Speaker 1: Bushkin. Welcome back to Medal of Honor Stories of Courage.
Speaker 1: I'm Malcolm Glawell. Today we have something a little different
Speaker 1: for you. A few weeks ago I spoke to a
Speaker 1: woman named Molly Hudgens. You likely don't know Molly or
Speaker 1: her story, but I think you should. Molly is a
Speaker 1: recipient of the Citizens Medal of Honor, which was first
Speaker 1: awarded in two thousand and eight to recognize ordinary Americans
Speaker 1: whose actions quote epitomize the concept of service beyond self,
Speaker 1: above and beyond their call of duty, whatever it may be.
Speaker 1: In Molly's case, her duty was as a guidance counselor
Speaker 1: at Sycamore Middle School in Tennessee, where in twenty sixteen,
Speaker 1: she came face to face with the potential school shooter
Speaker 1: and managed to talk him out of it. Through the
Speaker 1: course of the conversation, you'll hear in Molly many of
Speaker 1: the qualities we've tried to highlight in this series so far, faith, humility,
Speaker 1: dedication to service, and an incredible ability to think quickly
Speaker 1: under pressure, and of course, courage.
Speaker 2: Molly, good morning, How are you.
Speaker 1: I'm good? Are you are? You're in your office at school.
Speaker 2: I'm in my office at school. Sure I am.
Speaker 1: And you're in where you're in Pleasantville? But no, what's
Speaker 1: the day.
Speaker 2: Of the town pleasant View, Tennessee, View, Tennessee.
Speaker 1: That's not where all the country stars live.
Speaker 2: No, they do not live in this part of the world.
Speaker 1: And how long? How long have you been teaching them?
Speaker 2: I just finished my twenty fifth year. I have spent
Speaker 2: my entire educational career. I got hired here at twenty
Speaker 2: two and so I've only worked here.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Now, did were you always a guidance counselor No?
Speaker 2: I started out actually as a teacher. I taught seventh
Speaker 2: and eighth grade language arts for eight years before I
Speaker 2: moved to the counseling departments. So this will be my
Speaker 2: I'll be starting my nineteenth year in the counseling department.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And so you came to Sycamore straight out of college.
Speaker 2: I sure did. I was a desperation higher our principal.
Speaker 2: Our principal had three teachers who were all leading consecutively
Speaker 2: on maternity leave, and I was planning to be a
Speaker 2: high school English teacher. This was a middle school, but
Speaker 2: I felt like it would be a way to get
Speaker 2: my foot in the door, and so I agreed to
Speaker 2: do it. I taught fifth grade, sixth grade, and seventh
Speaker 2: grade math, language, Arts, science, social stay all four subjects
Speaker 2: over the course of that one semester, and by the
Speaker 2: end of it, I just loved the school so much.
Speaker 2: I didn't think I could leave. I knew the kids
Speaker 2: would come and go, but the staff probably would. And
Speaker 2: that is so true of the culture here. I mean,
Speaker 2: our principal has never worked She's going to be starting
Speaker 2: her thirtieth year here at Sycamore, never works anywhere else.
Speaker 2: Our assistant principal has only worked in our county twenty
Speaker 2: five years. I've only been here, you know. So people
Speaker 2: tend to come here and stay, and that is such
Speaker 2: an important piece I think of our story is the
Speaker 2: culture that we have. People are very embedded.
Speaker 1: Why do you think people stay? What's special about the school?
Speaker 2: Well, because it's very much a family, and just like
Speaker 2: a family, we don't always agree, we don't always get along.
Speaker 2: That people who work here want to be here. We
Speaker 2: are notorious for hiring our former students. I think we
Speaker 2: have eight of them on staff right now. People come back.
Speaker 2: You know it's a good place to be. You know
Speaker 2: that you're loved and cared about. And we use the
Speaker 2: word family a lot to describe Sycamore, and so it
Speaker 2: would be hard to leave your family. So for me,
Speaker 2: it's been impossib to leave here.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So you'd been there for years, and
Speaker 1: you had told me you had had prior to what
Speaker 1: happened that day, you had been increasingly engaged with the
Speaker 1: question of school violence. Tell me about how did it
Speaker 1: come to your attention in those in that period.
Speaker 2: So my first year here at Sycamore was the ninety
Speaker 2: eight ninety nine school year when we had six mass
Speaker 2: shootings across our country that culminated with the shooting at
Speaker 2: Columbine on April twentieth of nineteen ninety nine. And I
Speaker 2: remember that day vividly. I went home, and that was
Speaker 2: when we had just started having twenty four hour news
Speaker 2: coverage and you could watch it all day long, and
Speaker 2: I was I was just fascinated, not by I think
Speaker 2: a lot of the details that most of the general
Speaker 2: public wanted to know about the specific situation, But what
Speaker 2: I couldn't write my mind around is how could two
Speaker 2: boys create a plan of this magnitude over a year's
Speaker 2: time and nobody know about it? And so I started researching,
Speaker 2: literally just googled anything that I could find about mass
Speaker 2: shootings that had happened on school campuses. I read every book.
Speaker 2: I think I own every book that's been written about
Speaker 2: a school shooting all because in my mind, I thought,
Speaker 2: if I could, what if we had a kid like
Speaker 2: that here at school? What if he was in my class?
Speaker 2: Would I be able to recognize that child was in trouble?
Speaker 2: Is there?
Speaker 1: You know?
Speaker 2: In my mind, I thought, is there a way to
Speaker 2: interrupt this process? To find them when they're young enough
Speaker 2: that you could then intervene and change that pathway, change
Speaker 2: that direction. And even I spent so much time doing research,
Speaker 2: I ended up on the Homeland Security watch list at
Speaker 2: one points. And I understand now why, Yeah, I mean
Speaker 2: I was contacted by someone and just stated, why are
Speaker 2: you looking into so much of this? And I think
Speaker 2: in hindsight, I mean, I even tried to find specifically
Speaker 2: writings that were taken from at the time those two
Speaker 2: particular attackers at Columbine, because I felt like, if I
Speaker 2: want to find a kid like this, I'm going to
Speaker 2: have to understand them, and I'm an English teacher. Most
Speaker 2: of what is going to come out would possibly come
Speaker 2: through writings that they would do in class, and so
Speaker 2: that started the path. I spent ten years doing that recording,
Speaker 2: writing down, taking notes on everything that I knew, and
Speaker 2: I went to our director's schools and so listen, there's
Speaker 2: only eighteen school counselors in our county, but we don't
Speaker 2: really have many trainings that are geared toward what we do.
Speaker 2: You know, is it possible that I could, because by
Speaker 2: that point I'd moved to the counseling department. You know,
Speaker 2: is it possible for me to do a training? I've
Speaker 2: written one. It's called Recognizing Red Flags an Educator's Role
Speaker 2: in Preventing School violence, and it was an in depth
Speaker 2: psychological analysis of about thirty school shooters. So I think
Speaker 2: that God was preparing me in a mighty way. He
Speaker 2: gave me eighteen years of talking to kids, both in
Speaker 2: classroom settings and individuals, and he gave me all this
Speaker 2: content knowledge that I had learned about psychopathy. I'd learned
Speaker 2: about psychosis. I've learned about even hostage negotiations and things
Speaker 2: that most people wouldn't just know in their average lives.
Speaker 2: I'd spend a great deal of time fully enmeshed in
Speaker 2: this topic. For reasons I didn't understand, and to be
Speaker 2: quite honest, my family was concerned about that. You know,
Speaker 2: why would I be so focused on this? And I
Speaker 2: would just always say, I'm not sure, but I just
Speaker 2: feel like I have to know as much as I can.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I know, it's the whole thing is kind of crazy.
Speaker 2: It is.
Speaker 1: Give me a sense of what you learned from that
Speaker 1: immersion in all of that, What did you learn that
Speaker 1: prepared you for what happened that day.
Speaker 2: One of the biggest things I learned is that as adults,
Speaker 2: we spend a lot of time talking to kids, and
Speaker 2: I don't know that we listen as much as we should.
Speaker 2: And when I use the word listen, I don't just
Speaker 2: mean verbally, I mean through their writings. I had an
Speaker 2: open window to some of them, just based on topics
Speaker 2: we researched or we talked about, or they chose to
Speaker 2: write about when they could do free writing. And I
Speaker 2: looked at writings taken from the attackers at Columbine. Several
Speaker 2: of those things were things they wrote for class assignments,
Speaker 2: and so I think I started realizing if kids are
Speaker 2: writing about violence, especially if it's connected to prior events
Speaker 2: or prior people in history who committed atrocities, then I
Speaker 2: needed to pay attention. Those all became red flags.
Speaker 1: Did you all these years, when you're immersing yourself into subject,
Speaker 1: do you imagine that one day you would be face
Speaker 1: to face with a potential shooter.
