‘Hidden angels among us’: After Fox River Mall shooting, volunteers help heal
Things appear normal these days at the Fox River Mall in Grand Chute. Masked shoppers weave in and out of stores, parking lots are predictably busy and people pause for a bite to eat in the food court where, a few weeks earlier, gunshots rang out.
On Feb. 2, 17-year-old Dezman Ellis shot and killed 19-year-old Jovanni Frausto in what police called a targeted attack, injuring another victim and prompting a massive law enforcement response as mall employees and visitors hid.
Inside the mall now, though, are a group of trained volunteers who are ready to talk through what happened with the hundreds of people who were there and are afraid it could happen again.
They’re part of the Fox Cities Victim Crisis Response team, which was established in connection with a few local police departments in 1997. Led by executive director Emily Lewis, the 35 volunteers now work with 14 local law enforcement agencies to provide immediate and lasting support to crime victims and others who need help.
The team responds to hundreds of calls each year, ranging from comforting family members after a suicide to providing resources for domestic violence and sexual assault survivors. They also help the community heal after largerscale traumas, like the mall shooting and the 2019 transit center shooting where firefighter Mitch Lundgaard lost his life.
It’s meant to address dueling needs at the scene of a crime or another traumatic incident: Police officers have a lot to do, but victims and witnesses need support and someone to talk to. Response team members fill that role — in the middle of the night, no matter the weather, in all sorts of situations.
“It’s not glamorous for us,” Lewis said. “There’s not compensation. There’s not anything besides selflessness. The community needs to know there are these hidden angels among us.”
The Fox Cities group is a nonprofit, funded by grants from the Wisconsin Department of Justice’s Victims of Crime Act. It is unique in the state because of its partnership with law enforcement, though other communities have trauma response teams, too.
In northwestern Wisconsin, for example, the St. Croix Valley Sexual Assault Response Team provides a variety of services to people facing sexual and interpersonal violence, and in Milwaukee, a team of crisis counselors supported bystanders after a gunman killed five people at the Molson Coors brewery in late February 2020.
Collective trauma is a term used to describe how large numbers of people react to disturbing events such as war, social unrest or violence. The impact on mental health can be devastating, if often misunderstood.
Research has shown that traumatic events, particularly for children, can lead to mental health problems such as anxiety, depression and suicide as well as medical conditions like heart disease, cancer and diabetes.
The care people receive after such tragedies can have a lasting impact on their recovery. The sooner a person can talk through the incident, feel safe and know what to do next, the better. Following the mall shooting, Lewis and more than a dozen volunteers were onscene, giving people the option to talk about — and emotionally process — the experience.
For large-scale events such as the mall shooting, the team takes additional steps to help more people. It has scheduled weekly office hours at the mall and will hold a special community healing event next week at Appleton Alliance Church.
“Some people, the impact is immediate. Some people will not feel that impact for months,” Lewis said. “It may come out of the blue ... they hear a sound, or smell a smell. We knew we needed to be available for a while.”
While volunteers aid in improving mental health, they don’t need to have a specific background in medical or law enforcement professions. New recruits go through rigorous training and are paired with program veterans to help guide them through their first calls, said Lt. Kelly Gady, a patrol lieutenant with the Appleton Police Department and the department’s VCR team liaison.
One of those veterans is Carolynn Brown-Schoening, 83, of Neenah, who’s been on the team since 2002. A retired school counselor in the Neenah Joint School District, Brown-Schoening said she joined because it was a unique way to serve the community.
Although the COVID-19 pandemic has complicated her ability to respond in person, she’s still making calls to people who need support.
“You can see people (change) from the time you arrive on scene to the time you leave,” Brown-Schoening said. “They’re in a different place. There’s more hope.”
While it’s hard to measure the program’s impact quantitatively, Lewis said she knows it’s working when her volunteers are recognized in the community, or even written about in obituaries. She and a coworker were recently stopped at a local bakery by someone thanking them for being there when their father died.
Their law enforcement partners see the impact, too. Gady said she and her colleagues often want to be able to sit down with victims and offer them reassurance, some water and a blanket, but there’s usually little time as they need to complete their investigation. Crisis response volunteers fill that role, sometimes for hours.
“They’re not in a hurry. They’re not going to be called away or interrupted by another task. They’re really devoted to the person in need at that time,” Gady said.
Other police departments in Wisconsin have approached them from time to time about how the team works and whether it could be replicated, she said.
It’s a heavy lift, requiring many dedicated volunteers, grant writers and buy-in from officers. But to those who participate here in the Fox Cities and the people they serve, it’s worth the effort.
Lewis said she aims to expand her group’s reach throughout Winnebago and Calumet counties, as long as there are enough volunteers to do so.
“We want to be able to reach as many lives as we can through this work,” she said. “When tragedy occurs, we would love if (the instinct) was, ‘Get ahold of the VCR.’ “