Consider This from NPR - BONUS: 'It's OK That We're Alive'

Episode Date: March 7, 2021

What do you do after you've survived a mass shooting? In this episode of NPR's Embedded podcast, we hear the staff at the Capital Gazette newspaper return to work after losing five of their colleagues. Trauma reveals itself in unexpected ways, coworkers struggle to figure out how they fit together as a team, and the staff grapples with the question: Is the newspaper that existed before the shooting the same one that exists after?Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Support for NPR and the following message come from Carnegie Corporation of New York, working to reduce political polarization through philanthropic support for education, democracy, and peace. More information at carnegie.org. Hey, it's Ari Shapiro, and we've got a Sunday bonus episode for you. This one comes from our colleagues at NPR's Embedded podcast. They are in the middle of an ambitious series right now that took years to report, and we are going to drop you in at the second episode. Here's Embedded host Kelly McEvers. Hey, I'm Kelly McEvers, and this is Embedded from NPR. I just want to say there's some strong

language in this episode. And if you haven't heard the first episode in our Capital Gazette series, you might want to go back and listen to that. In that episode, we told you about a mass shooting on June 28th, 2018 at the Capital Gazette in Annapolis, Maryland. And you heard Celine Sanfelice, a reporter who survived the shooting. She was on CNN the day of the attack. That night, Celine was also interviewed by police. Then she got picked up by her parents, who suggested they all go out to eat. And that was just the way that my mom was reacting was like let's make it better let's just try and push on to be normal i mean they just didn't know what to do celine was obviously not ready to be normal she was still going over the terrible thing that had

just happened thinking she was about to die, watching one of her colleagues die. And then you have to, like, look at the menu and decide, like, do you want a drink? Celine ordered water, no food. At one point, she got up to go to the bathroom and asked her mom to come with her. I thought this was very weird because in her lifetime, she would never ask me to go to the bathroom with her. I thought this was very weird, because in her lifetime, she would never ask me to go to the bathroom with her. I said, okay.

This is Celine's mom, Oz Sanfeles. Celine went into a stall. And she goes, can you just leave the door open? Oh, okay. She says, can you just stand here in front of me? So just leave the door open and stand here. I said, okay. And so I did. She just didn't want to be in a closed room. I figured she was damaged in some way,

that she's going to have to be fixed, but not then and there. I just kept saying, okay. Later that night, Selene went back to her parents' house. She had heard about how Josh and Chase and the other staffers at the Capital Gazette had put out a newspaper in the parking lot, and that the next day they were going to go back to work. Selene knew she wanted to be part of it, but she also knew she was scared. Like maybe the man who killed her colleagues had a partner somewhere. Maybe that partner was going to come back and do it again. So I was like, should I go to work? Like, can I go to work? Is that even possible? She eventually fell asleep, then woke up in the middle of the night crying about how she couldn't save her friends.

Her mom, Oz, was there with her. So I said to her, I said, listen. I said, when you're ready, you will have to go and do your job, and you have to be now their words. You have to speak what they can't speak, their thoughts. So when you're ready, you have to get up, get dressed, and go back to work when you're ready. I remember saying, when you're ready. So like I said, it was the wee hours of the morning, after which I think I fell asleep. And I woke up, and I think it was like 7, 7.30,

and I noticed she wasn't in the bed. And I thought, uh-oh, I wonder what happened to her. So I get up looking for her, and she had gotten up and taken a shower. Her hair was wet, and she had on a black T-shirt dress. And I said, oh, I said, you're up. Do you want breakfast? You know, pretending like everything was normal.

I said, where are you going? And she said, I're up. Do you want breakfast? You know, pretending like everything was normal. I said, where are you going? And she said, I'm going to work. But just going on with your life is hard enough after a mass shooting. The effects stay with you a long time. Some survivors have even later taken their own lives. What I mean is, surviving is one thing, but how do you survive the survival? And now people like Celine at the Capital Gazette were about to go back and do the thing that put them in danger in the first place. So that's today's episode.

