‘Once you take that step, there’s no going back’: How a Uvalde mother and doctor torn by tragedy became activists

UVALDE — Sitting on the edge of a wooden console table in Ana Rodriguez’s living room are a pair of low-top, lime green Converse sneakers. Encased in a clear display box, they appear frozen in time, like the girl who used to wear them.

Rodriguez still remembers the day she bought them earlier this year.

Her 10-year-old daughter, Maite, picked them out in a local store. They were the only Converse pair, exactly her size, and a bright, almost fluorescent, shade of green. Rodriguez laughs, remembering how horrified she was by the color.

"I love them! Please, can I have them?" Rodriguez remembers Maite saying.

Not long after they brought them home, Maite drew a heart on the right toe with a black Sharpie. She got to wear them for only two months.

Maite was wearing her beloved Converse sneakers May 24, the day she died alongside 18 of her classmates and two teachers, gunned down in their classrooms at Uvalde's Robb Elementary School.

Authorities identified her body by those size 5 Converse shoes.

At Rodriguez's request, Maite’s friends and family wore dark green Converse shoes to her funeral to honor her memory. Somewhat fittingly, Maite's Converse shade, "bright pear," is no longer available on the Converse website — in a way, kept special, just for Maite.

In the five months since the shooting, Rodriguez has never shared pictures of Maite’s shoes with the public, preferring to keep that piece of Maite private for herself and her two sons. And yet today, Maite and her beloved green Converse sneakers are known around the world.

That’s in part due to actor and Uvalde native Matthew McConaughey, who held up a pair of dark green high-top Converse sneakers, sharing Maite’s dream of being a marine biologist and the horror of how her body was identified by her favorite shoes, in a passionate plea for gun safety legislation at the White House two weeks after the Uvalde massacre.

Now Maite’s green Converse shoes, with the heart on the right toe, have become a symbol of the 21 lives lost at Robb Elementary and the fight to limit access to firearms.

In the months since the shooting, Rodriguez and other relatives of the victims have pushed through their grief to demand that lawmakers take action to adopt restrictions on purchasing and accessing guns, including the kind used in the Uvalde shooting, an AR-15-style rifle that has been used in other mass shootings in Texas and elsewhere.

The parents of four of the victims created a nonprofit called Lives Robbed to advocate for gun law reforms and demand accountability from the school district, Uvalde City Council and law enforcement agencies that bungled the response to the shooting. Others have joined forces with national gun control groups.

Their efforts have captured national attention as they’ve traveled to Austin and Washington to appeal to elected officials directly and have brought the issue of gun control to the forefront of the Texas gubernatorial race.

Their advocacy helped push Congress to pass the first federal, bipartisan gun control measures in nearly 30 years, but the legislation doesn’t come close to meeting the families’ demands for change — including raising the age to purchase a semi-automatic rifle from 18 to 21, implementing red flag laws and requiring background checks on all gun purchases, all proposals that face uphill battles in Republican-dominated Texas. Gov. Greg Abbott has refused the families' calls for a special legislative session to address gun violence and, beginning a day after the shooting, has flatly rejected consideration of laws that would tighten gun access.

Though their sights are set on the midterm election right around the corner, the Uvalde residents, many of whom have never been involved in politics, are committed to the long-term fight to pass state and federal gun restrictions, in the hopes that other families will be spared the same heart-shattering grief the Robb Elementary families struggle with every day.

For Rodriguez, it’s a fight that takes a heavy emotional toll, but with green Converse sneakers on her feet, she keeps Maite’s memory alive every step of the way.

“It's a lot of work and will continue to be a lot of work. It’s a fight,” Rodriguez told the American-Statesman. “But it makes me be bolder when I put her shoes on to go to rallies and stuff like that; it makes me not be scared to talk. Because I (tell myself), ‘You're doing it for her. What would you not do for her?’ And there's nothing that I wouldn't do for her.”

‘You feel like someone took away your whole life’s work’

When Dr. Roy Guerrero pulls into his driveway on a recent Wednesday evening, it’s past 8 p.m. He was checking in on two sick kids at Uvalde Memorial Hospital after a full day of seeing patients in his pediatric clinic.

