A shooting victim finds peace in revisiting Cole Hall
Gravely injured shooting victim focuses on new goals - starting with returning to NIU
By Jamie Sotonoff | Daily Herald StaffNorthern Illinois University Police Chief Donald Grady slowly pushed open the doors of the Cole Hall auditorium, and Maria Ruiz Santana and her parents took a few steps into the room.
They looked around at the eerily empty podium and rows of seats. Then Maria stoically walked down the aisle to the exact place she was on that February afternoon when a gunman suddenly appeared in front of her Introduction to Ocean Science class and fired his shotgun into the rows of students.
A bullet hit Maria in the center of her throat, tearing through her esophagus and narrowly missing her spinal cord. She was hospitalized and unable to speak for almost two weeks.
Maria nearly died in Cole Hall that day. And yet, one of the first things she did when she returned to campus in mid-April was go back to that room and try to remember everything that happened.
Chief Grady had seen adults literally collapse with grief upon seeing that lecture hall, even requiring help out of the room. He pressed Maria about her wish to return, but she insisted.
"I knew I wasn't going to go forward if I didn't go in there," said Santana, a Larkin High School graduate from Elgin. "It was part of my healing process, because - I know it sounds weird - it didn't click that it had really happened."
Maria was now standing in the same spot in the fifth row where, two months earlier, she had lain bleeding on the floor, clinging to life.
She stared up at the podium, realizing just how close she had been to the shooter - and also how far she'd come in the last two months.
"I am just thankful that I have another chance to live," she said.
Maria asked Grady to explain how it all went down that day. She listened intently and asked questions like a police investigator. How did he get in? Where was he standing? Where were the victims sitting?
Maria told Grady what she remembered, and he took notes. As she listened to her daughter recount the details, Maria's mother quietly wept. Maria did not cry.
"I was so interested in what the chief was telling me. I was, like, 'Wow, I can't believe I'm standing here now,'" she said.
Not only is she still standing, but she's emerged mentally stronger and more focused than before.
Doctors were awed by her physical recovery. And academically, despite missing two months of school, Maria managed to complete all her classes from the spring semester - including the ocean science class taught by the same teacher, Joseph Peterson, who also was recovering from his gunshot wounds.
Of the surviving students, only two people dropped the class, Maria said.
"I said (to Peterson), 'I'm so happy you're my teacher and that you finished the class. You experienced what we experienced and you know how I feel,'" she said.
Her final grade was a C.
"I should have gotten an A," Maria said, laughing, "but no one was giving me an A just because I was shot."
This semester, Maria took a full course load, including a sociology class taught by Grady. She's also in the midst of an internship with the NIU police, working part-time at a day-care center in Sycamore, and preparing to graduate in 2009 with a bachelor's degree.
With her new friend Chief Grady serving as her mentor, Maria is pursuing a career as a police officer. On her 21st birthday, she obtained a firearm owner's ID card - so she can learn how to shoot a gun and not be afraid of a gunshot sound.
"Maria is not a victim. She is a survivor," Grady said. "Sure, she got shot. But she's turned it into a life-altering experience that's making her even better than she was before. The way she's lived and survived this thing? It's nothing short of heroic."
Maria and Grady rarely talk about the shootings. Instead, they discuss Maria's career goals, the classes she's taking, and the internship, where she does things like ride-alongs, filing police records and learning how to build relationships in the community.
Grady is careful to let Maria dictate the terms of their friendship.
"The last thing she needs is a constant reminder of what happened ... because I represent what went on in that room," Grady said. "So when she seeks me out, I talk to her. If she needs something from me, I'm there for her. She's a remarkable young woman."