How do you go back to work when work was the target? That's after this break. Support for NPR and the following message come from BetterHelp, offering online counseling. BetterHelp therapist Hesu Jo knows that lockdown has been hard on us as humans. We as people are hardwired to connect with others, which is why this whole time is so difficult. The connection that happens between people can be very powerful and how healing it can be to have a healthy relationship with someone. To get matched with a counselor within 48 hours and save 10%,

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individualized lessons with their online learning platform. Head to wyzant.com to find your perfect instructor. Love it or your first hour is free. Because at Wyzant, we take learning personally. He was one of the most consequential architects of the civil rights movement, but you may never have heard of him. For our Black History Month special series, Bayard Rustin, who made nonviolence part of

the fight for civil rights and organized the March on Washington. Listen now to the ThruLine podcast from NPR. Okay, we are back. And after the shooting on June 28th, 2018, and through the rest of that summer, no one on the Capital Gazette staff left the paper. Some of them did take some time off, and outside journalists helped fill in. But the newspaper never missed a day. That summer is when Chris Benderev first started getting to know the staff at the paper, starting with the editor. Here's Chris.

The boss at the Capital Gazette is Rick Hutzel, who kind of looks like one of those khakis-wearing newspaper editors in the movie Spotlight. And one of the first things I learned about Rick is that he loves talking about Maryland history. Like, sometimes, out of nowhere, he'll say stuff like, So the Federalist Papers, those were not printed in the Maryland Gazette, but there were local people having the same debate. It's fascinating, and it was a weekly paper. What Rick does not love talking about is himself. I'm not comfortable being the story he'd say. And in the months right after the shooting, he was also not comfortable letting in outside journalists, including me, to the new

office that his team was working from. First, he told me there were issues of security. They'd been advised to keep the address of their new location secret. Secondly, the office that they'd been temporarily working out of, which someone had loaned them, it was really small. It was the space normally meant for five college journalism students, but now it had to fit 15 reporters. Everyone was elbow to elbow. Rick technically had a corner office, but he couldn't even fully stretch his legs in it. It's a little tiny office, and my feet are too big for it. More than that, though, Rick said that his employees still needed privacy in this tiny newsroom, where people sometimes would

still just break down. He was working on finding them a bigger, more permanent newsroom. And in the meantime, Rick did agree to let me talk to some of his staff outside of the new location. Do you remember what it was like to walk in? Um, yeah, I remember like meeting Lon and being like, this is the security guard who's going to be here with you. And I was like, okay, we have a security guard. That makes me feel better. This guy's massive, and I think he has a gun. So I was like, all right, that seems safe.

That's Celine again. She told me that even with the armed guard, she found it really hard to feel safe enough, though. She did this thing that a lot of the other people who'd been in the room for the shooting did. She made sure to pick a desk where she could have her back up against a wall with a clear view of the front door. Because when people would come in, it would make this noise and you didn't know who was coming in.

And then if somebody didn't have the code, there was like a doorbell and that was like so scary. So I was like, I just want to see who's coming in the room. She says that even normal sounds like a doorbell and that was like so scary. So I was like, I just want to see who's coming in the room. She says that even normal sounds like that doorbell would send her into a panic. Your first thought is like, he's back or somebody's come to get me. So those first couple weeks, Celine couldn't actually do much work. But about a month after the shooting, she did go out on a story. Selene did an article where she checked in with people who'd survived a big tornado one year

earlier. But she says even though she was there to talk about their tragedy, they'd often end up talking about hers. People would tell you about where they were when they heard that the shooting was happening. I was in Walmart. I was camping. And then you get on with your job and your story. Selene knows they didn't mean to, but these people's stories would often end up making her relive the shooting too, which was upsetting. Every stage of putting together a newspaper story was different now for Celine. Like, after she finally wrote up a draft of her tornado story, it was time for an edit. But that was another reminder of the shooting. Because her editor used to be Rob Hyasson.

She'd loved Rob. Everybody loved Rob. Because he wasn't just a good editor. He was a teacher, someone who taught reporters how to fit more humanity into their writing. But Rob wasn't here anymore. Selene had a new editor, a nice guy, who'd come to Annapolis to help fill in during the summer. And I remember I had my first meeting with him. It was really great. It was awesome. But it felt so bad to get that from somebody that wasn't Rob. And then I just went out in the hallway and cried. It was just that feeling of like, I'm never going to get that from Rob again.

He's never going to edit any more of my stories. And I'm going to have to find a way to be a good writer without him. And I don't know how to do that. Celine did get used to churning out more stories, especially when she took over the entertainment section of the paper. But that meant filling big shoes, because entertainment used to be Wendy Winter's job before she was killed in the shooting. And Wendy had been prolific.

