On Nov. 14, 2019, three students were killed in the Saugus High School shooting in Santa Clarita, Calif. Now, one year after the incident, Saugus graduate, Kiki Egetoe, shared she painted portraits of the victims to serve and assist her community in healing.
Kiki Egetoe, a freshman from California majoring in art and psychology, was in her choir class when the first shots were fired, she explained. “I've been in choir for four years, and I thought previously if a school shooting happened, I would hide in the [storage room],” she said. Never expecting something like that to happen, Egetoe said she was in shock the entire time.
“I was just praying for everyone's safety. I was praying for my safety. … I was just praying a lot,” Egetoe said. These prayers helped calm her, she said, until she walked off campus into her parents’ arms. School was shut down for a month to allow students and teachers time to cope, she said, but the first week back was the hardest. “I was numb for an entire week; I didn't cry at all. It made me feel like a robot and I was so confused,” she said. “In the end, you can't handle things like it,” she added.
Egetoe’s friends are still coping, she said. “My best friend, she has PTSD from it. ... If she hears fireworks, she runs.” She added this was one of the reasons why her friend was unable to move to Laie with Egetoe due to the frequent fireworks in the town. “I think I've been blessed that I don't have PTSD from it,” she said, a blessing that assisted in her move to Laie less than a year after the event.
What is post-traumatic stress disorder?
Rachel Kekaula, the director of Counseling Services at BYU–Hawaii, said a traumatic event is an event that causes intense horror and threatens life and safety. Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), she said, is a mental health diagnosis that results from a traumatic event, through either direct or secondary observance. Some basic symptoms that assist in the diagnosis of PTSD, including hyper vigilance/arousal, re-experiencing, night terrors and mood disturbances, she added.
“Hyper arousal is when the person is continuously in a state of survival: the fight, flight or freeze. … They're always hyper vigilant, always aware that something else is going to happen,” Kekaula said. Re-experiencing comes in the form of flashbacks, she explained, and are actually much more intense than just the memory or thought. “They actually take the person back to the traumatic event. … They have physiological responses to the flashback.”
Individuals will also begin to avoid places and things that may remind them of a traumatic event, she said. These are triggers and are what make counseling so necessary, Kekaula added, saying daily life is full of triggers, intentional or not, and are almost impossible to completely avoid. This disturbance of daily life, she said, can have a negative effect on an individual.
Kekaula said the Counseling Center provides the gold standard for treating trauma and PTSD. While she has never had the personal experience of working with a student recovering or addressing trauma from a school shooting, Kekaula said the counselors are trained in treating all traumas in students. Kekaula advised any students struggling with symptoms to please come in and visit. “I would say there is hope. … Counseling therapy, it helps,” she said.
I would say there is hope. … Counseling therapy, it helps
What to expect long term
Lauren Goodwin, a junior from Colorado majoring in social work, attended Columbine High School until graduating in 2018. The year Goodwin was born, Columbine became the location of one of the largest school shootings in the United State’s history, she explained. Her brother was four at the time, she said. “Luckily, [my family] was not directly impacted. We didn’t have any family or extended family that went to the school. We just lived in the community,” she said.
Until Goodwin’s junior year of high school, the shooting was not a constant thought, she said. As the 20th anniversary approached, the students at Columbine High School were experiencing two to three lockdowns a month over the course of four months, Goodwin said. Students were used to the threats, but the increased number of lockdowns shocked the students, Goodwin added.
Due to Columbine being a well-known location, Goodwin said it has become a tourist attraction. Tourists will stand across the street and take pictures and hold signs outside the school, she said. “It’s just really disheartening,” Goodwin added, “because when those people show up, they don’t realize we obviously take security very seriously and our school goes on shut down because they don’t know who these people are.”
Goodwin reflected on the affect the Columbine shooting had on her life. “It’s definitely made me think a lot more about how I go about interacting with people and being sensitive to who they are and what they might be going through and understanding that we all have a story,” she said.
Saugus students and faculty returned to the school after the break, Egetoe explained. When she returned, Egetoe said she remembered the prayers she said in the closet. “God really helped [me] the last semester of high school,” she said, adding it was almost like He saved all the blessings from the past three years and dumped them on her at the end. Her biggest blessing, she said, came a month before the shooting, which prepared her for the service she would provide to the victims’ families.
“In order for me to cope with this shooting, I literally never felt like it before. I sprang into action,” Egetoe said.
The beginning of Kiki Egetoe Art
“A month before it happened, I started painting,” Egetoe said. She classified her painting under a group of styles, including abstract, expressionist, fauvism and neo expressionism. Three days before the shooting, Egetoe said she posted her first piece in this new style on Facebook. She used bright, rainbow colors in all of her pieces, something she has made distinctly her own.
After the shooting, Egetoe began painting portraits of the three victims to give to each of the families. Although she was concerned it would cause controversy, she included a portrait of Nathan Berhow, the assailant, on her Instagram art page. “[His mom] was getting some [support], but it was barely any,” she said, and she deserved just as much support because her child had just died too.
“I remember my dad walking into the family room where I was painting and just shaking his head. He said, ‘You better be careful,’” Egetoe said. “But I was so worried about his mom. I had so much compassion for her.” So, along with the portrait, Egetoe collected letters of love and support and gave those to Nathan’s mother as well.
Her reaction was amazing, Egetoe said. She saw the painting and started crying and gave me the biggest hug. After finishing the paintings, a job that took over 100 hours, Heavenly Father just packed in the blessings, she said.
“It’s like what they say in the scriptures, if you do one good thing Heavenly Father will bless you 10 times more,” Egetoe said. “There’s a lot of blessings that I’ve seen that have come out of this traumatic experience. … I’m just really grateful.”
A fund has been established through the Gracie Strong Foundation to help provide support for youth to “SPEAK UP” and can be found at graciestrong.org. Kiki Egetoe’s art can also be found at kikiegetoe.com. Stickers can be found on the website, and all the proceeds will be donated to the Gracie Strong Fund, Egetoe explained.