Speaker 2: You know, I've never been asked that and never really
Speaker 2: thought about it. So I'll tell you the first thing
Speaker 2: that came into my head when you asked that was
Speaker 2: I had ironically had a dream a couple of times. Now.
Speaker 2: The scenario that played out here was nothing at all
Speaker 2: like the dream I had had, but it did involve
Speaker 2: a kid bringing a gun to school and me somehow
Speaker 2: being involved in a peaceful resolution. And I assumed at
Speaker 2: the time that that was just because I had was
Speaker 2: reading so much about this. I really thought that the intention.
Speaker 2: I really thought that God's plan was just for me
Speaker 2: to have a passion that I could go and talk
Speaker 2: to other people about, to try to convince them of
Speaker 2: importance of not just school safety, but of mental health
Speaker 2: and in brain health. And I wanted people to pay
Speaker 2: attention to kids who were struggling. I felt like there
Speaker 2: were a lot that had flown under the radar that
Speaker 2: I had probably missed, you know, as a teacher and
Speaker 2: becoming a counselor could see more of just in their
Speaker 2: faces and their words that they were struggling, so that
Speaker 2: that could bring them in then, you know, and have
Speaker 2: those conversations. So I don't I never really thought that
Speaker 2: that would happen here, But in the moment when I
Speaker 2: realized what was going on, I did have a flash
Speaker 2: before my eyes. It was you know, people talk sometimes
Speaker 2: about if you're going to pass away, sometimes your life
Speaker 2: will flash before your eyes, But for me, it was
Speaker 2: not that. It was a flash of all these things
Speaker 2: I had read and researched, and I remember thinking, you know,
Speaker 2: I was kind of like Noah, and I was trying
Speaker 2: to build an arc and nobody had ever seen it rain.
Speaker 2: So people didn't really want to talk about school violence.
Speaker 2: They just it was kind of the head and the
Speaker 2: sand mentality that if we just pretend that it's not
Speaker 2: going to happen, or we don't talk about it, we're
Speaker 2: not going to invite it in. And so I sat
Speaker 2: there on those moments when I realized how serious this
Speaker 2: was and thought for such a time as this, And
Speaker 2: you know, Esther is one of my favorite characters in
Speaker 2: the Bible, and I remember thinking, wow, Lord, you know
Speaker 2: of all the hundreds, you know, of thousands of schools,
Speaker 2: and probably as many kids are more. You know, you
Speaker 2: brought that kid to Sycamore Middle School, and you you
Speaker 2: brought him to me. And it's like, all of a sudden,
Speaker 2: I had this moment of like, this is why. And
Speaker 2: I couldn't believe it. I couldn't believe it. I still can't,
Speaker 2: as you can tell, obviously, I still stand in all
Speaker 2: of that.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about that morning. So this is twenty sixteen.
Speaker 1: Do you remember what's the exact date.
Speaker 2: September twenty eighth, And I remember that because it was
Speaker 2: the day before my fortieth birthday.
Speaker 1: So it's the beginning of the school year. You were
Speaker 1: three weeks in or so. And is it anything unusual
Speaker 1: about that? Is it a day unfolding like any other?
Speaker 2: At the beginning, it's a day unfolding. I was training
Speaker 2: to run my first marathon, and I had run nine
Speaker 2: point six nine miles that morning before the treadmill overheated
Speaker 2: and went outside to finish that last little you know,
Speaker 2: part around running around our pool, just so I could
Speaker 2: say I had my ten miles in.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I got oh you're I'm a runner too, but
Speaker 1: oh yeah, I recognize the signs you're serious.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I knew, you know, I got dressed for school.
Speaker 2: I wore clothes that later I would look down at
Speaker 2: my lap and think, you know, if I were going
Speaker 2: to die in this, if this was gonna be my
Speaker 2: crime scene photo, I would addressed better. I would have
Speaker 2: not had on this eight dollar skirt that I don't
Speaker 2: even like, you know, I think I think God gave
Speaker 2: me some moments of humor in the midst of this,
Speaker 2: But yeah, dropped my I'll describe that.
Speaker 1: You what what was the skirt? You were were you
Speaker 1: were skirt? It was? What's going on over there?
Speaker 2: Well, because the previous day I had been in classroom
Speaker 2: guidance all day, and I knew that I was going
Speaker 2: to be back in my office trying to unearth all
Speaker 2: the paperwork emails I'd gotten the day before, so I
Speaker 2: probably wouldn't be leaving it. Not many people would see me.
Speaker 2: You know, when you're when you're about to experience the
Speaker 2: best and the worst day of your life, the biggest
Speaker 2: crisis you'll ever face, you are not only are you
Speaker 2: not going to be prepared for it, you most likely
Speaker 2: will not be dressed for it. So I wasn't, you know,
Speaker 2: And I thought I was just going to be here.
Speaker 2: I knew the kids wouldn't care what I had on.
Speaker 2: I'd be sitting behind my desk all day. It was
Speaker 2: a comfortable skirt, but it was the black and white
Speaker 2: palm tree printed skirts, and like I said, I didn't
Speaker 2: even really like it, but it was eight dollars, so
Speaker 2: I bought it. I have three of them.
Speaker 1: Now, yeah, well it's your lucky skirt at.
Speaker 2: Skirt, Yeah, but yeah. I dropped my oldest son off
Speaker 2: at his coach's house, because kids, if your parent's a teacher,
Speaker 2: you have to be at school first thing in the morning,
Speaker 2: way before everybody else, so he would ride to school
Speaker 2: later with his coach. I dropped our youngest son off
Speaker 2: at daycare, and I came to school and I pulled
Speaker 2: in the parking lot and I saw all these kids
Speaker 2: like starting to gather outside, and I remember thinking, oh,
Speaker 2: my goodness, you know, it's a kitchen on fire. What's
Speaker 2: going on? So I jumped out of the car kind
Speaker 2: of started moving toward the kids and realized that September
Speaker 2: twenty eighth of twenty sixteen was National cu at the
Speaker 2: Pole Day, the one day a year student so choose
Speaker 2: they can gather at the base of their school's flagpole
Speaker 2: for prayer. And so my intention was to run in here,
Speaker 2: throw my things down behind my desk, and run back
Speaker 2: out to supervise, because you leave very many middle school
Speaker 2: kids alone for very long, and something's going to happen
Speaker 2: that's going to require a lot of paperwork on the
Speaker 2: part of an adult. And so I just thought i'd
Speaker 2: run out in supervising. And that was just never meant
Speaker 2: to be because while I was here, standing here from
Speaker 2: from my things down, glanced at my calendar, this young
Speaker 2: man came in and and I had met I recognized
Speaker 2: him immediately because I just met with him the friday before.
Speaker 2: I remember when he came in, I realized his defenses
Speaker 2: were way up. But I also realized pretty quickly I'd
Speaker 2: never seen that kid before, and that bothered me. And
Speaker 2: I said, hey, you know, I don't think we've met,
Speaker 2: and so I kind of introduced myself and and I said,
Speaker 2: you know, I understand your you're kind of new to
Speaker 2: our school. And he said, you know, yes, ma'am. I
Speaker 2: came in last year and I said, okay, well that
Speaker 2: that kind of explains that, you know, and we're newly
Speaker 2: into this eighth grade year, so it just hadn't met him,
Speaker 2: and so I just I just told to me, I
Speaker 2: just thought maybe we could kind of check in see
Speaker 2: how things are going. And he sat down right across
Speaker 2: from my desk here I had two brown chairs. I've
Speaker 2: learned that some kids, if they talk to you, they
Speaker 2: want a barrier between you and them for comfort purposes.
Speaker 2: Other kids, I have a chair that sits right beside
Speaker 2: my desk because some of them they want their needs
Speaker 2: to be touching yours. They're fine with being close to you.
Speaker 2: And so he had sat down across from me, and
Speaker 2: we had just kind of started talking, and then all
Speaker 2: of a sudden, it was kind of like the damn
Speaker 2: broke and there were all these things in his life
Speaker 2: that I felt like he'd been holding on to that
Speaker 2: he just let pour out and I kind of just
Speaker 2: skooted back in my chair and let him talk. And
Speaker 2: he did. But one of the things that inside of me,
Speaker 2: in hindsight, was another red flag that was raised, was
Speaker 2: the fact that he was telling me this story that
Speaker 2: I knew aspects of it were most likely not possible,
Speaker 2: but there was just enough of it that some of
Speaker 2: it could have been probable. And I remember writing some
Speaker 2: notes on the sticky note because this was a Friday,
Speaker 2: and I thought, I'm going to look these things up
Speaker 2: over the weekend and see if this is even possible.
Speaker 2: But what really struck me was, I think this kid
Speaker 2: believes this story. You know, he's weaving this together, and
Speaker 2: I think he'd believes.
Speaker 1: I know you don't want to tell me this story,
Speaker 1: but what sort of a story is he telling you?
