A student who lived through the 1999 shooting at Columbine High School in Colorado is now a teacher at the school.
Mandy Cooke was a sophomore when two students opened fire at the school on April 20 and killed 12 of her classmates and a teacher.
Twenty years after the shooting, she's now on staff.
Cooke recently sat down with former Columbine teacher Paula Reed to discuss the lasting impact of the shooting, in a StoryCorps interview that was shared by NPR.
"You know, I never wanted to come back to Columbine to teach," said Cooke. "I know there're people out there who never stepped foot back into that building. It was hard."
Cooke didn't realize how much she was affected by being back at Columbine until a threat was made against the school.
"They put us on lockdown and I could see police coming down the street," she recalled, "nobody could get in or out of the neighborhood, and I was doing ok. But throughout the day, it just kept getting longer and longer. And then all these kids were like, 'Miss Cooke, what's going on?' And I said, 'You know, I don't know. But f--k this person. Whoever did this to us.' As you know, I don't curse at school. But I was pissed off."
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It was a huge turning point for Cooke.
"That's that moment I went right back to my 16-year-old self," she said. "I was so broken that day, I could never envision what am I doing 20 years later, or I couldn't see that far. And now looking back, I weirdly feel proud that I walk into Columbine every day. I'm doing the job that I've always wanted to do, and I get to teach some of the best kids in the world."
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At the memorial in 2019 marking two decades since the tragedy, Cooke addressed the crowd and admitted that although it's hard to put the vivid memories of that day behind her, moving forward is the only thing she can do.
"Twenty years ago seems like a lifetime ago. At other times, it feels like yesterday...," she said, according to KUNC. "I remember feeling confused walking out of Columbine thinking we were evacuating for a fire drill. Each one of us has our stories, but in the days, months, and years following April 20th, 1999, we gradually found our new normal."