Lucky
VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. — When Rebecca Lear found one of her colleagues wounded by a mass shooter on May 31, she told him he wasn’t alone.
She stayed with him until first responders could carry him out of Building 2. He survived.
Six months later, it remains a painful memory. Lear, 62, is working on healing from the traumatizing event.
As a part of that process, she got a tattoo Saturday (Dec. 7) alongside more than a dozen others who were affected by the Virginia Beach mass shooting.
“I want to do what I can do to make sure those 12 people who were killed and the four that were injured are not forgotten, and that this incident is not forgotten,” she said.
The tattoos are being offered for free by Healing Ink, a group that started in Israel and has provided tattoos to people impacted by the 9/11 terrorism attack, the Pulse night club shooting in Orlando, Florida, and injuries from terrorism and combat in Israel. Over the past four years, the group has tattooed more than 120 people, said Craig Dershowitz, the group’s president.
Fourteen tattoo artists from Virginia and Israel volunteered to design and give tattoos to mass shooting survivors, first responders and family members of victims. The artists set up stations inside a gymnasium at the Law Enforcement Training Academy in Virginia Beach. By the end of Sunday (Dec. 8) , the group (had) tattooed 30 people connected to the Virginia Beach tragedy.
Lear already got a tattoo on her wrist to remember the victims. But she wanted another that would symbolize faith and strength through adversity. Kenny Brown, a tattoo artist from Fredericksburg, created a dove with an olive branch with 12 leaves and paired it with the Bible verse Psalm 23 for her. She gasped, saying “it’s perfect” when she saw it for the first time Saturday morning.
“I didn’t choose to see the things I saw, and hear the things I heard and smell the things I smelled,” Lear said while she was getting the tattoo on her forearm. “I had no control over that at all. I have control over this.”
Dershowitz said getting a tattoo can make people feel strong again after experiencing something horrific.
“Many of these people have scars that you can’t see,” Dershowitz said. “When something negative was thrust upon you, you now have the opportunity to have something positive put on to your skin. That sense of having power again is really uplifting.”
Thomas Colson, another city employee, got the Superman shield tattooed to his chest. He laid on a gurney as the symbol was painted on. It was a painful process that even caused bleeding, but Colson said it was worth it.
His friend and coworker Ned Carlstrom, 50, came along for support. Over the summer, they got matching tattoos that say “SURVIVOR 5/31/19.”
Both crossed paths with the shooter multiple times, then barricaded themselves inside an office. At one point, the shooter peered into the office and made eye contact, but didn’t shoot. Since the tragedy, they have become like brothers and do everything together, Carlstrom said.
“Thomas was my strength during the time in that office,” Carlstrom said. “”He was like my Superman.”
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