'It's hard when people don't care that kids are dying.' Cazares family fights for Uvalde victims

UVALDE – Nearly a year has passed since the Cazares family waited for 9-year-old Jackie to walk out of Uvalde's Robb Elementary School after the chaos of a mass shooting May 24 in her fourth-grade classroom.

Jackie’s father, Javier Cazares, fought with law enforcement to let him into the school. He wanted to save his daughter. They wouldn’t let him in, so he waited, powerless while the sound of gunshots rang out.

As he waited, Gloria Cazares – a home health nurse – was receiving messages about the shooting. She made her way to the school and waited outside along with other parents as emergency vehicles and law enforcement personnel crowded the school.

Javier Cazares, 43, had just attended Robb Elementary’s awards ceremony for the students earlier that morning. He blew his daughter a kiss before leaving and returned less than an hour later to the school filled with gunshots, terrified children and disoriented parents.

Law enforcement took nearly 90 minutes to breach the classroom and neutralize the assault weapon-wielding assailant. By then, he had killed 19 children and two teachers in two classrooms with the rifle he had legally purchased.

Jackie never walked out of the school.

“Of course, I was terrified, but never in a million years do you think it’s your child,” said Gloria Cazares, 41. She looked down as she recalled the moment reality settled in.

She doesn’t remember her thoughts that day, just chaos as parents and families argued with police while gunshots rang out inside the rear of Robb Elementary School.

Javier Cazares wears a shirt with Jackie’s face on it; his wife wears Jackie’s fingerprint on a necklace. She holds it between her fingers as she gets choked up talking about the day her daughter died.

Gloria Cazares had called everyone in her contact list, trying to make sense of everything going on as word of the shooting came in.

Once Jackie’s dad received reports of an active shooter, he rushed to the school. Javier Cazares pointed to his beltline. “I’m a concealed (gun) carrier. I didn’t have my weapon on me,” Javier said with regret. Tears welled in his eyes as he spoke.

He and many other fathers were prepared to risk their own lives by rushing into danger, but law enforcement officers stopped them from entering the school.

Children covered in blood started to make their way out of the school, but the Cazares waited anxiously. They didn’t see their daughter emerge.

Families and bystanders were still arguing with the officials on the scene since so much time had passed, yet no law enforcement officers entered the classroom to stop the shooter. Both parents are still resentful of the response of emergency officials who had so many officers with gear and weapons at the school.

While events unfolded at Robb Elementary, Jackie’s older sister Jazmin was in lockdown at Uvalde High School for hours. Jazmin, a junior at the time, learned the news of the shooting via social media, as she tried to filter through sensationalized misinformation.

“I don’t think I really processed it until I got to the room with my parents and my sister wasn’t there,” said Jazmin Cazares, 17.

After the threat was over, the civic center and hospital were the only places where families could have a chance at rejoicing with their loved ones. The Cazares family waited hours and hours to hear some kind of update on their daughter.

Jackie had been lying on a stretcher in the hospital for more than two hours alone when the family finally found her.

The Cazares family honors Jackie’s memory. They are still trying to come to terms with their loss.

They talk to Jackie often, they said.

“Just a quick chat or whatever to say hello, good night, good morning, you know, things like that,” Gloria Cazares said. She looked skyward as she talked.

Gloria Cazares stays busy in order to heal. “The advocacy is the most important thing that’s keeping us going. We would get up and then keep fighting and keep on doing what we’re doing to try and make change for the better,” she said.

They promised Jackie to fight to prevent school mass shooting from happening again.

They have been to Washington, D.C., and Austin to lobby lawmakers and other politicians, but they have been met with disappointment. There is no appetite to change gun laws.

“We spoke with different representatives from Austin, and they’ll tell you straight up in your face: ‘Not what we believe in or our constituents believe in,’” Jazmin Cazares said. No one supports changing gun laws, even increasing the age to buy an assault rifle from 18 to 21 years old. The shooter at Robb Elementary, a former student, was 18 years old.

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Javier Cazares likens the gun violence to drug addictions. “If he wants a gun so bad, he’s going to find it somewhere, legally or illegally, you know?” Javier Cazares said as he shrugs his shoulders.

Justice, Cazares family members said, would be for Jackie to come home. But along with the 20 other families suffering from the loss of their loved ones, they will never know true justice. “But we can sure as hell get as close as we can, and that is doing the things that we do, working on the federal level, working state level. But it’s hard when people don’t care that kids are dying,” Jazmin Cazares said.

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: From Austin to D.C., the Cazares family advocates for Uvalde victims