As a producer, I see terrible things every day: graphic video, images, horrifying acts of violence, but nothing has affected me like this. The massacre at Virginia Tech hit home. I only spent four years in the small mountain town, but as any Hokie will proudly tell you, that place stays with you. Those people you pass on the Drillfield or sit next to in class are your friends. As alumni you feel a strong connection with every driver you pass on the interstate with a VT in the rearview window, because you share something very special. Put simply: Hokie Pride.

I truly did not believe the numbers when I heard them yesterday afternoon; surely, someone made a mistake. Despite the abnormally high ratio of young college students to locals, there is roughly no violent crime in Blacksburg. There was never a time that I didn’t feel safe on campus. Virginia Tech feels like home.

I produce the morning show, meaning I work overnight, so my shift was over by the time these events unfolded. I spent the rest of the afternoon glued to the news coverage on TV, on the phone with friends – fellow Hokies – trying to figure it out. Then I had to go into work and figure out how to tell you about it.

School shootings are always tragic, always delicate; always require – for me – a different kind of care in writing than anything else. It was even more difficult to express this senseless rampage because I know how devastated those on the campus are because I am too. I lived on the fourth floor of West Ambler Johnston my sophomore year – the same floor where those first two murders occurred at 7:15 am, so I can eerily put myself into those students’ shoes. Today, and in the many days to come we will all share the pain of family and friends mourning the worst kind of loss.

At the TV station, we’re a bit overexposed to information; it comes at you from so many angles, it can be hard to take it all in. What stands out to me is the incredible heroism of the survivors. For people like Derek O’Dell, just 20 years old, to barricade the door with a gunshot wound to his own arm and for Professor Liviu Librescu, a holocaust survivor, to give his own life for his students to escape absolutely breaks my heart. But also gives me hope. I know that there are silent heroes working behind the scenes, comforting those in grief, and organizing memorials and supports systems. I know that my fellow Hokies will come out of this, stronger.

I don’t know any of the victims or even any current students, but I feel like I’ve lost my brothers and sisters. And I think we can say collectively, that we’ve all lost something.