Last Friday morning, Denver resident Kevin Conboy saw police racing down his street and emergency vehicles in front of his son Ian's school. He immediately texted Ian.
His first concern was that Ian might have had a diabetic episode. Ian has type-1 diabetes. But then he learned Ian's school was in lockdown.
Kevin says that when he read Ian had heard a gunshot, he went into a mental lockdown, only concerned with making sure Ian made it out of the school safe.
"That was like, boom, Columbine, Newtown," Kevin told BuzzFeed via Skype. "Nightmares from hell in my mind, for about 30 seconds."
When Kevin got to the school, those nightmarish visions subsided. He saw the calm and orderly evacuation process officials were implementing and calmed down.
Kevin shared all these texts on his blog, explaining it was his way of processing what had happened. He works as a designer for the blogging site Wordpress.
"Sharing it seemed like a natural step," Kevin said. "I hoped people would get something out of seeing the back-side of the story, one where the kid was ok."
He's happy he did, too, as the outpouring of support has been enormous. Many other parents of diabetic children have thanked him and told him how touched they were.
Since the shooting, Kevin said that the community has stayed fairly quiet, which he believes speaks to the sadly routine nature of these events nowadays.
As long as Ian was still texting him, Kevin said that he could fight back whatever fear he feeling.