Though there are several family practice physicians in Uvalde, Guerrero is the sole pediatrician in the town of just over 15,000. Busy days are the norm for Guerrero, who sees 30 to 40 kids daily in his clinic, Encina Pediatrics, a modest but colorful converted space attached to his home in Uvalde. He has been practicing for more than 12 years in the town where he was born and raised.

“All these kids are growing up right in front of my eyes. … I will see kids here that are turning 11 or 12 years old that I had as newborns,” Guerrero told the Statesman. “Kids that I had when I started that were 7 or 8 are having kids now and bringing their kids to me.”

It’s a place where Guerrero helps kids heal, grow and thrive. But right outside the doors is a memorial — 21 empty wooden chairs under a banner bearing the motto #UvaldeStrong, honoring the 19 children and two teachers who didn’t get the chance to heal, grow and thrive. Five of the children were his patients.

Guerrero had been seeing one of the victims, 10-year-old Amerie Jo Garza, since she was 3 months old.

“Amerie had an appointment with me that afternoon after all this happened, at 4 p.m.,” Guerrero said. “I deal with that nightmare in my brain every single day, especially when I see pictures of her. It’s an unknown name for that emotion. I don't know what that is called, that nauseating, that terror, that chest pain, everything at once.”

Guerrero vividly remembers the events of May 24 — how he raced to the hospital to an unimaginable scene —screaming parents, children injured by bullet fragments, and in the surgical area of the hospital, the bodies of two young victims.

“One of these kids was unrecognizable. You couldn't even tell this was a kid until you looked from the neck down and saw his kid clothes. … The other had a chest wound that was so big in this tiny body,” Guerrero said. “I think there's emotions in this that don’t even have words, because you can't even explain what it is that you feel — it's nausea, it’s anger, it’s disbelief, it’s sadness.”

“Seeing children that are tragically killed in that manner makes you feel like someone took away your whole life's work,” Guerrero said. “As a pediatrician you work to grow these children to their full potential, whether it be by making sure they're walking at the right time, talking at the right time, have the right emotions as a teenager and expressing what they're supposed to. And then, for someone to just tragically take that away from you in the blink of an eye in such a destructive, horrible way. It makes you angry. It pushes you over the edge to say, it's not if I want to do something; I've got to do something."

When the opportunity arose for him to share what he witnessed that day, there was no question in his mind what he should do.

‘We are bleeding out’: Uvalde doctor urges action on gun limits

Just over two weeks after the horrific massacre, Guerrero, clad in a dark suit with a mauve patterned tie, testified in front of the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Reform during a hearing on gun violence. His voice steady despite his barely contained emotion, Guerrero described the horror he came across in Uvalde Memorial Hospital on May 24, and he condemned lawmakers for failing to take more action to prevent deaths from gun violence.

“I chose to be a pediatrician. I chose to take care of children. Keeping them safe from preventable diseases I can do. Keeping them safe from bacteria and brittle bones I can do. But making sure our children are safe from guns, that’s the job of our politicians and leaders,” he told the panel.

“In this case, you are the doctors and our country is the patient. We are lying on the operating table, riddled with bullets like the children of Robb Elementary and so many other schools. We are bleeding out, and you are not there. You are sitting in your office filling out the paperwork so you can get paid. My oath as a doctor means that I signed up to save lives. I do my job. I guess it turns out that I am here to plead, to beg, to please, please do yours.”

His words, along with the testimony of an 11-year-old patient of his who survived the shooting, and heartbreaking remarks from the parents of one of the victims, captivated the attention of lawmakers in the room and on Capitol Hill. Less than one month later, President Joe Biden signed into law some modest but significant gun safety measures, including closing the “boyfriend loophole,” and incentivizing states to implement red flag laws.

But the legislation, brokered in part by U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, did not come close to meeting the demands of the families of the Uvalde victims, who ultimately want a federal ban on AR-15-style weapons.

‘I put myself in this arena’

Joining Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris at the White House in July for an event celebrating the passage of the federal gun control measure, Guerrero acknowledged the progress he and the families still want to see.

“It’s been tough being a pediatrician in a community where children do not want to return to school, and parents don’t want to send them there, with the fear of a future attack,” Guerrero said, speaking to the crowd and the nation in front of the White House, with the president standing just behind his right shoulder.

