When Markie Coffer went to the Route 91 Harvest Country festival concert in Las Vegas she was one week past her due date and was hoping that standing on her feet for multiple hours might bring on labor. Having been a woman in similar condition once, I can relate to Ms. Coffer’s predicament. One thing she did not bet on though was the massacre that concert would turn into when the shooter (whose name I REFUSE to use-we all know it by now) started raining bullets down on innocent concertgoers that night. Thankfully Ms. Coffer was with her boyfriend Travis Matheson, a former Army Specialist, when the shooting started. They crawled across the open field on their stomachs and made it to safety. Coffer’s brother, who was with them that night, caught a bullet in the shoulder but is expected to make a full recovery.

 Thankfully Coffer and Matheson had their children with them the night before but they were not with their parents at the concert the night of the shootings. When asked about what he thought when the shooting started Matheson answered that his military training simply “took over” and he told Markie that they had to get to safety. I have heard this kind of comment before when my father told me how he survived during his service in Vietnam. I am sure that Markie Coffer for one is simply thankful that Travis’s training took over and he was able to think clearly enough to get them to safety in the middle of that mayhem.

I prefer to focus on these stories of good that are coming out of that horrid event. This one, in particular, is wonderful. The Marines who helped people get to the hospital (our own Nina Bookout covered this story here), the Army soldier who plugged bullet holes with his fingers and aided people who were injured. These are the names I want to remember, not the man who shot and killed 58 people and wounded 500 others.

I want to remember the British soldiers who ran to the site and helped people by applying tourniquets and comforting some who died.  Thank God they were on the strip enjoying some R & R when they heard people running and screaming “The gunman is coming!”.

But most of all I want to remember the story of a baby boy whose mother and father survived against incredible odds to see him come into the world two days after their trip through hell. It is a reminder that even in the face of pure evil, good triumphs.