Speaker 1: Can you give me just a sense.
Speaker 2: Of just a story about some things that he was
Speaker 2: involved in that were very adult like, kind of like
Speaker 2: if I told you a story about me owning a
Speaker 2: fortune five hundred company, right, you know, I'm sitting here,
Speaker 2: I'm an adult. I can tell you this story. I
Speaker 2: can probably create a pretty good one. But the whole
Speaker 2: time you're to me thinking, well, I've never heard of
Speaker 2: Molly Eedgens before, you know. So there were pieces of
Speaker 2: it that just did not seem possible. But what fascinated
Speaker 2: me was I thought, I think this kid believes what
Speaker 2: he's telling me, and I think he believes that I
Speaker 2: believe him, And so obviously I was concerned, so and
Speaker 2: of course I learned a lot about psychology that I
Speaker 2: would not have known otherwise. I've read the works of
Speaker 2: doctor Peter Langman, who is considered to be one of
Speaker 2: the world's leading experts on mass s sheotings that happened
Speaker 2: with teenagers, especially in school environments, and doctor Langman's work
Speaker 2: was crucial to me in the moments that this was happening,
Speaker 2: because I was able to recognize, based on all of
Speaker 2: these other case studies, what I believed was a psychosis
Speaker 2: or psychoses in process, and began to learn a very
Speaker 2: valuable lesson that day that reality is really about perspective.
Speaker 2: It doesn't really matter what's real, It only matters what
Speaker 2: people perceive to be real. And so in these moments
Speaker 2: with this child, it became crucial for me to accept
Speaker 2: his reality. And I do remember praying you know Lord
Speaker 2: helped me to not get lost in this. But I
Speaker 2: had to try to meet him where he was. We
Speaker 2: use those words a lot, and meet the child where
Speaker 2: they are, and that was very important. I don't think
Speaker 2: that that piece would have occurred had I not had
Speaker 2: all this background research. So he talked for forty five
Speaker 2: minutes and I remember thinking, he's missed an entire class period.
Speaker 2: I've got to get him back to class. And so
Speaker 2: I said to him myself, listen, you have you know,
Speaker 2: you've really unburdened a lot today, you've shared a lot.
Speaker 2: Would you like to come back maybe one day next
Speaker 2: week and then we can meet again and talk and
Speaker 2: and he he said yes, he would like to do that,
Speaker 2: and so I wrote his name on my list.
Speaker 1: That's the crucial moment.
Speaker 2: The crucial moment, oh shuts.
Speaker 1: In this whole. I mean, I know where there's many
Speaker 1: much more to the story, but that moment, you've established
Speaker 1: a connection with him, and you've you're the safe place
Speaker 1: he can go, and that's why he comes back, I think.
Speaker 2: So. I think there were several things. The biggest one
Speaker 2: I was willing to listen. I didn't in a I
Speaker 2: didn't challenge what he said. I didn't point out anything
Speaker 2: that I thought was a falsehood. I just listened and
Speaker 2: gave him a place to share that and then offered
Speaker 2: to listen more. And so I think you're right. You
Speaker 2: know it was a it was a safe place, and
Speaker 2: that's most likely why he did come back.
Speaker 1: So you're looking at this boy he's boy, and he's
Speaker 1: telling you a story that is in part maybe part real,
Speaker 1: with part fantasy. And what sort of other signs is
Speaker 1: he giving you? Is he is he agitated? Is he
Speaker 1: hostile to you? Is he No?
Speaker 2: Quite the opposite. Actually, when I look back on that,
Speaker 2: I think about how he was very articulate, he was
Speaker 2: very bright. We made good eye contact, there was good conversation,
Speaker 2: you know. He I did realize that I had perceived
Speaker 2: him just in hindsight, as a quieter student. His grades
Speaker 2: were solid, he did not have a massive disciplinary record.
Speaker 2: When we talk about a lot of these kids who
Speaker 2: commit these atrocities, one of the things that people fail
Speaker 2: to recognize is that a lot of times they are
Speaker 2: the outliers. They are not on the radar of anyone.
Speaker 2: Sometimes they are, but a lot of the times they're not.
Speaker 2: And that is because if someone is suffering from a psychosis,
Speaker 2: they can be psychotic in one way and function perfectly
Speaker 2: normally in many other ways. They can hold jobs, they
Speaker 2: can come to school, they can do work, they can
Speaker 2: participate in class discussion, they can have friends. A lot
Speaker 2: of them become very good, especially the older, they get
Speaker 2: at covering up what they perceive to be taboo behavior,
Speaker 2: and I think that some of the things that he
Speaker 2: was experiencing, he was testing the waters with me to
Speaker 2: see how I would react that Friday, to see if
Speaker 2: I would react strongly, or if I would say, you know, well,
Speaker 2: that's not possible, or if I would question what he
Speaker 2: was saying. And I didn't, And that, to me was
Speaker 2: another crucial piece, because you know, you fast forward to
Speaker 2: the next week, we come back on Monday, I had
Speaker 2: this running list of kids to see. We try to
Speaker 2: see them in the order that they request to see them,
Speaker 2: kind of like they've taken a ticket, unless obviously it's
Speaker 2: a crisis situation that then involves us to bump them,
Speaker 2: you know, to the front of the line. But I
Speaker 2: never got to him on Monday, and then on Tuesday,
Speaker 2: I was in classroom guidance with eighth graders all day long,
Speaker 2: and so Wednesday morning I just hadn't gotten to him yet.
Speaker 2: But that's okay, because he came back.
Speaker 1: We'll be back in a minute, So tell me about that.
Speaker 1: It's Wednesday morning, and is he Is he in your
Speaker 1: office when you arrive or are you in your office
Speaker 1: and he comes through the door.
Speaker 2: No, I had just put my things down to go
Speaker 2: back out for the prayer at the poll to kind
Speaker 2: of supervise, and he came in and he said, hey,
Speaker 2: miss Hudgens, would it be okay if I came back
Speaker 2: to talk to you during related arts, which is the
Speaker 2: time where kids have pe or art or health. I
Speaker 2: looked at my calendar. I knew eighth grade I had
Speaker 2: that at ten thirty. I didn't have anything scheduled for
Speaker 2: that time. So I said, hey, that no problem. You
Speaker 2: just come back then. If you need a note from
Speaker 2: your teacher, you let me know. And he said okay,
Speaker 2: and he left, and I just thought, well, I hadn't
Speaker 2: gotten him yet, but when they come back again, you
Speaker 2: usually bump them up higher on the list, and so
Speaker 2: I thought, I'll see him first thing this morning at
Speaker 2: ten thirty. And so then I went about my morning duty.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's eerie in some ways to watch myself
Speaker 2: on surveillance video. I'm walking through the hallways of the school.
Speaker 2: I stopped and straighten the lanyard of one of our
Speaker 2: eighth grade teachers I'd worked with for twenty years, never
Speaker 2: thinking at all that anything's wrong. I mean, I'm coming
Speaker 2: back to the counseling department, and I'm almost skipping because
Speaker 2: I know that Glenn, my co counselor, has prepared breakfast
Speaker 2: and we're gonna eat and talk about our day. And
Speaker 2: I was in Glenn's office, which is adjacent to mine,
Speaker 2: with my back to the door, when the young man
Speaker 2: came in and I noticed he was there because Glenn
Speaker 2: looked up from his plate and he said, well, hey, son,
Speaker 2: you know what can we do for you? And I
Speaker 2: heard the kid say I was supposed to meet with
Speaker 2: Miss Hudgens at ten thirty, but I don't think I
Speaker 2: can wait until then. And I remember looking at Glenn
Speaker 2: and almost like rolling my eyes, and I was thinking, oh,
Speaker 2: my goodness, my breakfast is going to be cold, and
Speaker 2: then thinking that that was kind of selfish, and just
Speaker 2: turning and smiling and saying, well, hey, honey, that's okay.
Speaker 2: You just head on over to my office and I'll
Speaker 2: be over there in a second. And so I remember
Speaker 2: like wolfing down, you know, the rest of breakfast, and
Speaker 2: dropping the dishes in the sink and coming in and
Speaker 2: closing the door and just walking around and sitting down
Speaker 2: right here and just saying, well, hey, babe, what's going on,
Speaker 2: which is how I usually start all of their conversations.
Speaker 2: And then pretty quickly I realized something was different. His mannerisms,
Speaker 2: his facial expressions seemed different than the week before. And
Speaker 2: I think the reason that I really recognized this was
Speaker 2: my body reacted. First, my heart rates started to pounds.
Speaker 2: I remember thinking that I could hear my pulse in
Speaker 2: my ears, and I thought, I don't think my heart
Speaker 2: sounds like this when I'm running, you know. And then
Speaker 2: I felt like somebody took a cup of something warm
Speaker 2: and like poured it on top of my head, like
Speaker 2: it was running down my body. And I remember even
Speaker 2: saying to myself, like kind of steadying myself at the
Speaker 2: desk and saying to myself, Molly, don't faint. He was
Speaker 2: looking around the room, eyes kind of darting in different places.