She did write-ups for what seemed like every concert and play and restaurant and charity fundraiser in the Annapolis area. Plus, she did weekly profiles that readers loved, like Home of the Week. She regularly put in 60- to 80-hour work weeks. Wendy actually pre-wrote so many stories that her byline kept appearing in the paper for weeks after the shooting. And at first, Celine had been game to pick up Wendy's beat. But by early December, she was struggling to publish even half the number of stories that Wendy had. And lately, people in Annapolis have been asking if she, as Wendy's replacement, would be covering their holiday event this year. You know, like Wendy always did.

Oh, they'd add, and why hasn't there been a Home of the Week every week anymore? One day, after work, Celine recorded a voice memo for me about all this. And in it, it was like she was longing for the days when people had brought up the shooting too much. People don't even say sorry. Like, people have stopped saying, like, hey, I'm sorry. Wendy used to do this, but who will do it?

Now it's just, Wendy used to do it, who's gonna do it? And it just feels like everyone else is back to normal. It feels like a lot of people have forgotten what that day was like. I guess my point is that I'm still really sad, and all I just really want is for Rob to read my stories again, and for Wendy to do the shit that she used to do because everybody loved it. And I can't do it the way that she did it. It was just so much easier.

We had such a big space. And now we're all crammed up in this little space and everything is so loud. Everything is just really loud. When it first happened, like, I wasn't even, I wasn't there, I wasn't in the state. I couldn't get there. I couldn't get back. This is Danielle Ohl, the city government reporter. She was on vacation when the shooting happened, so her experience of jumping back into work was very different from Celine's. When I got back to work, I think I was almost like, yes, like, okay, like, I'm here. And, you know, that was fine for a while. But then, one night that fall,

Danielle was sitting in the back of the Annapolis City Council chambers to cover the biweekly meeting, like she always did, and this local businessman walked up to her. He was angry. He didn't like how Danielle had quoted him in a recent story about a controversial bike lane. The two of them went back and forth about this for a minute. And then...

He said something along the lines of, I understand freedom of the press, but you see what happened to you guys. And I don't think I said anything. Then he said, oh, I'm not threatening you. Danielle began to shake. His comment wasn't just upsetting because it referenced the shooting. It was upsetting because the gunman who killed five of her colleagues had also been mad about how her newspaper had written about him.

Let me explain. Back in 2011, the man who would later take a shotgun to Danielle's newsroom had been convicted for harassing a woman. She was a high school classmate that he'd reconnected with on Facebook. The Capital Gazette had published a short column about his harassment case. The column was meant to be this cautionary tale about the perils of social media. And afterward, the man was furious. He'd tried unsuccessfully to sue the paper for defamation. He'd railed against them on Twitter.

And then, in 2018, he attacked the paper. Back at the city council meeting, after Danielle's conversation with the businessman, she was having trouble focusing. We should say that we talked to the businessman, and he denied using the exact words Danielle remembered, but he did say that he referenced a shooting. Danielle eventually had to leave the room.

I was really hot. I was hyperventilating. I couldn't get it together. I, like, went to the back of the building and just stood under this awning it was raining I was crying and then I went back and I you know while I was walking back around the building to the front door I was kind of like okay you got rattled but like he's not like gonna hurt you and like you can do this like this is job. But when I got back into the chambers, he was giving public comment to the council.

And I, like, opened my laptop again, and I tried to start taking notes, and then I just couldn't. Danielle began hyperventilating again. And this time, she had to leave City Hall and go home. Like, people make fun of triggers. It's like this meme now, to be triggered. But it happens.

And it sucks, because you want to be able to do your job. You want to be able to just, like, hear from somebody who is upset with you and listen to them, and that's what I would normally do. Danielle ended up taking some time off that week. She was realizing that even though she thought jumping right back into work could help, after all, this was the place that got famous for putting out a damn paper the next morning. Sometimes, work would only make things worse. This message comes from NPR sponsor, Sotva, the comfort company. Sotva luxury mattresses are made in America by expert craftsmen using the highest quality materials

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Okay, we're back. And here's Chris Bender of again. Let me take you back to Danielle's ordeal at the city council, because there's a part of the story that I didn't tell you yet. As she was sitting there, shaking and realizing she couldn't do her job and cover the meeting. She wrote to someone, her boss, Rick. He called her immediately. And he was like, do you want me to come? Do you want to leave? I was crying. I couldn't like figure out what to say. So he came and he like sat in the back of the city council chambers with me, which is really weird. Like he's never there. He of the city council chambers with me, which is really weird. Like he's never there.

