NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at for further information. Nurith Aizenman, NPR News.Ĭopyright © 2022 NPR. She went through that by herself.ĪIZENMAN: Now, she says, all they can do is come together. RODRIGUEZ: I do it for her because I know she's the one who's really going through something, and I will never know because I'm not in her head. She has her moments where she just cries.ĪIZENMAN: So Rodriguez is trying to at least keep her busy, focused on helping others. Days later, she still seems numb, says Rodriguez. By the time Rodriguez was united with her, she was hysterical. The girl was at Robb when the shooting started. MONIQUE RODRIGUEZ: Put the table here so we have, like, an assembly line just going.ĪIZENMAN: Her 9-year-old daughter stands by her side, hair in a high ponytail, expression - somber. ZAMARRIPA: You know, everybody is just praying.ĪIZENMAN: More people are showing up to help, to pack the burgers and paper bags, including Monique Rodriguez, dressed in a white T-shirt with the words Uvalde Strong printed on it. ZAMARRIPA: When you say Sally, everybody knows Sally - outgoing, love gardening, loved her plants.ĪIZENMAN: Barely a week ago, Zamarripa swung by Sally's house to pick up some plants she was selling. They've been friends with her for years, know her as Sally. Zamarripa worries about his grandmother, who he shot just before heading to the school. PEREZ: (Speaking Spanish) - you know - (speaking Spanish) those kids, you know.ĪIZENMAN: "He must have been so angry to take it out on the children," she says. MARTINEZ: It's real sad, I mean, all the way around.ĪIZENMAN: Perez switches between English and Spanish, as many Latinos in Uvalde do, as she wonders at the demons that haunted him. He was 18, but Martinez keeps referring to him as that little boy. He lived down the street from my mom's when he was a baby, you know?ĪIZENMAN: And because this is Uvalde, they mourn him, too, as one of their own. MARTINEZ: You know, the shooter, I know his family as well. That's my brother-in-law's wife.ĪIZENMAN: The talk turns to another person who lost his life in this tragedy. PEREZ: Are you - you're not the one that lost - it was your wife, right? The two friends step out of the car and walk up to a young man who's piling wood into an enormous grill, Jerry Martinez.ĪIZENMAN: Zamarripa and Perez don't actually know him on sight, but in that Uvalde way, it takes them about 2 seconds to figure out who he is, and that he's related to one of the teachers who was killed. Last night, Perez and Zamarripa bumped into a friend who told them of a plan to grill burgers at a place everyone calls the Mexican park. All over town, people are holding impromptu cookouts to make meals for the families of the victims. We can't - Uvalde, our little hometown.ĪIZENMAN: And so people in Uvalde are trying to apply the best salve they can think of - food. ROMIE PEREZ: It's just something that we can't believe. It seems impossible to heal the wounds like this, says Perez. Perez sighs as we pass a line of 21 crosses that someone's erected by the side of the road, one for each of the victims. In the seat next to Zamarripa is her best friend since kindergarten, Romie Perez. Now, that very interconnectedness has made the mass shooting at Robb Elementary all the more painful. This is a place where roots matter so much, where so many people hail from Mexican American farmworker families that have been intertwined for so many generations. But they didn't want to cut the tree because that tree has been there years and years even before them, you know, probably their great-great-grandparents.ĪIZENMAN: In Uvalde, she says, you don't cut down an oak tree. She's 65, old enough to remember when they poured the asphalt around it.ĮLIA ZAMARRIPA: When they were building new houses on each side of the road, they needed to make the road where the tree was. NURITH AIZENMAN, BYLINE: As we drive along one of Uvalde's side streets, Elia Zamarripa points out a towering oak growing right in the middle of the road. NPR's Nurith Aizenman joined two longtime friends as they headed to one of the gatherings. But the tragedy has also sparked spontaneous get-togethers across town as people search for a way to heal. And finally today, residents in Uvalde, Texas, are still struggling to come to terms with the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in which 19 children and two teachers were killed and 17 others were wounded.
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