Las Vegas shooting survivor returns home
The gym was quiet as Jovanna Calzadillas stood from her wheelchair and stepped tentatively toward the podium, her husband, Frank, close behind.
It has been one year since a gunman opened fire on the crowded grounds of the Route 91 Harvest Festival in Las Vegas. Jovanna was shot in the head.
She stood to send a message, she said later: “Do not give up.”
Jovanna went to school in Winkleman, at Leonor Hambly School and Hayden High.
During the Monday assembly, the first-graders presented her with paper flowers they made that morning. The second-graders gave her cards. Other students made posters.
Jovanna thanked everyone, her family and friends, the students whose moms and dads she knows.
“There is no place I would rather be than here with you guys,” she said. “I love you all.”
Frank eased her back into her wheelchair. He turned to the kids. “What a year, huh?”
In the days after Jovanna was shot, doctors predicted she would not live, let alone talk and walk. She spent the last year in hospitals and therapy.
Frank also went to school here, and he told the students the friends they make now will support them later.
Be kind, he said. If something is wrong, help fix it. It is these people, at this school and in this town who will always be there. Their support has sustained his family.
Frank and Jovanna asked everyone to join them outside to release 58 balloons, one for each person who did not survive.
Jovanna watched the balloons float into the rainy sky. She wiped tears away.
“I could have been one of those balloons,” she said. “I am so lucky to be here.”
Jovanna feels guilty. “I’m trying to celebrate, and I can’t because I feel guilty that the others are gone,” she said.
So, for them, too, Jovanna will work hard to get better. She won’t give up.