14-year-old child with curly hair who “wasn’t afraid of something,” Tiffany mentioned. He and Mia had an 8-minute lengthy secret handshake they’d do each time they met, Mia mentioned.

Folks collect at Central Park in Santa Clarita to recollect these killed and wounded within the Saugus Excessive College capturing.

(Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Instances)

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He wore a SpongeBob T-shirt virtually on daily basis. The primary time he met Tiffany in a division retailer, he “shook my hand very firmly and mentioned, ‘I simply need you to know I’m Mia’s boyfriend,’ then ran off laughing,” Tiffany mentioned.

Mia liked him and he’s gone, killed as they walked collectively, simply one other day till it wasn’t.

However as a lot as we mourn the lifeless, the dwelling matter too. Gun violence is a horrible, tragic second for many who die. It’s a lifetime of ache for many who stay.

Tiffany remembers the morning Mia was shot, probably not being concerned at the same time as she heard one thing was occurring at the highschool. She determined to drive over and test. On the way in which, she acquired a textual content from a quantity she didn’t acknowledge.

“Hello mother, I don’t know should you’ve heard, however there was a capturing. Inform Max to chew together with his mouth closed,” it learn. Max is Mia’s little brother, in first grade when the capturing occurred and an open-mouth eater on the dinner desk, a lot to his massive sister’s dismay.

Tiffany realized one thing was improper and known as the quantity. A lot of what occurred is a blur, however she remembers asking the one who answered if every part was OK, and being advised Mia had been shot. “Do you need to discuss to her?” they requested.

Gun management activist Mia Tretta.

(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Instances)

Mia sounded “as regular as may be,” Tiffany mentioned. “Thank God for shock and adrenaline. I really feel like, had she sounded in ache, I might have crumbled.”

By some means Tiffany known as her husband, Sean, and so they arrived on the faculty at virtually the identical time, with Mia being wheeled out on a gurney. There was a helicopter journey to the trauma heart, and although the bullet missed a significant artery by millimeters, “we knew fairly shortly that she was going to be OK,” she mentioned.

“However when you must inform a baby that their greatest buddy was killed, you immediately see the innocence drain from them,” she mentioned.

Mia nonetheless has bodily issues from being shot — she’ll have one other process in coming months. However the emotional restoration is tougher.

“For a very long time, I used to be very, very numb,” Mia mentioned. “Trauma is a curler coaster. It doesn’t finish and it’s not static.”

Tiffany felt the shock too and nonetheless does.

“You attempt to stay slightly bit tougher, you attempt to love extra, you attempt to not maintain grudges on belongings you would have prior to now,” she mentioned. “As dad and mom you bought to maintain going. You bought to choose up and maintain it collectively. You’ll crumble in the future when they’re married and have their very own youngsters. It’s robust.”

A household gathers at a memorial to Gracie Anne Muehlberger and Dominic Blackwell exterior Saugus Excessive College in 2019.

(Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Instances)

One of many hardest components is how political shootings have turn into. In case your baby is in a automotive accident, Tiffany factors out, the one response is sympathy and kindness.

“You say my baby was shot at a faculty capturing, all people has an opinion on that,” Tiffany mentioned. “It’s the one factor that’s polarized, and it’s actually unfair. You’re speaking about youngsters’ lives and children’ security.”

Mia has a service canine now, a golden retriever named Randy, who goes to high school along with her and may wake her up from nightmares. She has PTSD. Popping balloons startle her, and Max is aware of higher than to run up and scare her, as he appreciated to do earlier than the capturing.

However Mia additionally found one thing about her ache.

“I noticed actually early on that I had the identical consolation sitting in mattress crying as I did going out and attempting to alter one thing,” she mentioned.

Mia travels the nation talking on gun rights. Not way back, she was at the White House for an occasion with President Biden. And he or she voted for the primary time a couple of weeks in the past — all candidates she trusts to share her values. Just lately, after the varsity capturing in Uvalde, she held a walkout at Saugus Excessive. Within the conservative enclave of Santa Clarita, it wasn’t properly acquired.

“Folks had been holding up Trump flags and throwing issues at us,” she mentioned. “It’s a whitewashing, sort of attempting to fake this didn’t occur in ‘Awesometown,’” as one native neighborhood dubbed itself.

It’s Mia’s perseverance that offers me hope.

I’m pretty sure the so-called adults aren’t fixing America’s gun drawback anytime quickly. Even in California, with a few of the strictest gun legal guidelines within the nation, we’re confronted with the stone wall of those that genuinely consider they may sometime want their weapons to overthrow our authorities, and any try and curb gun rights dangers that mangled notion of patriotism.

However the youngsters have an opportunity.

“Era Z goes to eliminate them,” Tiffany mentioned, talking of the politicians who consider their self-serving worship of the 2nd Modification is extra necessary than our kids.

“I see it not simply with my daughter,” she mentioned. “I see it when she goes and meets with different teams of younger [activists]. They notice the numerous drawback we’ve got with weapons on this county. I’ve loads of hope for them, and it’s unlucky that we’ve needed to burn all of it down for them to construct it again up.”

Mia doesn’t need her complete life to be about weapons. She’s 18 years previous and making use of to varsity. She goals of Stanford, and so they’d be fortunate to have her. And he or she and her mother are again to volunteering at Thanksgiving, this 12 months making meals for these dwelling in motels.

However Mia is on this struggle to win it, identical to so lots of her friends who “take no s—,” as Tiffany places it.

“These are change makers,” Mia says of different younger survivors she’s met.

“They’re combating for the very same factor,” she mentioned, regardless of in the event that they deal with local weather change, reproductive rights or any of the opposite issues that appear so insurmountable and contentions — to “be secure and be completely happy and be liked and never be scared.”

“It’s not an excessive amount of to ask,” she mentioned.

No, Mia, it’s not. I want we might win this struggle for you, go away you with a greater world. Or at the very least one the place massacres don’t come and go from our consciousness like thieves, stealing a little bit of our means to really feel every time.

However I’m grateful you’re not ready for us to catch up. And I’m grateful that for all you’ve misplaced, you haven’t given up on us.