Pulse survivor works to fulfill promise to friend who died there
In the worst moment of her life, Amanda Grau lay atop a pile of strangers in the bathroom stall of an Orlando nightclub. She was trapped, shot four times and trying to press against the largest of her wounds to stop herself from bleeding out.
In that moment, precisely four years ago today, and in the millions of moments since, Grau fought to live.
“I am a daughter. I am a sister,” she told herself. “I have to survive to make my way back to my family.”
It was June 12, 2016, shortly after 2 a.m., in what would become the most deadly mass shooting to that point in modern American history. Fortynine people were murdered at the Pulse nightclub by a single gunman, including Grau’s friend, Christopher Sanfeliz, a 24-year-old bank employee.
Grau, then a 33-year-old nurse technician from Tampa, was one of the 68 seriously wounded.
She would spend a month in the hospital, a year in physical therapy relearning to walk and use her right arm, months in counseling, and countless long days of working while going back to school.
She is now an EMT, a graduate of the Tampa Fire Rescue
Training Center and the recipient of one of 49 inaugural legacy scholarships awarded by the onePULSE Foundation, allowing her to attend paramedic school, starting in September.
“I made a promise to Chris [Sanfeliz],” she said. “I prayed to him. I told him that I wanted to save people like the paramedics and EMTs who saved me. I intend to keep that promise.”
Grau is from a tight family.
She grew up in Tampa, an outgoing student who played nearly every sport her small school offered. She had a soft spot for helping people. Before her grandmother became too frail to live independently, Grau took care of her, an experience that led her into a job as a nurse technician for the elderly.
“I know it’s a cliché, but she would give you the shirt off her back,” said her younger brother, Phillip Grau, 32. “But she was also very competitive.”
On June 11, 2016, Grau had driven to Orlando with a friend to meet up with Sanfeliz, his boyfriend and another friend. They were dancing to Latin music at the club, known for its gay clientele, when one of her friends left to use the restroom. Moments later, Grau heard the first strange “pop!”
“I thought it was either the music … or maybe fireworks,” she said. “It was really weird. And then it went off again, and I turned around and that’s when I saw.”
A man in a long coat was aiming at them with what looked like an assault weapon. Grau dropped the drink in her hand and ran. She remembers the crowd screaming as one of a flurry of bullets caught her below her armpit, blowing off a chunk of flesh and muscle. She passed out, came to, and ducked into the women’s bathroom.
For the next three hours, as the gunman came and went — sometimes washing his hands, sometimes talking on the phone, alternately apologizing and spraying the stalls with gunfire — Grau was hit in the back, leg and ankle. She tried to feel for pulses on the bodies around her and dialed 911, only to find it repeatedly busy. She called her mother instead, awakening her, and asked her to call the police.
“I have to hang up now,” Grau blurted. The gunman was coming back.
Then she began texting with Phillip, who called the police in Orlando and began to relay information from his sister to hostage negotiators.
Where was she in the building? How many were with her? Were the others still alive?
In between texts, Phillip raced to pick up his parents and the three of them drove from Tampa to Orlando. They arrived in time to witness officers blast a hole in the side of the club and start pulling out victims.
He and his parents were eventually sent to Orlando Regional Medical Center to wait for word on whether Amanda was alive.
“When we first saw her, it looked like there was a massacre inside her room with the amount of blood in there,” Phillip said.
Grau underwent two surgeries in Orlando and another two after she was transferred to a hospital in Tampa. She had to have a skin graft for the initial wound and suffered nerve damage under her arm and in her right leg. She has developed arthritis because of the injuries.
When she first went home, she struggled.
“I didn’t want to go anywhere. I didn’t want to see anybody. I was scared all the time. Sometimes, still, I get scared,” she said. “But my mom told me, ‘You can’t live a life in fear.’ You know, if I stayed inside all the time, afraid, then it was like I hadn’t survived after all.”
A year after the attack, during Pride week, she was invited to throw out the first pitch at a Tampa Bay Rays game. The whole family was there to witness it.
“To see her do that was a monumental moment,” Phillip said. “I don’t think there was a dry eye anywhere around us, knowing what she had been through.”
She began dating her fiancée, Jazmin Espada, in January 2018 and returned to work that March. In January 2019, feeling strong again, she began school to become an EMT. She graduated that June and spent another four months at the fire academy, attending full time while working on weekends.
“It was exhausting for her,” Espada said. “She had bags under her eyes. There were many nights I would go to bed while she was still studying, and I would wake up to find her snoring with her book open. She just couldn’t keep her eyes open any longer. … But one thing about her — she never gives up.”
On days it was damp and rainy, Grau’s body would ache. Sometimes her ankle and leg would swell.
“I would remind her, ‘You know this is your dream,’” Espada said. “‘You’ve already survived the hard part.’”
And Grau reminded herself: “If I give up, if I don’t do what I want with my life, he [the gunman] wins.’”
On Friday, as remembrance ceremonies unfold in Orlando, Grau will be with family on the other side of the state — her parents, her brother, her fiancée and her fiancée’s two children, whom Grau is raising as her own. They will have just celebrated her dad’s 60th birthday. Grau will take a brief break from the intense workouts she needs to stay in shape for the firefighter’s physical exam, which she expects to take just before entering the yearlong paramedic program.
At some point, she’ll slip away for a few moments of silence by herself.
“I’ll think of everybody whose life was taken that day, and I’ll say a few prayers for them, and then I’ll say prayers for their families — their mothers and fathers and sisters and brothers,” she said. “It is always a difficult day for me, but at least I have my family to wrap their arms around me. I am blessed.”