Speaker 2: He seemed very nervous, which was nothing like the way
Speaker 2: he had appeared the week before. And then he started
Speaker 2: to ask me a series of questions that obviously spiked
Speaker 2: my level of concern. He started asking if, then questions,
Speaker 2: if I do this, what are you going to do?
Speaker 2: They were terrifying, and I remember thinking, play dumb, and
Speaker 2: so I remember saying, well, honey, I don't know what
Speaker 2: I would do, but why would you do that? And
Speaker 2: frantically I start thinking about what my options are because
Speaker 2: in that moment, I just had this thought, and I
Speaker 2: think the Lord gave it to me. It was he's
Speaker 2: got a gun. And then I start I remember praying.
Speaker 2: I remember saying, Lord, if there's anything separating you from me,
Speaker 2: take it away, because if this is it, if I'm
Speaker 2: going to die today in my office, you know, in
Speaker 2: this tress skirt I don't like the day before I
Speaker 2: turned forty, I want to know where I'm going. I
Speaker 2: want to know I'm okay. I remember saying, take care
Speaker 2: of my boys and help me be brave. I mean,
Speaker 2: it was a thirty second prayer probably, And then I
Speaker 2: start trying to focus on what he is saying to me,
Speaker 2: and all the while I'm thinking about the teachers who
Speaker 2: were right across the hall. I remember thinking about about
Speaker 2: the number of students they had. I knew their backs
Speaker 2: would be to the door, and for some reason in
Speaker 2: my mind, I thought that's where he'll go first. There'll
Speaker 2: be his first victims. And it dawns on me the
Speaker 2: only thing standing between him and them is me, and
Speaker 2: I remember thinking, you got to do everything you can,
Speaker 2: like you got to do everything you can. So I
Speaker 2: start really listening to what he's saying. He would go
Speaker 2: back to rehash some of the things that he had
Speaker 2: been so concerned about the week before. All the while
Speaker 2: I am frantically trying to think about what I will
Speaker 2: do if I can get this gun. Can I just
Speaker 2: pull the trigger and unload it into the ceiling? I remember,
Speaker 2: you know, but I remember looking up here and thinking,
Speaker 2: we have a drop ceiling. It's a steel roof. This
Speaker 2: building was built in nineteen seventy eight, and I had
Speaker 2: read a lot. I knew what the trajectory of bullets
Speaker 2: would do inside of a cinder block room, and I
Speaker 2: remember thinking that that's not going to work. And I
Speaker 2: had this thought, you're going to talk your way out
Speaker 2: of this. And I remember thinking, you know, for a
Speaker 2: kid who spent a whole lot of time in trouble
Speaker 2: in elementary school because I just couldn't seem to stop talking,
Speaker 2: yet had gotten a job where I talked all day,
Speaker 2: it worked out great for me, right, And so I
Speaker 2: just remember thinking, you don't have to talk yourway eye this.
Speaker 2: At one point in the conversation, he unzips his jacket
Speaker 2: and he sticked his he stuck his hand inside of it,
Speaker 2: and I knew, I knew what it was. And he
Speaker 2: started tapping on something. And I say this all the
Speaker 2: time when I tell our story. Something rose up in
Speaker 2: me and I remember thinking, not my school, not my school.
Speaker 2: This will not happen here. This will not I will
Speaker 2: kill you or you will kill me. But you're not
Speaker 2: leaving that room. And I'll tell you I had never
Speaker 2: thought about harming anybody. I mean, I'm a counselor what
Speaker 2: we want to help people. That's not ingrained in our
Speaker 2: in our DNA. But in that moment, if it was
Speaker 2: going to be him or those kids, or him or
Speaker 2: one of those staff members, or him or me, it
Speaker 2: was going to be him. There was no way he
Speaker 2: was going to leave this room. I didn't know what
Speaker 2: I would have to do. I remember thinking at one point,
Speaker 2: thank you Lord. You know you've had me training all
Speaker 2: these months for a marathon that I'm supposed to run
Speaker 2: in three weeks. I'm of the best physical shape of
Speaker 2: my life. If this becomes physical, I think I have
Speaker 2: a chance that when you started to tap on that box,
Speaker 2: I remember thinking I had to take the bait, and
Speaker 2: for some reason that made me furious, and so I
Speaker 2: looked at him and I just said, slightly sarcastically, I said,
Speaker 2: what are you tapping on? And I remember he kind
Speaker 2: of cocked his head to one side and he was
Speaker 2: like a pencil box. And I thought, no, it's not
Speaker 2: I've never sent in an eighth grade with a pencil box.
Speaker 2: But something again in me said, don't push Molly, and
Speaker 2: so we just kept talking and then at one point
Speaker 2: he looks at me and he says, Miss Hudgens, I've
Speaker 2: got something to tell you that I bet nobody's ever
Speaker 2: told you before. And I knew what he was going
Speaker 2: to say, but I said, well, honey, I don't know.
Speaker 2: I've been doing this job for a long time. My
Speaker 2: doubt there's anything you can tell me I haven't heard before.
Speaker 2: And he said, I bet nobody's ever told you they
Speaker 2: had a loaded gun. And again, I said the first
Speaker 2: thing that came into my head, and I think the
Speaker 2: Lord gave me this. I said, well, no, honey, they haven't,
Speaker 2: but you probably wouldn't be the first person to have
Speaker 2: one here. And he unzipped his jacket the rest of
Speaker 2: the way and he pulled out the gun. He laid
Speaker 2: it right here on the desk in front of me,
Speaker 2: with the base of the gun facing away from me.
Speaker 2: I remember reading the word millennium upside down and backwards
Speaker 2: and frantically trying to figure out I thought it was
Speaker 2: a nine millimeter. Later we would learn that it was
Speaker 2: a forty five. That only matters in terms of the
Speaker 2: number of bullets the gun can hold, and I knew that.
Speaker 2: Then he unzipped his jacket and he reached into the
Speaker 2: outside pocket and he pulled out an additional magazine of ammunition,
Speaker 2: and he stood it up right beside the gun on
Speaker 2: my desk, and I start frantically trying to count the
Speaker 2: bullets that you can vaguely see through the side of
Speaker 2: the magazine. And then he pulls out a holster that
Speaker 2: we would later learn he had used to attach the
Speaker 2: additional magazine to his ankle. And so he lays all
Speaker 2: these things on the desk in front of me, and
Speaker 2: it strikes me, you know, I'm like a three foot target.
Speaker 2: And so I remember standing up and leaning out, and
Speaker 2: I put my hands on like on the gun, and
Speaker 2: I said, honey, why don't we talk about what's going on,
Speaker 2: and or why don't you want me take these and
Speaker 2: then we can talk about what's going on? And he
Speaker 2: yanked it all away. He shoved the magazine and the
Speaker 2: holster back into his outer pocket where they had been
Speaker 2: to begin with, and he held a gun in his
Speaker 2: left hand, pointed down with the floor. And so I
Speaker 2: am already like sort of halfway standing here because I've
Speaker 2: leaned over to touch the gun. So I just stood
Speaker 2: up the rest of the way and I put my
Speaker 2: hands up, and all I start being flooded in my
Speaker 2: mind with all these things I've learned. Is this a
Speaker 2: hostage or a non hostage situation? You know, if it's
Speaker 2: a hostage situation, the goal is to lower their expectations
Speaker 2: until eventually the hostage taker realizes their best they're not
Speaker 2: probably going to get what they want, and their best
Speaker 2: option is to leave that situation. If it's a non
Speaker 2: hostage situation, the person already has what they want and
Speaker 2: you're not trying to lower expectations. You're trying to lower
Speaker 2: their emotions. So I remember thinking to myself, You've got
Speaker 2: a lower his emotion, Stay calm, let him feel as
Speaker 2: if he has power. So I walk around the chair
Speaker 2: that sits at the end of my desk, and I
Speaker 2: got down on my knees and I think I heard that,
Speaker 2: get on your knees, and I realize now, you know,
Speaker 2: I was trying to put myself in a subservient position
Speaker 2: because now I am physically lower than him, even in height.
