Emily Cantrell never wanted notoriety. Not dodging bullets ricocheting around her head. Not witnessing bloody mayhem. And surely not the ongoing reminders of Oct. 1, 2017 in Las Vegas that repeat the anxiety that six therapists haven’t solved.
Reluctantly, the deadliest mass shooting in American history isn’t just a paragraph or two in Cantrell’s biography, it’s a terminally emotional tattoo.
“It is part of me now,” Cantrell said. “It has changed my life.”
Cantrell, the headline speaker at Saturday’s 4th Annual Women’s March Napa Valley, was well aware of gun violence before that horrific attack on a country music concert at the Madalay Bay Hotel that killed 58 people and wounded hundreds — as a former broadcast journalist for KOMO-TV in Seattle, “I covered a lot of death and destruction,” Cantrell said. “That’s why I hate guns and violence in general” — but she didn’t become a devoted crusader for tighter gun restrictions until after the first-hand experience.
Not that she never acknowledged America’s plethora of mass shootings, including the 2016 nightclub massacre in Miami that left 49 dead that “hit me very heard, I never thought ‘it won’t happen to me.’ I’ve never been someone to say, ‘Not in my backyard.’ But it wasn’t until I was actually in it did I understand the magnitude,” Cantrell said.
While people can discuss mass shootings ad nauseum, “it’s impossible to understand unless you’ve been through it,” Cantrell said, “which is why so many don’t get involved in the movement until they’re personally affected.”
Formally the director of communications and marketing for the nonprofit Seafair festival, Cantrell is directs of The World Trade Center Seattle responsible for business development, strategic planning and marketing.
Her colleagues were “so incredible in trying to help me heal,” Cantrell said in a previous interview.
Some friends, however, were baffled.
“They didn’t know what to say or how to act around me,” Cantrell said. “I’ve lost some friends who just don’t understand why more than two years later, I am still affected by it.”
As for pursuing the right post-traumatic event counseling, “that’s been really tough. When I arrived home, I was grateful that I wasn’t suicidal,” Cantrell said, unable to secure a stable connection with one therapist — she’s been to six.
Admittedly, Cantrell’s had to confront memories of more than the Las Vegas shooting. When she was a college freshman, her friend’s dad was shot and killed on campus. At a music festival in Arkansas, Cantrell had a gun held to her head.
“It’s incredibly frustrating that so many people think that more guns will solve the problem,” Cantrell said.
The Las Vegas shooting initially bonded Cantrell and her fiancé. But the strain of the shooting experience took its eventual toll. Though the couple ended up marrying in Las Vegas, they divorced last month.
“It had a lot to do with how we handled trauma differently,” said Cantrell, who hears from people after every major act of gun violence.
“Normally after shootings, I hear from those who have been shot and survived or loved ones who lost someone in the shootings,” Cantrell said. “Rarely do you hear from someone who was not shot but who are suffering from the ‘invisible wound.'”
Cantrell returned this past December to Las Vegas to hear country singer Jason Aldean finish the set that ended with gunfire in 2017. Several hundred other survivors from that tragic day attended the indoor concert.
“It was amazing,” Cantrell, acknowledging that “I would say yes, sadly” that gun violence will always exist, “but it doesn’t have to be at his level. I think our youth is our biggest hope. I think they’re going to make changes because the adults will not.”
Though she’s testified twice before the senate as a board member of Alliance for Gun Responsibility — and does again next week — Saturday’s expected crowd of around 6,000 in Napa will definitely be Cantrell’s most significant audience to hear her speak.
“I’m fine if they leave” before the speech, Cantrell laughed, granting this 30-minute phone interview between meetings Thursday afternoon.
Cantrell said she’ll “tell my story and talk about what I’ve done since” the Vegas shooting and “what other people can do” parallel to the march’s theme, “Power in Unity.”
The 4th Annual Women’s March Napa Valley is Saturday. The program begins at 10:15 am on the stage located on the street in front of the Napa County Hall of Justice, at 1125 Third St. in downtown Napa.
For more information, visit womensmarchnapavalley.org.
