Uvalde school shooting hits home for Galesburg woman; friend's son on playground that day

GALESBURG — Chris Blanco, 50, was inside her hair salon, Salon Blanco, 975 N Henderson, when she heard the news on May 24 that a shooter was inside Robb Elementary in Uvalde, Texas.

Blanco — who was born in Lubbock, Texas, and moved Uvalde in 1986, then Galesburg in 2005 — immediately thought of her family and friends who still lived there.

She contacted her father who lives about a block away from the school and then her best friend Naomi Mason, 49, whose 9-year-old son Byron was on the playground when the shooter climbed the fence into Robb Elementary’s parking lot and began firing at the school.

“It's just shock and then fear,” Blanco said. “First you start calling all of your family and wondering where everybody is at. I called Naomi to see where she was at and that's the first thing I thought about, was Byron.”

Fortunately, Byron nor any of the other students outside Robb Elementary that day were hit by the shooter. But neither Blanco or Mason knew that yet, as Mason was more than 40 miles away from Uvalde and in-between phone service.

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Mother goes into 'panic mode'

Working as a test-car driver, Mason was in Utopia, Texas, when she first received a call from Robb Elementary notifying parents that the school was on lockdown. As Uvalde is not far from the border with Mexico, Mason said it’s not unusual for the school to go on lockdown every couple weeks, so she continued on her route.

It wasn’t until Mason reached Leakey, Texas, that she had service again and received a second call informing her there was an active shooter at her son’s school.

“At first I was like, 'It's not in the school.' I'm trying to comfort myself,” Mason said. “It's not in the school, this is outside of the school, they're chasing somebody. My son is safe, my son is safe, my son is safe. That's all I could keep thinking: my son is safe.”

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Mason said she has panicked only two times in her life. The first time was when her late husband went into cardiac arrest. The second time was when, after receiving the second call about the active shooter, Mason then learned that one of her coworker’s nieces had been shot and killed at Robb Elementary.

Nervous before but now in “panic mode,” Mason started driving back toward Uvalde. She then heard from a family member that her son was safe and at Mason mother’s house.

“Heck, when I finally got to my mom's house where my son was, I just couldn't let go,” Mason said. “My son ran out of the house towards me as soon as I pulled up and he hugged me tight and both of us, we just couldn't let go because it was a scary situation.”

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Son quieter after Uvalde shooting

Mason said that she doesn’t want her son to dwell on what he experienced at Robb Elementary and that she started him on counseling the next day. But from what he has told her, Mason knows that he was out on the playground for P.E class when the shooter entered the school grounds and started firing.

Mason said that the school staff told the children to run inside to the cafeteria and as Byron was fleeing, he saw other people around him fall to the ground. Byron thought that they had been shot, but Mason said that they later learned that the students and staff were dropping down out of fear.

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“He's trying to run but he says that he keeps seeing his little friends dropping to the ground,” Mason said. “He thought his little friends were shot and then he thought his coach was shot but he went ahead and he kept running because the guy was shooting.”

Mason said that her son is typically a talker and loves to sing but that after he was evacuated from Robb that day, he had been more quiet than usual. Mason said that her son constantly comes to check on her and make sure that she is still there.

“That first night he was terrified that the gunman was going to come and get him, that he was going to find him and all of this. It was really sad and hard to hear all of that," Mason said. "I finally told him he's not going to come for you and he's not going to come for anybody else. He's gone."

‘It’s going to take a long time’

Mason said that her son isn’t afraid anymore that the gunman is going to return and that she is so grateful her son is alive. But she said she also feels guilty, because she knows cousins, co-workers and classmates who have all lost children.

“I'm so happy to have mine and, like I said, I'm so grateful. I just feel bad,” Mason said. “I feel guilty because I have mine and they don't have theirs.”

Blanco said that it has been difficult for her to be so far away from Uvalde because although she didn’t go to Robb Elementary, she knows people who have children in the hospital and remembers going to school with the two teachers who were killed.

“I feel helpless. It's hard not to be there to help the community. And that's another thing, we don't know who to help because now there's all kinds of fraud and different stuff that's coming out,” Blanco said. “So I've been focusing on helping my friend Naomi because I know her and I know that she's struggling.”

For Mason, she believes it is going to take a very long time for the Uvalde community to recover because of how many innocent lives were lost.

“What do you really say? What can you really say, there is just no word,” Mason said. “When you lose your parents you're an orphan. You know, what word is there for when you lose your child?”

This article originally appeared on Galesburg Register-Mail: Uvalde, Texas, school shooting hits home for Galesburg hair dresser