America, 2014: Waiting to Hear If Your Daughter Is Among Victims of Latest Mass Shooting

Our 20-year-old daughter attends the University of California at Santa Barbara and lives in Isla Vista. So it was with growing horror that my wife and I awoke Saturday to hear the news of the shootings the night before that killed seven people. Of course, the odds against our daughter being involved were huge. UCSB has over 21,000 students, most living in Isla Vista, a village adjacent to the campus which is mostly apartment buildings, convenience stores, restaurants and bars. A beachside community alongside UCSB, which juts out into the Pacific, it’s one of the hotter spots in the well-regarded University of California system. We called our daughter’s cell… which she doesn’t often answer on Saturday mornings when she likes to sleep in, and didn’t this time. So we sat, and waited, and tried not to imagine the worst. You read these stories all the time. Mass shooting. Community-wide horror. Calls for reform, opposed by NRA, no matter if it’s as lightweight as ID checks at gun shows. Investigation of alleged perpetrator’s life. Identities of victims not immediately disclosed pending notification of next of kin. Here’s one you don’t ever want to have to do: I google “UCSB shooting victims” with our daughter’s name. In the usual microsecond, one or two items having nothing to do with the incident come up. Thank God. My wife, Loretta, is a devout Catholic. I’m a lightly-practicing Jew but a true believer today. May the God I’m Not Sure Is There forgive me for my opportunism. Thank heavens, no one has called us. How long has it been? Back to google “UCSB shooting” to re-read the stories. The incident took place at 9:30 p.m.. That’s 12 hours ago. Our daughter would have been carrying ID so they would have sure gotten to us by now if she were involved. Call UCSB campus police. Amazing, a woman picks up first ring. I say I know the phone is ringing off the wall but can she tell me anything? She can’t. It’s the Santa Barbara Sheriffs’ case. She gives me the number. “We’ve had parents calling here all morning who can’t reach their children on their cell phones,” the woman says. “You’d think the kids would call them.”