Speaker 2: And I remember hearing he's right handed. I knew he
Speaker 2: had taken the gun out with his right hand, but
Speaker 2: he now had it in his left. So I put
Speaker 2: my left hand on his right shoulder, just like a
Speaker 2: like to comfort him. And then I just reached over
Speaker 2: with my right hand and I interlaced the fingers of
Speaker 2: my right hand with his right hand, and I remember thinking, well,
Speaker 2: if you're gonna shoot me, you're gonna have to do
Speaker 2: it with your non a dominant hand. And I just
Speaker 2: started talking. I couldn't believe this was happening. You know
Speaker 2: you asked earlier about that. Did you ever think something
Speaker 2: like this will happen? No? But at the same time,
Speaker 2: I remember thinking a couple times, you're prepared for this
Speaker 2: than anybody else in this building. I work with some
Speaker 2: amazing educators who are very intellectual people, but I knew
Speaker 2: that none of them had researched this study this, so
Speaker 2: in my mind, I thought this was the perfect place
Speaker 2: if he was going to come here. I tried to
Speaker 2: start fully engaging him in conversation, and not too far
Speaker 2: into that conversation, the worst case scenario happens when I
Speaker 2: start to hear noises in the hallway and I realized
Speaker 2: the kids are changing classes. I can hear the toilets
Speaker 2: start to flush in the girl's restaurant right here behind me.
Speaker 2: You can hear out in the hallway the locker doors
Speaker 2: are slamming. The kids are talking there, yelling to each other.
Speaker 2: And then I thought, get ready, because here come the teachers.
Speaker 2: I could see them out of my peripheral vision, passing
Speaker 2: the glass pane in my door. At one point Glenn
Speaker 2: would come and stand there and look in, and I
Speaker 2: wouldn't make eye contact with him because I was afraid
Speaker 2: if I did, he would realize something was not right
Speaker 2: and he would come in. He stood there for probably
Speaker 2: I don't know, twenty seconds maybe, and then he left,
Speaker 2: and later I asked him, I said, listen, I'm so
Speaker 2: glad you didn't come in. You weren't supposed to, But
Speaker 2: what kept you from that? And he said, well, Molly,
Speaker 2: I looked in there, and you were down on your knees,
Speaker 2: and I thought, well, lord, she's praying with him. She's
Speaker 2: gonna be in trouble. But whatever. He came back to
Speaker 2: his office.
Speaker 1: You don't getting any trouble in Tennessee, Yeah, Praig with me?
Speaker 2: I hope not. But I knew I had seven minutes.
Speaker 2: Seven minutes they were going to be in the hallways,
Speaker 2: and I tried to engage him as much in conversation
Speaker 2: as I could. I did not want him to realize
Speaker 2: how close in proximity he now was to victims or
Speaker 2: potential victims. And so as the sound started to diminish
Speaker 2: in the hallway, I remember feeling this sense of like,
Speaker 2: their back in there, back in you know, they're back
Speaker 2: in classes. And we talked some more. He realized that
Speaker 2: he what he had done was already a felony. You know,
Speaker 2: bringing a loaded firearm or any firearm on a school
Speaker 2: campus is obviously against the law. He knew that he
Speaker 2: he had all these concerns about things, but it dawned
Speaker 2: on me that this was an even more critical situation
Speaker 2: than I first realized. When he explained to me that
Speaker 2: if he did not kill people here at school, that
Speaker 2: someone was going to kill his family. And in that moment, I,
Speaker 2: you know, I remember like almost inhaling sharply and thinking,
Speaker 2: this is a psychosis. What you know, what you were,
Speaker 2: what you were seeing on Friday that was concerning to you,
Speaker 2: probably delusions, what you're seeing right now, hallucinations, like all
Speaker 2: of that began to piece itself together. And that's when
Speaker 2: I remember saying the prayer, Lord, help me, don't get
Speaker 2: help me, do not get lost in this. And so
Speaker 2: I started thinking, Okay, Molly, what would you actually do
Speaker 2: if you really thought that there was, truly there was
Speaker 2: a kid on campus whose family was in danger? What
Speaker 2: would you do? And I thought you'd reach out to
Speaker 2: law enforcement. And so I remember telling him, you know,
Speaker 2: we've got to get someone to your home to protect
Speaker 2: your family. And I remember this look on his face
Speaker 2: that was like, she believes me. She believes me. So
Speaker 2: I decided to work from that approach. I would love
Speaker 2: to say that I had this beautiful strategy. In hindsight,
Speaker 2: I think it was a beautiful strategy, but it was
Speaker 2: not of my creation. I know that for sure. It
Speaker 2: was like I played the best mental chess match of
Speaker 2: my life and I don't even know how to play chess,
Speaker 2: but I was working through everything that he would present.
Speaker 2: We talked for a long time. It starts to dawn
Speaker 2: on me that I cannot believe somebody has not come
Speaker 2: into this office. Our teachers were fairly accustomed to understanding
Speaker 2: that if the door to this office is closed, they
Speaker 2: know not to come in. I'm either a meeting with
Speaker 2: the student, I'm on the phone, or there's something going
Speaker 2: on that I need a private setting. But I still
Speaker 2: was worried. Kids were so us to turn in your
Speaker 2: bed of fees that day. It was the last day,
Speaker 2: and I kept thinking, somebody's going to come in. And
Speaker 2: so I looked at him and I said, honey, listen,
Speaker 2: I don't know what it is, but I know that
Speaker 2: God's got a plan for your life. And He's stiffened
Speaker 2: in his seat, and he looked down at me, and
Speaker 2: I remember he said, Miss Hudgens, do you believe in God?
Speaker 2: And I thought, oh, Molly, why did you say that.
Speaker 2: It's like my heart just dropped into my stomach. And
Speaker 2: then I just thought, well, if this is it, you know,
Speaker 2: I thought about Peter, and I thought that this is it.
Speaker 2: I'm not going to die denying the Lord. And I
Speaker 2: was terrified, and I said again, first thing that came
Speaker 2: to me. I said, well, honey, I do I do
Speaker 2: believe in God, but I feel like you don't. You know,
Speaker 2: is there a reason that you don't? And he said,
Speaker 2: miss Hugeons, do you know how many times I've asked
Speaker 2: for help and nobody's ever helped me? And I said, well,
Speaker 2: what do you think this is? I said, you know,
Speaker 2: maybe God wasn't telling you no. Maybe he was just
Speaker 2: telling you to wait for today. And I said, listen,
Speaker 2: I don't I don't know what we're going to do,
Speaker 2: but I promise you two things. One I will not
Speaker 2: leave you, and two what we're going to figure it out?
Speaker 2: And he started asking me all these questions about God,
Speaker 2: and I remember thinking how unusual that was, because of
Speaker 2: separation in church of church and state that my faith
Speaker 2: is not something I can go about and prophesy hear
Speaker 2: at work, you know, but if kids ask you questions
Speaker 2: about anything in a private study, you can certainly tell
Speaker 2: them what you believe or what you feel. And so
Speaker 2: I did my best to answer all of his questions,
Speaker 2: feeling inept because I didn't know the answers to some
Speaker 2: of them. But I remember in that moment just having
Speaker 2: this thought, pray with him, what else do I have?
Speaker 2: It was like the first time in my whole life
Speaker 2: that I really really had to put my faith where
Speaker 2: my fear was. And so I just looked at him
Speaker 2: and I said, listen, I've got an idea. And I
Speaker 2: don't know what you think about this, but how would
Speaker 2: you feel if maybe we prayed about it? You know,
Speaker 2: you've asked me a lot of questions about God. You know,
Speaker 2: maybe we could just pray about it and ask for
Speaker 2: some direction as to what we should do. And I
Speaker 2: really thought that he would say, you know, I don't
Speaker 2: I don't really want to do that, or I'm not
Speaker 2: comfortable doing that. But he didn't. He said, I think
Speaker 2: that would be okay. And there on my knees holding
Speaker 2: the hand of this child.
Speaker 1: You've been on your knees holding his hand this entire time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is probably I would say, maybe forty five
Speaker 2: fifty minutes in this would this what would last ninety
Speaker 2: minutes before it would end? And so holding his hand,
Speaker 2: I prayed the most heartfelt prayer of my life. The
Speaker 2: whole time I prayed his eyes were closed. I kept
Speaker 2: mine open because I was afraid not to. I was crying.
Speaker 2: He was too. I remember thanking God for everything I
Speaker 2: knew about him that I had learned, you know, the
Speaker 2: Friday before, when I'd been listening and during the prayer,
Speaker 2: I remember feeling like this pressure at my back. I
Speaker 2: thought it was just because I had been in this
Speaker 2: position on my knees for so long, But at that moment,
Speaker 2: I just remember praying, Lord, if there is anything, that
Speaker 2: there is any negative entity affecting this situation, remove it
Speaker 2: from the equation. I felt like I was in a battle,
Speaker 2: a spiritual battle, something I had never experienced before, and
Speaker 2: I was scared. But I was going to fight, not
Speaker 2: just for the kids, not just for the staff, not
Speaker 2: even just for me, but for him. See what I
Speaker 2: knew this whole time is that most people who commit
Speaker 2: mass murder before they are homicidal, they are suicidal. Their
Speaker 2: intention in most cases is to not survive their incident.
Speaker 2: Many of them are hoping their lives will be taken
Speaker 2: by law enforcement and they won't have to do it themselves.