He's the editor-in-chief. Like there's no reason for him to be there. I told it, I was like, Rick, I think I have to leave. And he was just like, done, go. I was like, okay. And she went home and I, for the first time in, I don't know how many decades, covered a city council meeting. Here's Rick again. Before Danielle left for the first time in, I don't know, how many decades, covered a city council meeting. Here's Rick again.

Before Danielle left for the night, she says that she told Rick that he didn't have to say anything to the businessman. No need to create a scene. Rick disagreed. He told her, quote, people can't talk to my reporters like that. I did go talk to the guy and told him to please back off. And I did point out that I felt that he had harassed my reporter. The man later apologized to Danielle. She says he told her that he felt really bad about what had happened. Rick had spent decades of his career climbing the ranks at the Capital Gazette.

But by the time they were attacked, he'd only been its top editor for three years. One time he told me that he hated the fact that he'd always be remembered as the editor of the era of the shooting. But he also told me that his wife was always trying to reassure him. He'd also be remembered as the editor who pulled them through it. And as part of that, he also made some hard decisions about the paper. Remember how Celine was struggling to replicate Wendy Winter's output? Rick realized it was impossible for Celine, maybe for anyone. So he pulled back on the number of Wendy-style stories that they do. And he discontinued one of the paper's longest-running and most beloved features, Home of the Week. Probably that's about 30 years of Homes of the Week.

And, you know, I couldn't figure out a way to save it. Celine was relieved, but some readers were not happy. And I got a letter from one reader, and she was really angry with the fact that we weren't doing Helm of the Week anymore because that was her favorite part of the paper. It's hard to judge someone's character from just one letter. Her letter seemed to indicate a complete obliviousness to what was going on. That was the reason she bought the paper.

And if you take that away from them, yeah, you may get an angry letter from someone who may not recognize the fact that you're just trying to figure out how to tell you about what it was like to be back at work at the Capital Gazette. It starts right after the attack when there was this vigil that city leaders in Annapolis had organized on a lawn outside a historic building downtown. At one point, some of the Capital Gazette staff got on stage to say a few words. For those who don't know who we are, this is Celine Sanfelice, Rachel Pacella, Daniel, and I'm Phil Davis. We all work at the Capitol currently. Josh Maccaro, the photographer who'd worked on the day of the shooting out of the pickup truck,

he was down in the crowd. He wanted to be up on stage with his friends that he'd known for years. But most of the people up there had been in the room during the shooting. They were the real survivors, Josh felt. I didn't go up with the staff. I already felt like I didn't. I don't know if I should go up there. My instinct was to stay back. Josh up with the staff. I already felt like I didn't. I don't know if I should go up there. My instinct was to stay back.

Josh stayed with the crowd. For Josh, an invisible divide had formed between the out-of-the-room people like himself and the in-the-room people. And it was all wrapped up with Josh's own guilt about not having gone into the office on the day of the shooting. Ever since, he hadn't been able to shake this one thought. I should have been there.

It was my newsroom. By all rights, I should have been there. And the feeling is that if you'd have been there, maybe you could have done something. Maybe you would have been going to the bathroom and you would have seen something in the hallway and you could have done something. Maybe you would have been going to the bathroom and you would have seen something in the hallway and you could have done something. Josh didn't know what to do with those feelings. Then, one day early on in the temporary newsroom, he noticed his colleague, Rachel Pacella, had shown up. She was a 27-year-old reporter who'd been in the room during the shooting. She's the one who tripped and fell

while trying to escape. Josh thought about how she'd been through so much more than he had. And in that moment, he decided he did know how to bridge this invisible divide. He'd go check in with her, put his own emotions aside, and focus on trying to see if there was anything she needed. So they walked over to a part of the office, away from everyone else. I was like, how you doing, Rachel? And she said something like, I'm okay. I'm just really glad to be here, and I'm really glad to be alive. And I burst into tears

this young reporter shouldn't have had to feel lucky to be alive that she wasn't murdered it just hit me and I just started crying and then she's comforting me she's like no no it's okay are you upset because you weren't there? Because she's clever. And I was like, yes, of course I'm upset that I wasn't there. How could I not be there? And

she's like, it's okay. It's okay that you weren't there. It's okay. I'm glad you weren't there. It's okay. And she's like, look, let me write you a note. And she's got her notepad out. And she wrote me a note. And I think I have it in my wallet if you want me to read it. You probably do. Here it is. This is the office of Rachel Pacella.

