The holidays couldn’t have arrived soon enough for Sammy Edmonds, who will soon be enjoying the comforts of home among her loving family.
Not that her experiences this fall have been anything less than exceptional. Edmonds, who graduated from San Marino High School in June, is attending Cal Lutheran University in Thousand Oaks, where the Business student is a member of the Regals’ softball team and enjoying her freshman year both on the field and in the classroom.
But the comfortable momentum she had assembled these past few months came crashing down on Wednesday, November 7, when, unbeknownst to Edmonds at the time, her decision to finish an assignment and skip a party just might have saved her life.
A country music aficionado and member of Cal Lutheran’s line dance club, Edmonds had planned on attending the popular College Night festivities at the Borderline Bar & Grill. Yes, the same Borderline Bar & Grill where a gunman opened fire the same night Sammy planned to be on the dance floor, killing 12, including a recent Cal Lutheran graduate.
“I was going to go,” Edmonds said this week. “I told my mom on Wednesday afternoon I was going to go if I finished my homework. As it turned out, I had to finish a paper and I ended up going to bed at 10:30.”
Edmonds was woken by her roommates at 11:45 p.m.
“They were asking if I had friends who went to Borderline,” Edmonds said. “We were panicked. I had friends texting me constantly.”
Edmonds and her friends quickly found a live stream of the news feed from Borderline, and recognized friends who were outside the bar while police and investigators scoured the place.
“We saw people we knew; someone was wearing Cal Lutheran shorts. I saw someone on television I had just seen in the dining hall that night. And now, we see them on television.”
Edmonds reported that she and her roommates was joined by several others on her floor, but with news reports and constant text messages “we barely slept.”
Classes were cancelled on Thursday and Edmonds that morning strode past news vans and camera crews to attended chapel services.
“A lot of students were there,” she said. “You could tell the people who had been at Borderline.”
Edmonds said she and most of her friends didn’t want to leave campus even though school had been called off. A few hours later, the decision would be made for her as the Woolsey Fire turned towards campus.
“We were evacuated at 1:00 a.m. on Thursday morning,” Edmonds said with an air of experience. “It wasn’t a mandatory evacuation, but we knew we might get stuck on campus if we stayed. You could see the glow of the fires nearby.”
Edmonds went to a friend’s house in Santa Clarita before she was picked up by her parents, Tracy & Scott Edmonds, who brought her back to San Marino, where she spent the weekend in peace and quiet.
“It’s amazing how much the community of San Marino reached out,” Sammy said. “I heard from people all over the country who wanted to know if I was safe. [SMHS counselor] Mrs. [Mollie] Beckler reached out. The school psychologist at San Marino High School even called in my brother to make sure he was OK. Everyone has been so supportive.”
Some who are mutual friends of Edmonds’ were injured in the attack, most suffering cuts and bruises as they jumped to safety through broken windows. She has a shirttail connection to Justin Meek, the Cal Lutheran alumnus and former water polo player who worked as a security guard at Borderline and was killed by the gunman. Witnesses have reported that Meek was heroically breaking windows and steering others to safety when he was shot.
Edmonds reported that as many as 200 Cal Lutheran students were at Borderline that night.
“When you say Wednesday night, we think college night at Borderline,” she said. “It is very popular.”
Sammy returned to school on Monday, November 12, but not all the bad vibes had been escorted off campus.
“CLU just can’t catch a break,” Edmonds wrote to this reporter in an email the next morning. “We got an alert at 9:50 saying we were on lockdown due to a bomb threat across the street from campus.”
Bad luck comes in threes. And in a five-day period, Edmonds experienced a mass shooting, a wildfire and a bomb threat.
Sadly, even for a generation raised with active shooter drills and lockdown procedures, students live under the constant threat of such atrocities.
“It’s so sad that we now think this is normal,” Edmonds told The Tribune. “To be scared to go to school, to be sacred to go class, it’s ridiculous. It should be a safe place. I should never have to call my mom and tell her there has been a mass shooting. It is so sad.”
She did say that the campus administration has reacted well, in her opinion, under trying circumstances. “They have done a great job,” Edmonds said. “I feel very safe on campus. It is like a second family. I loved the vibe when I visited here and these circumstances have brought us together even more.”
Edmonds checks in regularly with fellow Class of 2018 graduates Dillon Goldsmith and Michael Shahan, both of whom live in her building. She has also found a friend in Meghan Henry who, ironically, was a softball opponent up the road at La Cañada High School.
“She’s like my big sister,” Edmonds said of her new teammate. “And I can tell you this…we are ready for break.”