Speaker 2: But I did not want to lose him either, and
Speaker 2: so at one point in the prayer, he raises the
Speaker 2: gun up, and I am thinking that he's gonna shoot himself.
Speaker 2: And I remember being terrified and just thinking, what are
Speaker 2: you going to do, and then thinking are you just
Speaker 2: You're just gonna sit here, Molly, You're just gonna watch
Speaker 2: this happen, you know? Can you live with that? And
Speaker 2: I knew I couldn't, And so I let go of
Speaker 2: his shoulder and I reached out with my left hand
Speaker 2: and I still, I don't still know what I was
Speaker 2: gonna do. I guess I maybe was just going to
Speaker 2: try to push the gun down. I don't know. But
Speaker 2: he raised the gun all the way up over his
Speaker 2: head and with his pointer fingers on the trigger, he
Speaker 2: scratched the top of his head with his middle finger,
Speaker 2: and I remember thinking that is not funny, but like,
Speaker 2: at the same time, it was. It was like in
Speaker 2: the middle of this, you know, I teach English, right,
Speaker 2: the climax, the point of greatest emotion in height whatever,
Speaker 2: It's like, God gave me this drop of humor just
Speaker 2: to remind me, like you were still in this, you
Speaker 2: are not alone. This is a good fight, and you're
Speaker 2: in it. And so he raised, you know, lowered the gun,
Speaker 2: and I remember when I finished the prayer. He seen calmer.
Speaker 2: I had asked him several times through the course of
Speaker 2: this about giving me the gun, and every time he
Speaker 2: would say, Missagens, I want to give it to you,
Speaker 2: but I just can't. And so the prayer ended, and
Speaker 2: it was like this moment of just kind of what's next.
Speaker 2: You know, we are sweating profusely. It's still sitting here.
Speaker 2: If I really think about it, I can smell it,
Speaker 2: like I'm just adrenaline and all that that's released in
Speaker 2: a moment like this. And I had been praying, like, Lord,
Speaker 2: I need some kind of opening. And I remember that
Speaker 2: he looked and I had a medal hanging up on
Speaker 2: the wall right up here that was from a five
Speaker 2: K and he just said, I forgot that you like
Speaker 2: to run. And we started talking about running, and I
Speaker 2: just thought, here's your opening. And I said, I said, yea, honey.
Speaker 2: I said, you know, I told you guys yesterday and
Speaker 2: classroom guidance, I'm training for that marathon and I had
Speaker 2: to run ten miles this morning. I said that, you know,
Speaker 2: really rigs havoc on the knees. And he wanted me
Speaker 2: to go back and sit at my desk he thought
Speaker 2: I would be more comfortable, and I just said, I
Speaker 2: can't do that. I can't leave where I am. I'm
Speaker 2: going to stay right here, no matter how much my
Speaker 2: knees hurt until you until you give me that gun.
Speaker 2: And he said, well, I think maybe I want to
Speaker 2: give it to you. And then I had this thought,
Speaker 2: if he gives that weapon to me, then he's going
Speaker 2: to feel like he's giving up his family. And so
Speaker 2: I looked at him and I said, well, listen, why
Speaker 2: don't you let me take it and then you don't
Speaker 2: have to give it to me. And he said, okay,
Speaker 2: I think that'd be okay, and he leaned over and
Speaker 2: put the safety on, and I remember winging over him
Speaker 2: and taking the gun, and I just put my arms
Speaker 2: around there and we just hugged each other, me on
Speaker 2: my knees and him in his chair, and I'm patting
Speaker 2: him with one hand, and I remember telling him how
Speaker 2: much I loved him, how proud of him I was.
Speaker 2: I remember saying, you know, the right thing is never easy,
Speaker 2: but it's still the right thing. And the whole time
Speaker 2: I am holding what I now know is a fully
Speaker 2: loaded gun, just because of the heaviness of it, and
Speaker 2: we stayed like that for a long time. I remember
Speaker 2: watching the clock. I still have it on the wall
Speaker 2: back there. An elementary teacher told me one time, if
Speaker 2: the kid ever hugs you, don't let go until they do.
Speaker 2: And I'll tell you I do that with everybody. If
Speaker 2: somebody hugs me, I never let go until they do.
Speaker 2: They must need it, and so we stayed that way
Speaker 2: for a long time. I remember during that just thinking,
Speaker 2: just hold him like he's yours, Molly, just hold him
Speaker 2: like he's yours. I had two boys, so I understood that.
Speaker 2: And finally when he let go, I stood up. I remember,
Speaker 2: like the blood my legs like ate horribly, like I
Speaker 2: guess all the circulation, the blood running back through my legs,
Speaker 2: and I remember thinking, though, you've never seen or read
Speaker 2: about a school shooter who only has one weapon, and
Speaker 2: so it was my assumption that there were more, and
Speaker 2: so I said to him, why don't you give me
Speaker 2: all of it? And I was hoping if there were
Speaker 2: other weapons he would give me those as well, but
Speaker 2: he gave me I already had the gun, and so
Speaker 2: he gave me the magazine and the holster. I walked
Speaker 2: back around my desk right here and in the corner.
Speaker 2: I had two filing cabinets, and I wore the key
Speaker 2: to one of them around my neck on my lanyard.
Speaker 2: I still do, actually don't have the filing cabinet, but
Speaker 2: I still have the key. And I remember going up
Speaker 2: and unlocking the drawer and like pulling it out and
Speaker 2: making a dent in my purse and thinking, I can't
Speaker 2: believe I'm making a dent in my purse to put
Speaker 2: a gun, but then putting in there and closing the
Speaker 2: drawer and locking it, and like the key falling back
Speaker 2: around my neck and literally thinking that's one way. And
Speaker 2: so I walked back around and sat beside him because
Speaker 2: there was another chair adjacent to his, and we just
Speaker 2: started talking. We probably talked for fifteen more minutes. He
Speaker 2: wanted to know what I was going to do. He
Speaker 2: wanted to know what was going to happen to him.
Speaker 2: I couldn't answer any of those questions, so I stayed
Speaker 2: on the path that I had taken earlier with we
Speaker 2: have to protect his family. And I said to him,
Speaker 2: I said, honey, listen, I have got this friend who
Speaker 2: works in law enforcements, and I think he can help us.
Speaker 2: His name is Chris, And I said, wouldn't be okay
Speaker 2: with you if I called him? And he said, yes, ma'am,
Speaker 2: I think that would be okay. And so what he
Speaker 2: didn't know was that Chris was the first name of
Speaker 2: our student resource officer. At the time, we had one
Speaker 2: SRO that covered four schools in our county, so we
Speaker 2: only had three county wide. I knew there was only
Speaker 2: a twenty five percent chance that Chris would be here,
Speaker 2: but I called him, and I'll never forget when he
Speaker 2: answered the phone because I was so relieved, and I said,
Speaker 2: you know, hey, it's Mollie. Is there any chance that
Speaker 2: you're at the middle school today? And he said, well,
Speaker 2: I actually i am, but I'm in the conference room.
Speaker 2: I'm meeting with some parents. Can I call you back
Speaker 2: in a few minutes. And I said, well, this is
Speaker 2: kind of urgent, but because the whole time, the child
Speaker 2: is sitting across from me looking at me, and I
Speaker 2: am terrified he is going to jump up and bolt
Speaker 2: out the door. And so I said, yes, that'll be okay,
Speaker 2: but if you'll just come down as quickly as you can.
Speaker 2: And so as soon as we hung up the phone,
Speaker 2: I realized that nothing in my voice. Nothing about the
Speaker 2: words I'd chosen would have been any indicator to Chris
Speaker 2: on the other end of the line that this was
Speaker 2: an emergency, although I was hoping he would read into something.
Speaker 2: And so I looked at the child and I said, Honey,
Speaker 2: would it be okay with you if I sent a
Speaker 2: text message to my husband to let him know that
Speaker 2: Bradley has baseball practice after school today. That was our
Speaker 2: oldest child. And he said, well yeah, And so I
Speaker 2: sent a text message to Chris and it said I've
Speaker 2: just taken a loaded gun off of a child in
Speaker 2: my office. He doesn't know that I've contacted you. It's
Speaker 2: locked in a drawer, Please come down quickly. And I
Speaker 2: remember watching the screen fade to black and just hoping
Speaker 2: it went through. You know, old building still roof allows
Speaker 2: for terrible cell signal, And so I remember I even
Speaker 2: got on our student management system and said, honey, do
Speaker 2: you have any missing assignments? And he looked at me
Speaker 2: like I've lost my mind? And I did. I printed
Speaker 2: him off, went through everything the kid was missing in
Speaker 2: language arts, math siens and social studies, just trying to
Speaker 2: buy some time. And at the end of that he
Speaker 2: said missagings. I think, I'm I think I'm just going
Speaker 2: to go back to class, and I said, no, let me,
Speaker 2: let me try one more time. So this time I
Speaker 2: made the decision to call our assistant principle. I knew
Speaker 2: that I could have a conversation on my end that
Speaker 2: would make absolutely no sense on her end, and that
Speaker 2: she would get somebody she would know. So thing was
Speaker 2: not right. And so when I called her office, Chris,
Speaker 2: the SRO answered her phone and I said, hey, it's Mollie.
