In a Bend changed by violence, community urges love

Published 5:40 am Sunday, August 27, 2023

Community members reflect on the year since the east Bend Safeway shooting, and how people can care for each other.

KATY CLABOUGH

Regaining a communal sense of safety in Bend can be found in simple acts of kindness, said Katy Clabough, owner of Nancy P’s Bakery and Cafe.

Clabough stressed that the onus for caring for the community and creating a kinder, safer world rests on everyone in Bend.

“It’s not something we’re going to get from our government. It not something we’re going to get from the people running this town. It’s something that we, as people, have to be responsible for,” Clabough said.

At the bakery, Clabough regularly interacts with customers as she prepares lattes and serves food, which has allowed her to tune into the way people treat each other.

Before stepping out into the world, she urges Bend residents to be acutely aware of how they treat their neighbors, family, friends and passing strangers.

She urges them to check in on each other with genuine care and empathy. And she suggests paying careful attention to the mental health of others.

“How are you treating the people that you interact with daily?” she said. “Are you treating them with kindness? Are you treating them with respect?”

It boils down this, she said: “We all have to be responsible for the way we want our community and our country to be.”

— Janay Wright

MARCUS LeGRAND

Marcus LeGrand, Bend-La Pine Schools board member and the Afrocentric Program Coordinator at Central Oregon Community College, felt the community has gained an awareness since the Safeway shooting. But so has he.

LeGrand has especially been focusing on the mental health of his students, he said.

“It allowed me to look at how I can continue to educate students on being kind to one another in my leadership classes, being aware of your surroundings, and being observant, and being cognizant of situations, to be able to hopefully temper some of the stuff that goes on,” he said. “Really making people learn to communicate with people because you can’t let stuff fester anymore.”

With his own students, LeGrand has begun taking the time at the start of classes to check whether they have

anything they want to talk about and whether they are okay.

“You gotta really take the time to really look within yourself, inward, and say how can I be better so nothing like this happens or how do I continue to talk to people to make sure they’re okay, so they don’t get to the point where it’s boiling over?” he said.

— Noemi Arellano-Summer

MOLLY COGSWELL-KELLEY

Molly Cogswell-Kelley, executive director for the Horner Cycling Foundation, said she has not noticed any significant changes in Bend since the Safeway shooting a year ago, but she does find herself more on edge when she is out in public.

“I am very startled when I hear loud sounds when I’m in public places,” Cogswell-Kelley said. “Whenever I go anywhere, it’s always in the back of my mind that a mass shooting could happen at any time.”

Cogswell-Kelley still feels safe in Bend, but is now just “a little more aware of my surroundings,” she said.

To help continue to ease the pain of the shooting, Cogswell-Kelley encouraged others to go out of their way to be kind to people.

“That is what I try and do every day,” she said. “Listening and being kind to one another can go a long way as Bend continues to recover. I tend to always believe that people are pretty wonderful. I want to make sure that we don’t lose sight of that.”

— Mark Morical

DON EMERSON

Bend has been home to Don Emerson for nearly all of his 47 years. It is where he grew up, graduated from high school, raised a family and spent more than two decades coaching soccer.

But in that time, the former Mountain View High School soccer coach and now general manager of Bend FC Timbers, never experienced a year like the one that followed the shooting at the east Bend Safeway.

“There was a loss of security here,” Emerson said. “Especially for us who have been here for a long time in a small town. I think we need to build that back up. We need to build it up for our kids and our community.”

As a soccer coach, Emerson is around kids all the time. In the last year, he has noticed a change in his behavior when dealing with the youth in the area. After all, the gunman was just 20 years old.

“I check in on them more and see how they are doing more,” Emerson said. “I try to do a better job if a kid has changes in behavior than what I was used to.”

Bend has changed in the past year, but not as swiftly as he thinks it should, especially when it comes to identifying ways to deal with mental health issues.

“I think there still needs to be drastic changes on how we take care of each other,” Emerson said. “It is not good enough yet. I’m hopeful that we will get there. I think we need to have more drastic changes. We need to be able to identify things earlier and better and not react.”

— Brian Rathbone

MORGAN SCHMIDT

The day after the Safeway shooting, community members grieved and coped and mourned at a vigil at Drake Park, with the Deschutes River as a backdrop.

“You were not alone in wondering and texting frantically your loved ones, knowing that whoever was harmed, whoever we lost, would quickly become the loved ones of our whole community,” Morgan Schmidt, a pastor, told a crowd of Safeway employees, local leaders and everyday citizens that day.

Now, Schmidt rejects the idea that Bend must settle for a way of life that includes violence and injustice. But she says the city has to choose its path: Bend can become a community of love and kindness or one of fear and isolation.

“Collectively I think there is a sense of loss, grief and even anger over all that we’ve navigated during the seemingly endless succession of ‘unprecedented’ events over the past few years,” Schmidt said.

People are allowed to grieve, no matter how much time it takes. For those who are asking, “What now?” Schmidt insists violence as the status quo isn’t the way it has to be.

“We are worn but not undone,” she said.

— Anna Kaminski

MOLLY TAROLI

Molly Taroli and her husband were shopping in the frozen foods aisle of the east Bend Safeway when they heard gunshots followed by a woman’s scream.

Taroli immediately reached for her handgun in her purse while her husband ran to the parking lot to grab his own firearm from his truck.

“It was something I never thought would happen at 7 p.m. on a Sunday in August at a Safeway grocery store,” Taroli said recently.

She thinks about that day often in the year since the shooting. She thinks about what could have gone differently — what she could have done differently.

“I think of it probably whenever I go anywhere because I know it can happen any time and any place,” Taroli said. “And I’m going to do the best I can to protect myself and those around me.”

Especially as the one year anniversary approaches, Taroli remembers the two men who were killed: Glenn Bennett and Donald Surrett Jr.

“I want this day to be more of a remembrance for them than the negative of the situation, that there was someone who wanted to hurt people and did,” Taroli said.

Taroli and her husband still frequent that Safeway. It’s the closest one to their house in Alfalfa. The first visit after the shooting was an act of resistance. It was a way for Taroli to face her fears.

But an unspoken connection arises at each Safeway trip whenever Taroli makes eye contact with the same people she did that night.

“We remember, we all remember,” Taroli said. “But that unspoken connection is what brings us together from an incident and can move (us) forward.”

— Anna Kaminski

The Bend community was devastated on Aug. 28, 2022 when a gunman killed two people at the eastside Safeway store before turning a gun on himself. In the year since, residents have healed, taken stock and reflected. 

A year of mourning and loss ends in reflection: A year later, Bend still mourns the loss from Safeway shooting

Two men create bond, friendship after their chance meeting during the shooting: They saved each other in the Bend Safeway shooting. They’ve been friends ever since.

Community members talk about how Bend has changed: In a Bend changed by violence, community urges love

For the first time, Police Chief Mike Krantz speaks out: Bend Police chief reflects on Safeway shooting one year later