Challenging school violence

Edison High School students gathered Feb. 4 for a sobering look at teen violence, with an uplifting message.

The Rachel’s Challenge assembly tells the story and legacy of Rachel Joy Scott, the first person to be killed at Columbine High School on April 20, 1999.

It has evolved into the largest school assembly program in America, and many of Rachel’s family members take the message all over the country, hoping to suppress teen violence, suicide and bullying.

Rachel was described as a devout Christian by her family, and wrote of her faith in six journals that were made public after her death.

Videotapes made by the Columbine killers showed them mocking Rachel for her faith; she was shot several times by the gunmen at point-blank range. Some stories say they asked Rachel if she still believed in God, after shooting her in the leg.

The assembly program combines grim live footage of the Columbine massacre with Rachel’s pictures, drawings and writings, as well as interviews with her friends and family.

One often-told story described how Rachel befriended a new girl in school at lunchtime, when the new girl was sitting all alone in a corner of the cafeteria. Rachel walked up and introduced herself, and asked if the girl wanted to sit with Rachel and her friends. The girl declined out of shyness, but Rachel had all of her friends move their food and backpacks to the other table to sit with the girl.

Another schoolmate, who looked and spoke differently than the other students due to a disability, said Rachel’s kindness to and defense of him when he was being bullied was the moment that saved him from a planned suicide.

“With one word we say to someone, we can change their entire life,” assembly speaker Brandie Orozco said.

“Rachel was just absolutely the wrong person to go after, in any sense,” said a boy named Brooks, who was friends with the two Columbine gunmen — but unaware of their plot.

The signs and almost prophetic words surrounding Rachel prior to and after her death were uncanny.

In her diary at the age of 16, she wrote, “This will be my last year, Lord.” She told everyone from her church youth leader to her parents and friends that she would die young but have an impact on the world. As the date of her death approached, her poetry evolved from thankful to dark.

“I’m dying, quickly my soul leaves, slowly my body withers. It isn’t suicide, I consider it homicide. The world you have created has led to my death,” one of her last poems read.

But the most striking story came from an Ohio businessman, who described himself as never being spiritual. Shortly after the events at Columbine, the man learned about Rachel while watching CNN, when he was struck by a vision of crying eyes. The tears fell down from the sky onto a rose, growing from the ground. He had no idea what the vision meant, but he located Rachel’s father, Darrell Scott, and called him.

Scott likewise had no idea what it meant, but promised to keep it in mind. Later, he was told by the police that Rachel’s backpack was ready to be picked up; it had been kept for evidence after the shootings.

After Scott picked up the backpack, riddled with bullet holes, he decided to look through it in his car. What he saw stunned him; he sat, crying, for about half an hour, he said. There at the end of Rachel’s last diary was a drawing of a pair of eyes, up in the sky, streaming tears onto a rose. The stem of the rose grew from a Columbine flower.

The day Rachel died, a teacher saw her drawing in her diary and asked about it. Rachel told her that she was inspired to draw the flower, and that she was going to be an impact on the world.

At the end of the assembly, Edison’s students watched a picture and video montage of Rachel’s life, from baby videos to a prom picture taken just before her death.

The students had been presented with five challenges based on Rachel’s life: to eliminate prejudice from their lives, dare to dream, choose positive influences, use kind words, and start a “chain reaction,” inspired by one of Rachel’s last essays. Orozco urged them to close their eyes and think of the five to six people closest to them. She then told the students to go in the next three days to each of them, and tell them exactly what they felt about them.

“This will start a chain reaction,” she said.

Afterward, students flooded to sign a banner and pledge to carry on Rachel’s message of kindness, or join a training program to learn how to implement Rachel’s Challenge in their school.

“Kindness begets kindness, and it’s contagious,” Student Support Specialist Linda Temple told them.

“You could change the climate of this school.”

CANDICE BAKER may be reached at (714) 966-4631 or at candice.baker@latimes.com.