Speaker 2: I said, you know, I know you're working on something earlier.
Speaker 2: Can you come on down now? And he said, well,
Speaker 2: we've actually had to move into vice the vice principal's
Speaker 2: office in order to review some bus footage from the incident.
Speaker 2: And I can tell he's a little frustrated, because you know,
Speaker 2: he is hard at work here trying to investigate a situation.
Speaker 2: And I continue to interrupt, So I said, well, listen,
Speaker 2: can you check your messages because I sent you an
Speaker 2: email or a text or something. Can you see if
Speaker 2: you got that. I'm having trouble getting those out today.
Speaker 2: And he he looks at his phone and he says, Molly,
Speaker 2: I don't I don't have anything from you, and then
Speaker 2: he said, well, actually I just got a text message,
Speaker 2: and he read the first line of it and he said,
Speaker 2: I want you to stay on the phone as if
Speaker 2: we're still having a conversation. And I'm on my way,
Speaker 2: and I remember seeing him up here, at his face
Speaker 2: coming through that glass pane, and just thinking, you're not alone,
Speaker 2: which I hadn't been alone, you know, but now it
Speaker 2: was like I had a person with me. And Chris
Speaker 2: came in and conducted the most gracious and kind interview.
Speaker 2: The child told him the same story he told me,
Speaker 2: and then he looked at Chris and he said, I
Speaker 2: went to Miss Hudgins because I thought she was the
Speaker 2: only person that could talk me out of this. And
Speaker 2: I remember thinking, if I live to be one hundred
Speaker 2: years old, I will never get a compliment any greater
Speaker 2: than that one. So I was allowed to stay with
Speaker 2: him the whole time. I wanted to leave school with him,
Speaker 2: but Chris said to me, Molly, your job is done,
Speaker 2: and so I stayed. I wrote a statement for the
Speaker 2: police Central Office came they wanted me to go home.
Speaker 2: They felt like I should be able to take the
Speaker 2: day off or take a couple of days and I
Speaker 2: remember saying, well, who's going to do bus duty if
Speaker 2: I'm not here? Like, just stay in the course, right,
Speaker 2: And I did. I stayed all day, I did bus study,
Speaker 2: I went to baseball practice. It was Wednesday night, and
Speaker 2: I went to church and came back the next morning,
Speaker 2: got up in around eight miles, slept like a baby,
Speaker 2: got to hear the next morning, and remember thinking, I'm
Speaker 2: so glad the flag is not at high staff. And
Speaker 2: it wasn't until I got to my door and I
Speaker 2: was kind of shaky, like trying to put the key
Speaker 2: in that I remember saying, Oh, good grief, Molly, it's
Speaker 2: in office going in. It would take me a while
Speaker 2: to realize that most people who experience a traumatic event
Speaker 2: don't normally return to the city of the crime. And
Speaker 2: you know, work for seven or eight hours, and then
Speaker 2: I wouldn't see him again for a month.
Speaker 1: We'll be back in a minute.
Speaker 2: On that Friday, after this happened, one of our eighth
Speaker 2: graders came to me and said, Miss Hudgens, are y'all
Speaker 2: gonna talk to us about this? Are we just going
Speaker 2: to like sweeping under the rug and act like nothing happened?
Speaker 2: And I went to the principles that I want to
Speaker 2: talk to all the eighth grader So I put them
Speaker 2: on our cafeteria. There were about two hundred of them,
Speaker 2: and I remember standing on something I think it was
Speaker 2: a chair, just so they could all see me. And
Speaker 2: I remember saying, nobody knows what happened in my office
Speaker 2: this week except for me and this other student, and
Speaker 2: so I want to answer any questions you all have
Speaker 2: because I want you to know the truth. They asked
Speaker 2: questions for almost an hour. I would not tell them
Speaker 2: who he was. I knew that over the course of
Speaker 2: time they would probably figure out who he was based
Speaker 2: on just who did not return to school from an
Speaker 2: extended absence. But I remember saying to him, do you
Speaker 2: guys remember the guidance lesson that we talked about on
Speaker 2: Tuesday before this happened, And it was a lesson on
Speaker 2: September eleventh. Our kids were not alive on September eleventh.
Speaker 2: So there's a lesson called one Life Can Make a
Speaker 2: Difference and it's about Wells Crowther, who lost his life
Speaker 2: in the World Trade Center rescuing people. And so it
Speaker 2: was a lesson on how anybody can do something to
Speaker 2: help someone else. You just have to be willing and
Speaker 2: available and recognize that need. And so I talked to
Speaker 2: them about that, and I reminded them that one of
Speaker 2: the takeaways they were supposed to get is that sometimes
Speaker 2: there may be somebody who's struggling and they may not
Speaker 2: know how to ask for help, or they may be
Speaker 2: afraid or an embarrassed or ashamed to do that. And
Speaker 2: I remember saying, that's where you have to stand in
Speaker 2: the gap for them. You come and tell me, and
Speaker 2: we'll figure out what to do. And then I remember
Speaker 2: telling them sometimes that person may be you. You may
Speaker 2: be the person who's struggling and you may think nobody
Speaker 2: can help you. But if you come to me, we'll
Speaker 2: figure out something. So I told him all said, you know,
Speaker 2: he did on Wednesday exactly what I told you guys
Speaker 2: to do. He was struggling, he was going through something,
Speaker 2: he did not know what to do, and he came
Speaker 2: to me for help. And I said, so here's what
Speaker 2: we're going to do. We are going to protect him.
Speaker 2: And I remember telling them they could talk to anybody
Speaker 2: at school, at you know, the family, me, anybody on
Speaker 2: our staff about what had happened. But I remember saying
Speaker 2: we're not going to talk about this outside of our
Speaker 2: school family, and you want to talk about miracles. Those
Speaker 2: two under eighth graders never told his name, so it
Speaker 2: was never published. The media never descended on his home,
Speaker 2: his family never had to move. But I only got
Speaker 2: to see him one more time. I got subpoenaed, and
Speaker 2: I had prayed that I wouldn't. I did not want
Speaker 2: any consequence he received to be connected to me. And
Speaker 2: I got there for court and the judge saw me
Speaker 2: and he said, I need to talk to you in
Speaker 2: my chambers. And we went in and he said, Missugens,
Speaker 2: I just went to a training in Memphis a month
Speaker 2: ago and you presented. And I said, yes, Sir, I did.
Speaker 2: And he said on school shooters. I said I know.
Speaker 2: And he said I can't believe this, and I said
Speaker 2: I can't either, and he said, well, we're going to
Speaker 2: do something different. You're not going to testify. He said,
Speaker 2: I'm going to bring in the prosecutor and the defense
Speaker 2: attorney and I just very simply want you to tell
Speaker 2: them what happened in your office that day. And I
Speaker 2: guess I needed to tell it because I re enacted it.
Speaker 2: I got down on my knees and held hands with
Speaker 2: the prosecutor. And at the end of it, I remember
Speaker 2: everything had changed, you know. She had come in like
Speaker 2: a ready to prosecute, and he had come in ready
Speaker 2: to defend, and all of a sudden it was different.
Speaker 2: And I remember one of them said to me, what
Speaker 2: do you think we should do? I said, I think
Speaker 2: we should get help for him. He came to me
Speaker 2: and he asked for help, and I promised him I
Speaker 2: would see this through to the end. And I remember saying,
Speaker 2: whatever we do is going to set a precedent, and
Speaker 2: I would really love for our little town in the
Speaker 2: middle of nowhere to get it right. And I knew
Speaker 2: that if he went to jail, the course of his
Speaker 2: life would be changed forever. And I wanted more than
Speaker 2: anything for him to have a second chance. And I
Speaker 2: believe if we could protect his identity, he could have that.