“I see children daily with PTSD and anxiety that’s now leading to depression. I spend half my days convincing kids that no one is coming for them, and that they are safe, but how do I say that knowing that the very weapons used in the attack are still freely available? Let this only be the start of the movement towards the banning of assault weapons.”

It’s a cause he’s been fighting for loudly, publicly and wholeheartedly ever since, with no plans to slow any time soon. Less than two weeks after he first testified in front of Congress, Guerrero started an organization called Uvalde Strong for Gun Safety, recently renamed Uvalde Strong for Child Safety, focused on organizing the Uvalde community to educate people on firearm safety, push for accountability for the Uvalde victims’ families and advocate for gun restrictions.

"Once you take that step, there's no going back, right? I put myself in this arena now … and I’m laser-focused on what I’ve got to do,” Guerrero told the Statesman. “Guns are the No. 1 killer of children now, above any disease, above any kind of accidents. It's an epidemic, an epidemic that needs to get addressed, and it needs to end. Things need to change sooner than later.”

Guerrero emphasizes that the group is not "anti-gun."

“I was raised owning guns my whole life, you know, hunting with my dad, eating what we killed. … I've always just been about sensible gun ownership,” he said.

Despite his new commitment to activism, Guerrero said he has never considered himself a political person and still doesn’t. To him, gun safety should not be a partisan issue.

“This is not a Republican or a Democratic thing. … Kids dying is not a political issue,” Guerrero said. “Something's got to be done. There's no question about it. You have to do the right thing and move the right mountains to save our future. Our kids are everything."

‘The biggest blow’: Uvalde mother perseveres after daughter's death

As Rodriguez rests on her brown suede couch on an October Sunday afternoon, the house is quiet, but memories of Maite seem to fill the room.

Color emanates from the many photos of Maite displayed around the home. In several, she’s wearing her favorite color, green. In all of them, her radiant smile immediately draws attention. Among a cluster of photos on Rodriguez’s wooden console table is a bright golden urn containing Maite's ashes.

With the exception of a teal scrunchie and a lime green wristband bearing her daughter’s name, Rodriguez is dressed all in black — from her boots and leggings to her long-sleeved sweatshirt decorated with the motto "Be Kind to Your Mind." It seems to be a subtle nod to her all-consuming grief.

In the first months of the year, Rodriguez thought the hardest thing she would have to grapple with in 2022 would be her divorce from Maite’s stepfather. Then May 24 happened.

“It's been really hard … kind of one blow after the other. The first blow was the separation. … But when she passed, that was the biggest blow I've ever received,” Rodriguez said quietly. “After she passed, the divorce seemed like child's play. It's been smooth sailing with the divorce. I wish I could say the same about grieving my daughter.”

Now, just over five months since Maite died, Rodriguez is starting to occasionally have good days — which she largely credits to the support of her 15- and 11-year-old sons, her work and her extended family, many of whom also live in Uvalde.

In the days after the massacre at Robb Elementary, Rodriguez said the shock and earth-shattering grief made sharing Maite’s story with anyone but family impossible.

But as she began to process the grief, another emotion started to come through.

“I was angry with the people that were there. Nothing was known yet. Nobody knew who could have made it, how fast everything happened, who passed away within seconds of him walking in, who didn't; we didn't know any of that. We know a little bit more now, but, you know, initially, I was like, I want people held accountable,” Rodriguez said.

Then she saw Matthew McConaughey, with whom she had spoken at Maite’s funeral, address the world from the White House.

“I felt that he was pissed. I felt he looked angry, you know? And I thought, 'Wow, somebody is really fighting for them.' … It encouraged me to want to keep doing something,” Rodriguez said.

She started slowly, speaking to individual reporters when she felt able to.

“It was a bit hard and intimidating. But in the back of my mind was that question of, ‘What is bigger — your fear of public speaking or your love for your daughter? What is stronger?’ And for me, it was, hands down, my daughter,” Rodriguez said.

She said her first big step into activism was participating in the Unheard Voices March and Rally on July 10 in Uvalde. Organized primarily by the families of the Robb Elementary victims, especially the Cazares family, which lost their 9-year-old daughter Jackie, the march drew hundreds of people, possibly more than 1,000, who braved the blistering Texas sun and heat to march from the school to the town square.

