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CEDAR CITY — Jason Aldean was about to go on stage Sunday night, but Chanel LaCroix had a job interview Monday morning.
LaCroix and three friends celebrating their college graduation at the country music festival were discussing how late to stay when they first heard gunfire. They believed it was erupting somewhere else on the Las Vegas Strip.
"But we realized people started falling around us, and it was coming from above us, that we were the target," recounted LaCroix, 24, a Southern Utah University master’s student.
Moments later, bullets ripped into her hand and thigh.
On Wednesday evening, LaCroix’s campus held a somber vigil honoring the 58 slain and roughly 500 injured by a gunman firing from a high-rise hotel window.
Cedar City’s Heather Alvarado was among those killed by Stephen Paddock, 64, of Mesquite, Nevada.
LaCroix was recovering at home in Overton, Nevada, on Wednesday and couldn't be at the vigil. Her hand hurt, she said, but the pain medication was working.
Her survival, she said in a Wednesday interview, "is definitely a blessing."
At the university a 2 ½-hour drive north of Las Vegas, about 350 students gathered on the lawn as administrators urged unity and support.
“The fabric of Cedar City and SUU runs through Las Vegas,” said Mindy Benson, vice president of alumni, noting that many SUU students come from Las Vegas and droves of graduates go on to live and work there. “This hits close to home.”
Many in the crowd of mostly students exchanged hugs and held tealight candles in cupcake wrappers. Some held posters reading “Vegas Strong,” and others pet a pair of therapy Great Danes named Cajun and Diezal. Some simply wept.
On Sunday, as a torrent of bullets rained over the music festival, a gunshot ripped into the pinky edge of LaCroix's right hand and another through her left thigh.
Morgan Palmer saw her injured friend and threw herself on top of LaCroix to shield her. The two didn't know whether to stay put or run. LaCroix bolted toward the airport, dialing her mother.
At 10:16 p.m. Sunday, Julie LaCroix was mostly asleep and passed the ringing phone to her husband, who was sitting up in bed, she said. He put the call on speaker and heard her daughter screaming that she was bleeding, that she was running toward the airport and that she loved them.
"I heard her voice and shot straight up," Julie LaCroix said.
She and her husband called a cousin in Las Vegas and started driving south.
Chanel LaCroix didn't realize until she was crouched behind an airplane air conditioning unit in a hangar at McCarran International Airport that the bone in her hand was exposed. She had lost track of Palmer, who at the time was fashioning a T-shirt tourniquet for another woman in their group who had been shot in the leg, she said.
LaCroix returned home Tuesday after spending a day in the hospital. She and several others at the hangar early Monday morning were shuttled to Sunrise Hospital and Medical Center in Las Vegas, where she and her friend with a shattered tibia received care, and she met up with her remaining friend and parents.
The group had planned the trip as a celebration after graduating months earlier from Dixie State University in St. George, and were staying with a fifth friend who lived in Las Vegas but didn’t attend the concert.
We all are connected to Vegas somehow.
–Noelle Nowling
At SUU, new information is "trickling in" about students injured and affected by the shooting, said school spokeswoman Ellen Treanor. More than 800 SUU students are from Nevada.
"It just seems like it’s really close," Treanor said. No victims were mentioned by name at the gathering.
Benson, who addressed the audience at the vigil, said she has tried to stop and talk with students who are in tears as they walk through campus, but they didn’t notice her because they were wearing headphones. She and others urged students to share how they’re feeling, even if they are numb.
Savanna Loncar, a freshman, said the mood on campus was “mopey,” but the tragedy is bringing students and employees together.
Her classmate Noelle Nowling agreed. “We all are connected to Vegas somehow,” she said.
LaCroix, for her part, said she was trying to rest, work with professors to get back to her public administration schoolwork and avoid reading too much news. She said she's focused on feeling grateful. And so is her mother.
"It hits me at night when things quiet down and the phones aren’t ringing," said Julie LaCroix. "It hits me how blessed we are and how bad it could have been."
Cedar City was also mourning the death of Heather Warino Alvarado, 35, a mother of three who often went on daytrips or more extensive travel with her family.
Alvarado's husband is a firefighter. After Las Vegas metro police confirmed her death, the Cedar City Fire Department said its thoughts and prayers are with the couple's family.
"She was happiest when she was together with her family, especially her children, and would do anything for them," Albert Alvarado has said.
An account has been opened at State Bank of Southern Utah in her name. A GoFundMe account* has also been opened.
*KSL.com does not assure that the money deposited to the account will be applied for the benefit of the persons named as beneficiaries. If you are considering a deposit to the account, you should consult your own advisors and otherwise proceed at your own risk.
