Kimberly Vaughan with Rhonda Hart and Tyler Vaughan.Photo: Courtesy of Rhonda Hart
A lot has changed for Rhonda Hart in the year since her 14-year-old daughter, Kimberly Vaughan, was shot and killed in theSanta Fe school massacre on May 18, 2018.
Nowadays, she’s helping former Congressman Beto O’Rourke campaign for president.
Hart attended the State of the Union as the guest of Houston Congresswoman Lizzie Fletcher. She’s met top lawmakers in Washington, D.C. with Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America and is a Survivor Fellow with Everytown for Gun Safety. She and her son, Tyler, 11, even got to watch Friday night football withThe Pioneer Woman‘sRee Drummondand her family at their home in Oklahoma.
“What a year it’s been,” the37-year-old U.S. Army veterantells PEOPLE.
That’s all gone now.
Rhonda Hart with Presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke and her son, Tyler Vaughan.Courtesy of Rhonda Hart
The last time Hart saw her daughterwas on the morning of the shooting, as Kimberly headed into the building where she ultimately lost her life along with seven other students and two teachers.
“I love you!” she called out the bus window.
Smiling, Kimberly turned and answered her mother in American Sign Language, saying “I love you!” back and prompting Hart to do the same in return – one of many sweet rituals they shared.
Less than a half hour later, her daughter was dead.
“She was just too awesome for us down here, so she had to go upstairs and be awesome up there,” she said after her daughter died.
DREADING ‘THE BLUR’ OF PAIN
“I call it the blur, which first happened when I found out what happened to Kimberly,” Hart says. “Physically, my body hurts. It’s kind of like having a newborn. Everything hurts, everybody’s crying and you don’t know if you’ve eaten yet. Emotionally… it’s very tough.”
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In the weeks and days before the one-year anniversary of the shooting, “the blur came back,” Hart says.
She’d already been bracing herself for the one-year anniversary of the Santa Fe shooting, expecting the worst, when she heard about the shootings at theUniversity of North Carolinaat Charlotte on April 30 and then, just a week later, the shooting at the Denver-areaSTEM schoolon May 7.
“That hit me like a ton of bricks,” she says. “I saw this picture of this little girl being led out of the school. She’s probably six, in her tiny little Gryffindor shirt and I was like, ‘You know what? This should not be happening.’ ”
On Hart’s Facebook page, next to a picture of the scared little girl with tears in her eyes, she wrote, “This little Gryffindor is facing a real-life ‘Dementor’ known as gun violence. It doesn’t have to be like this. I lost my Ravenclaw last year to this same thing. Call 202-224-3121 (for the U.S. Senate.) Text HONOR to 644-33. Join a real-life Dumbledore’s Army and fight it.”
STOPPING THE SHOOTINGS
Like other parents who have lost their children in school shootings, Hart has been working nonstop to try to prevent other families from having to endure such unimaginable pain.
Rhonda Hart and her son, Tyler Vaughan.
Just hours after she found out her daughter had been killed, Harttook to Facebook, writing, “Folks-call your damn senators. Call your congressmen. We need GUN CONTROL. WE NEED TO PROTECT OUR KIDS.”
She took on President Donald Trumpwhen he came to visit families after the shooting.
In the days and months after the shooting, Hart started working with March for Our Lives to push for gun violence prevention.
Not everyone in Santa Fe agreed with her views and when things became “too toxic,” she and her son moved to another town.
Trying to effect change on a local level, Hart ran for the board of education in that town in April – but lost.
Shrugging off the defeat, she says she got an encouraging call from O’Rourke afterward. “He was like, ‘I’m super proud of you, and I know it was a hard race.'”
That meant a lot to her. So did learning that he keeps a picture of Kimberly in his duct-taped wallet. “I try not to bug him because, you know, he’s trying to run for president,” she says.
Hart hopes change comes soon.
“I mean, we haven’t fixed this in 20 years, since Columbine. I was actually evacuated from my high school two days after Columbine. Two days in a row because we got threats. And then, 19 years later, we still haven’t fixed this – and now my kid is a statistic,” she says.
Hart is working so hard to reduce gun violence, she says, “Because this sucks so bad. I can’t imagine any more families having to go through this.”
source: people.com