At the front of the group was Rodriguez, wearing a white T-shirt with a pair of lime green sneakers in the center, and on her feet, her own pair of dark green, high-top Converse shoes with a Sharpie-drawn heart on the right toe. A large group of friends and relatives in green tie-dyed shirts with Maite’s face on the front marched alongside her.

The families’ message to the public and elected officials, which has remained the same since that first march, was threefold: They want their lost loved ones to be remembered; they demand accountability and transparency from those who failed them; and, most important, they will not stop until their gun restriction demands become law.

That third demand was the primary focus of the families’ next collective rally, this time at the Capitol in Austin at the end of August, when Rodriguez and other relatives of the Uvalde victims called for Abbott to reconvene the Legislature for a special session to raise the minimum age to purchase AR-15-style rifles from 18 to 21. The 18-year-old who killed their loved ones had purchased his weapons legally.

One of many parents of Uvalde victims who spoke to the crowd, Rodriguez shared emotional memories of Maite, ending with a message directed toward the governor.

“Gov. Greg Abbott, this is for you. I stand here today not asking but demanding a special session to raise the minimum age from 18 to 21 to be able to purchase an assault rifle, and while you’re at it, enhance background checks. If you do not meet our demands, then I suggest you prepare yourself, because we will vote you the hell out! We will vote you out! So stand with us, Gov. Abbott, or get the hell out of my way!” Rodriguez yelled, drawing cheers from the crowd.

While Abbott has ordered special legislative committees to investigate the Uvalde massacre and school safety, he has refused the families’ demands and has called the prospect of raising the minimum age for assault rifle purchase "unconstitutional" — an argument that gun control activists have disputed, pointing to other states, including Republican-dominated Florida, that have adopted similar laws.

‘I’m learning this as I go’

Rodriguez describes some of the victims' parents as being "full throttle" in their activism, but Rodriguez said her own advocacy has taken a heavy toll, and she hasn’t been able to be as involved as other parents.

“I was really lost at one point. I was so involved in a lot of things, and it was taking every ounce of me emotionally. It’s hard. The rally in Austin was a big one. … We took the charter bus back (to Uvalde), and on the ride back home I cried the entire time. … I see the bus full of people, and everybody's going back with their kids; everybody's going back with their significant other … but (without Maite) I felt I was going back empty-handed after all that fighting,” Rodriguez said.

“I was drained. I came home from the rally, and I cried for two days. I just closed myself in my room, and it wasn't healthy; it wasn't good. So I decided to take a step back,” Rodriguez said.

Now she says she’s trying to find a balance between fighting for Maite and maintaining a sense of normalcy for herself and her two sons as they continue to grieve.

“There's no guide. I'm learning this as I go, I learned that I needed to pull back because everything I was doing was just like applying the Band-Aid and ripping it off, applying the Band-Aid and ripping it off,” Rodriguez said. “I try not to beat myself up about it because I'm just one person, and I talk to (Maite) a lot, and I let her know, ‘I hope you know I'm just taking a break so I can come back stronger.❜ ❞

When the "Dr. Phil" show reached out to Rodriguez in September asking her to appear on the program, she agreed.

“I said, ‘I think this is going to be probably one of the biggest opportunities that I'm going to have to talk about Maite.' You know, he has such a huge platform. … Talking about her and letting people know what happened that day and who she was to me and who she was as a person was something that I really wanted to do,” Rodriguez said.

She said she did her best to honor Maite and share some memories of her, but it was also important to her to convey the horror of what she as a parent experienced May 24.

“It's raw, and people need to know, because there's people out here who think this is not real — it's fake, that it's a hoax. And it's like, no, it really isn't,” Rodriguez said.

She also agreed to go on camera to film a personal campaign ad for Beto O’Rourke that began airing in TV markets statewide Oct. 1.

The ad begins with home videos of Maite — dancing in ballet class, feeding ducks and posing next to a microscope. It then cuts to Rodriguez, who’s sitting in her home and wearing earrings depicting Maite’s green shoes. Speaking to the camera, Rodriguez describes her daughter, then criticizes Abbott's lack of action "to stop the next shooting."

