"I want them to see me and be like, 'OK, she’s going to fix it. She’s going to make it better,'" said Lauren Card.
An Oregon woman who survived last October's mass shooting in Las Vegas was sworn in as a police officer earlier this week after being inspired to pursue the profession by those who saved her life.
Lauren Card, 23, said the Route 91 Harvest Country Music Festival descended into complete chaos when gunman Stephen Paddock began firing on the crowd from the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay hotel.
But what she recalls most clearly about the incident is help arriving, she told The Register-Guard.
“And in that moment, I kind of had a sense that, ‘OK, the police are here. They are going to fix it. They are going to make it better. Everything is going to be OK,’” Card said.
After the shooting, which killed 58 people and injured hundreds more, making it the deadliest in America's modern day history, Card tried to go back to college.
“At first I was having trouble focusing. I went through the initial shock stuff, like, ‘Holy crap, what just happened?’ And it was hard for awhile just to mentally process it," she said.
To cope with the intense emotions, she decided to pursue a career in law enforcement. Card was sworn in as one of the newest members of the Springfield Police Department in Oregon on Monday.
“I want to be that person for someone else in that situation," she said. "When they’re going through something crappy or going through a hard time, I want them to see me and be like, ‘OK, she’s going to fix it. She’s going to make it better.’”
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