Joshua Macero has permission and validation for whatever he feels for forever. Additionally, Josh should not feel guilty for not being there. Josh has a kind heart, for which I prescribed at least one hug a day the occasional cry but mostly as many laughs as possible signed Rachel Pacella BD and then in parenthesis bullshit doctor

you know I guess I just wanted Josh if he was ever you know i i guess i just wanted josh if he was ever you know feeling guilty to have something that he could always like take out of his pocket you know and look at it was uh one of the kindest things anyone's ever done for me because rachel was there And so having her say, it's okay. You're part of, you're, you're part of this. It's okay for you to feel this way. I be a surprise to anybody that I feel pretty guilty about what happened. Rick, as the boss, didn't just feel bad about not having been there the day of the shooting. He also kept thinking about how, in the years leading up to the attack, he'd convinced two of the journalists who'd been killed not to leave the paper. But Rick says, just like Josh,

there were moments where his colleagues told him to go easy on himself. And that, he says, was one of the best parts of being all packed into that tiny newsroom. A lot of it was about looking each other in the eye and saying, it's okay that we're alive. Rick and the whole staff eventually learned that things weren't going to be normal at work ever again. But at least they could all be not normal, together. Thank you.

Yes, sir. You know which one's yours? I think, yeah, am I this one? Or I think Chase is the end and I'm the second to the end. Yeah. In June 2019, almost a year after the shooting, the Capital Gazette finally moved out of that tiny, temporary newsroom and into their own much bigger office,

which had a steel security door and two inches of Kevlar lining the inside of the walls. On the first day, Celine started by setting up her new desk right next to Danielle's. Okay, first things first, how do I make it stand? You just press the up button. Yeah, it's pretty good. I'm not even this tall. A couple hours later, I was interviewing Celine in one of the large new conference rooms. Pictures, and there was like a camera with a big light. And suddenly... Yeah. But yesterday...

This loud, shrill fire alarm went off. Celine jolted upright. She inhaled sharply. And then... It's okay. There's just wiring stuff going on. She calmly said that it must be wiring stuff, because it was a brand new building.

And she was right. It was a false alarm. Celine had spent the past year in therapy. She told me that she'd learned ways to breathe deeply or tap her knees in an alternating pattern to calm herself when she got startled. Basically, ways to remind her body, you're not in a shooting again. It wasn't like everything was fixed.

Some noises still sent her into a panic. But mostly... It feels like I'm a normal person, which is awesome. There's only like, you know, when these little moments happen that it kind of reminds me that I am not. But I'm okay with that. Work was improving too for Celine. She'd recently reported a big ambitious story. It'd been hard to find sources willing to talk to her. People weren't responding to her emails

and Facebook requests. And then she remembered a piece of advice from her former editor, Rob. Sometimes you have to be willing to leave the office. And it was funny because Rob had sent me on a couple door-knocking assignments that he knew I didn't want to go on, and I was like, this isn't how you get things anymore. But this time, Rob was right. And somehow it happened that through door-knocking,

I had the most success. When the story finally went to print, people around town told her how good it was, and that she should feel proud and happy about the work that she'd done. And for the first time in a while, Celine did. Rick Hutzel told me at one point that he made three goals for himself after the shooting. One, keep putting out the paper. Two, get the Capital Gazette into its own full-sized office. Those were complete. On the next episode, Rick tries to figure out how to accomplish his third goal.

Cover the trial of the man who killed his colleagues. This episode was reported by Chris Benderev, produced by Raina Cohen, and edited by Allison McAdam. Big thanks to Karen Duffin, Kia Miyakunatis, Jenny Schmidt, Yo-Ai Shaw, Chris Turpin, and Justine Yan. Our intern is Carolyn McCusker. Our project manager is Liana Simstrom. Our senior supervising producer is Nicole Beamster-Boer. Our lawyer is Kimberly Sullivan. Fact-checking by Susie Cummings and Mary Glenn Denning. Engineering by Isaac Rodriguez.

Music by Ramteen Arablui and Blue Dot Sessions. Our bosses are Nancy Barnes, Neil Carruth, and Anya Grundman. Thanks also to John Sanfelice, Dave Broughton, and Keith Cyphers for telling us their stories. If you want to reach out, we are on Twitter at NPR Embedded. We will be back next week with more in our Capital Gazette series. Thanks. Thank you.