Rodriguez and several other parents of Uvalde victims appeared in another statewide TV ad for O’Rourke, and many traveled to Edinburg to rally for the Democratic challenger ahead of his debate with Abbott at the end of September.

‘He just kind of stayed quiet’

Though Rodriguez said she has never considered herself to be a political person, and in the past didn’t participate in elections, voting will be a priority for her this year.

She said that when she met with the governor in person a few months after the shooting, she implored him to take action on gun safety measures, and she got angry when he doubled down on his approach of focusing on mental health.

“I said, ‘Imagine (your daughter), visually, laying on the ground in a pool of blood with her head shot off.’ I said, ‘Does it hurt?’ He just kind of stayed quiet. I said, ‘Because that's my reality. I don't have to imagine it. I know my daughter laid up on that ground without half of her head,❜ ❞ Rodriguez said.

In response to a request for comment, a spokeswoman for the governor emphasized his sympathy for the families of the Uvalde victims and repeated his argument that raising the age to purchase AR-15-style weapons would be unconstitutional.

“Governor Abbott and First Lady Abbott join all Texans in mourning every single innocent life lost that tragic day, and we pray for the families who are suffering from the loss of a loved one," Renae Eze said in a statement, adding that the governor visited with victims' families in Uvalde to provide assistance and ensure they're receiving adequate resources. “This year, federal courts have made clear that the Second Amendment prohibits raising the age to buy a semiautomatic rifle from 18 to 21. … Governor Abbott continues to work on solutions focused on the root of the problem: mental health.”

With early voting already underway, both the Abbott and O’Rourke campaigns are in the final stretch of the race, with Abbott consistently polling ahead. Yet even if O’Rourke were to pull off an upset, he almost certainly would be working with a Republican majority in the Legislature, which has loosened gun restrictions over the past several sessions.

SUBSCRIBE: Help support quality journalism like this.

The uphill battle for O’Rourke and the victims’ families supporting him is also evident in Uvalde, where in 2020, then-President Donald Trump won with nearly 60% of the vote.

“I feel like we've gotten some support, definitely shout out to all the supporters, but there is also no way to sugarcoat it — there's division here,” Rodriguez said.

“People like their guns, and, you know, I'm not out here trying to take anybody's guns away. I'm just out here trying to buy some time, three years," she said, referring to raising the age to purchase assault-style rifles.

Rodriguez has received hateful messages for her activism from people who criticize her for being paid to appear in O'Rourke's ad, even though she was not, and who claim that she's lying about the details of her daughter's horrific death.

She said she does her best to ignore the vicious messages and won’t stop fighting for gun reform in Maite’s honor. Part of what gives her the strength to do so is seeing how Maite’s legacy has taken on a life of its own and resonated with people around the world.

‘I’m trying to become who I was raising her to be’

Rodriguez regularly sees strangers wearing green Converse shoes with a heart on the right toe and receives pictures of people wearing them all over the country, as well as messages about how Maite’s story has affected them.

She recently received a text from a teacher in Missouri whose school started a program called the "green shoe kindness bulletin board" to help create awareness about how to tell a trusted adult about people showing signs of hurting themselves or others. Already, it has helped teachers intervene with one student in the school.

“Even after death, the fact that she's a part of possibly saving someone from taking their own life, it’s a big deal. It's a big deal to me because it's painful, you know? Because I can't have her, and she didn't commit suicide, but she might have been a part of some parents out there not having the pain that I have,” Rodriguez said, fighting back tears.

She misses Maite every day and describes her as mature yet goofy, curious and motivated. Maite was teaching herself how to use a sewing machine and a DSLR camera, and she had her heart set on going to Corpus Christi for college to study marine biology.

Though her grief often feels unbearable, Rodriguez, who sent her sons to school this year with bulletproof backpacks, said she is committed to continuing to fight for Maite.

“I'm trying to become who I was raising her to be,” Rodriguez said. “Strong, independent, vocal, opinionated, healthy, kind, empathetic. I'm trying to practice what I preached. So I just really hope that she's proud of what I've been doing, because I was raising her to be exactly who I'm becoming.”

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Uvalde shooting leads to rise in gun control activism in community