Speaker 2: And they listened, and they made the decision that he
Speaker 2: would go to an impatient mental health facility. I remember
Speaker 2: asking the one ask I had that day is if
Speaker 2: it was okay with him, if I could see him
Speaker 2: or speak to him again, And he still had on
Speaker 2: the same clothes he'd had on that day obviously when
Speaker 2: he left here, he had worn other clothing at the
Speaker 2: facility where he was kept, so it was a very
Speaker 2: real same shirt, same pants, and he was handcuffed, and
Speaker 2: he was shackled around his waist and he had shackles
Speaker 2: around his ankles. So I remember like whispering to one
Speaker 2: of the deputies. Is all of that necessary? And he
Speaker 2: looked at me and he said, Molly, do you know
Speaker 2: what he did? And I said, I guess I'll always
Speaker 2: be a little too close to it. So he was
Speaker 2: seated on a bench. Our courthouse is very old, and
Speaker 2: it even has some benches that that probably came from
Speaker 2: a church. They looked like a church pew. And I
Speaker 2: remember he was seated and because of his hands, he
Speaker 2: couldn't stand up on this without help. And so before
Speaker 2: I even thought about it, I just got down on
Speaker 2: my knees right in front of him, and I remember
Speaker 2: holding his hands. And he never spoke. I don't, I
Speaker 2: honestly don't think he could. But I looked at him
Speaker 2: and I told him all the things I said in
Speaker 2: my office, that I loved him, that I was proud
Speaker 2: of him, and I reminded him that I was going
Speaker 2: to be there until the end. I would see this
Speaker 2: through the end. And I remember saying, I said, listen,
Speaker 2: I don't know what that's going to look like. I
Speaker 2: don't know how much I will be able to be involved,
Speaker 2: but I promise you I will be here. And I
Speaker 2: got up and I left, and I've never seen him again.
Speaker 2: On the fourth anniversary, a lady calls me from our community.
Speaker 2: She had worked at our school, so she knew who
Speaker 2: the child was, but she and her family owned a
Speaker 2: small business and she had no idea this was the
Speaker 2: fourth anniversary of this incident. And she said to me,
Speaker 2: Miss Huggens, She said, the young man who was involved
Speaker 2: in the incident at school has applied for a job
Speaker 2: at our business. And she said, we really try to
Speaker 2: hire people who struggle. Maybe they don't have family, or
Speaker 2: they just don't feel like they fit in. And she said,
Speaker 2: I really feel like this would be a good place
Speaker 2: for him, but we want to hire him if you
Speaker 2: don't want me to. And I cried, and I said,
Speaker 2: do you know what today is? Is the fourth anniversary?
Speaker 2: And I said, and you're calling to ask me to
Speaker 2: give him a job. Reference yes, hire him, Please hire him,
Speaker 2: and she did. She did. I thought many times about
Speaker 2: going to the business, you know, just like showing up.
Speaker 2: I wanted to see him so much. I just wanted
Speaker 2: to know that he was okay. I just wanted him
Speaker 2: to know somebody still cared about him. But something in
Speaker 2: me just said, don't push Molly. And so when our
Speaker 2: book came out about our story, he found out from
Speaker 2: someone about the book, and a person came to me
Speaker 2: and said he would really like a copy that I
Speaker 2: think I can get that to him, and I said, well,
Speaker 2: I will give him one. And so I remember I
Speaker 2: wrote in the cover everything I ever wanted to say
Speaker 2: to him, and I remember I wrote in there, listen,
Speaker 2: I don't know if you ever want to talk about
Speaker 2: this again, so I'm not going to try to find you,
Speaker 2: I promise, but I also want you to know that
Speaker 2: if you ever want to talk about this for the
Speaker 2: rest of your life, I will be here and you
Speaker 2: know where to find me. And I really thought, I
Speaker 2: think I really hoped that he would read that book
Speaker 2: because the last chapter is all for him, and I
Speaker 2: thought you would read it and then like send me
Speaker 2: an email or reach out or something. But I had
Speaker 2: to realize that the way I experienced his incident was
Speaker 2: not the same way that he did, and I don't
Speaker 2: know how he feels about it, and that's okay. I
Speaker 2: wanted him to have a second chance, whatever that might
Speaker 2: look like, and he got that, and there's a great
Speaker 2: joy for me. And knowing that this September will have
Speaker 2: been eight years and even though he has lived so
Speaker 2: closely to me, I've never seen him again. And I
Speaker 2: figure that one day, if it's God's will and in
Speaker 2: his timing, that I'll run into him somewhere. It'll probably be,
Speaker 2: you know, pumping gas or at a grocery store, and
Speaker 2: I hope that when I do that, he'll know how
Speaker 2: happy I am to see him, how grateful I am
Speaker 2: that he's okay. I want to hug him. There's so
Speaker 2: many things I want to say to him, and I
Speaker 2: want to hear. Still, I still want to listen to
Speaker 2: what he experienced and what he went through as he
Speaker 2: as he healed. But if that is not meant to be.
Speaker 2: If that is not the case, then I have accepted
Speaker 2: that I did my part. I played the role I
Speaker 2: was supposed to in his life, and tent with that.
Speaker 1: Well, this has been extraordinary. I have only one last
Speaker 1: question for you, for what you did. You were awarded
Speaker 1: the Citizen's Medal of Honor, and I'm just the nation's
Speaker 1: highest award for courage, and I can you just tell
Speaker 1: me what you think? What's your definition of courage.
Speaker 2: Courage is rising up and doing something when you don't
Speaker 2: think that you can. It's standing in the gap when
Speaker 2: you think that you're probably not enough. It's knowing that
Speaker 2: you might lose everything but hoping that you won't. And
Speaker 2: it's depending on a higher power to give you what
Speaker 2: you need to finish the job you were prepared to do.
Speaker 2: You see the Male of Honor recipients. I believe they
Speaker 2: were all chosen. I think God chose each one of
Speaker 2: them particularly for their incident. I don't think anybody else
Speaker 2: in history could have performed the acts of heroisdom and
Speaker 2: bravery that they did on the day that they did,
Speaker 2: in the way that they did. Many of them are
Speaker 2: great men of faith, and their stories are what led
Speaker 2: me to start to feel as if I could share
Speaker 2: my story. And with the Citizen's Honors, we have a
Speaker 2: multitude of recipients who are posthumous recipients who lost their
Speaker 2: lives in schools and I wear a bracelet every single
Speaker 2: day that has all their names on it, just to
Speaker 2: remind me that they were not gifted a ninety minute intervention.
Speaker 2: You know, they went directly towards an attacker in their
Speaker 2: schools and they lost their lives doing it. And so
Speaker 2: when I share story, I feel as if I represent them.
Speaker 2: I know that I don't will never feel like I
Speaker 2: fit in a category with any of the citizen or
Speaker 2: the military recipients. But I know that as long as
Speaker 2: I'm alive, I can tell their stories and I can
Speaker 2: remind people of their heroism. And when you look at
Speaker 2: the Malavana recipients and you look at the faith that
Speaker 2: they shared, I can't help but think about Gary Biker,
Speaker 2: who went back to school after Vietnam after he received
Speaker 2: the medal and got a master's degree in counseling and
Speaker 2: became a school counselor in Greece, New York for thirty
Speaker 2: four years. You know, they prepared me for how to
Speaker 2: go forward in this life, knowing that while some people
Speaker 2: would perceive what I did as heroism, other people would
Speaker 2: think I just got lucky. I always say I didn't
Speaker 2: get lucky, I got rescued. And there's a big difference.
Speaker 1: Where's the metal.
Speaker 2: It's right here. I knew you might want to see it.
Speaker 2: So with the military recipients, with the citations that are
Speaker 2: written for the Medal of Honor, they all say that
Speaker 2: they have gone above and beyond the call of duty,
Speaker 2: which is why that's here. But the engraving that is
Speaker 2: on this is the same engraving that's on the sarcophagus
Speaker 2: of the tomb of the Unknown Soldier. And the reason
Speaker 2: they did that was to marry the idea that heroism
Speaker 2: is not just a military concept, it's something that happens
Speaker 2: every day to people across the country. Yeah, and of
Speaker 2: course if I tilt the computer just slightly, you all
Speaker 2: can see there's You know, I've been given more accolades
Speaker 2: and things than I could ever you know, have in
Speaker 2: a lifetime, but they're nothing compared to just the opportunity
Speaker 2: to still be here, you know, and get to tell
Speaker 2: the story and share it with people. And so thank
Speaker 2: you for this opportunity. Not at all I appreciate it.
Speaker 1: Well, this has been fantastic. Have a lovely day. Hug
Speaker 1: those boys from me.
Speaker 2: I will I will.
Speaker 1: Medal of Honor. Stories of Courage is written by Meredith
Speaker 1: Rollins and produced by Meredith Rollins, Constanza Galardo, and Izzy Carter.
Speaker 1: The show is edited by Ben Nadaf Haffrey, Sound design
Speaker 1: and additional music by Jake Gorski, recording engineering by Nita Lawrence,
Speaker 1: fact checking by Arthur Gombert's, original music by Eric Phillips.
Speaker 1: If you want to learn more about our Medal of
Speaker 1: Honor recipients, follow us on Instagram and Twitter. We'll be
Speaker 1: sharing photos and videos of the heroes featured on the show.
Speaker 1: We'd also love to hear from you dm us with
Speaker 1: a story about a courageous veteran in your life. If
Speaker 1: you don't know a veteran, we would love to hear
Speaker 1: a story of how courage was contagious in your own life.
Speaker 1: You can find us at Pushkin Bonds. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Malcolm Glampa.