Jim Goodman and his dance partner Hattie Pong were dancing up a storm Sunday night. Never mind, for the moment, the 9-mm bullet still lodged in Goodman’s back, too close to a kidney to remove. Never mind the emotional and physical trauma that Pong suffered after that day a year ago.
That’s when Goodman, a retired San Gabriel cop, stepped in to protect others, including Pong, from the bullets.
And yet, one year later, there they were at an Alhambra restaurant on Sunday night, with dozens of survivors of the Monterey Park mass shooting on Jan. 21, 2023. Smiling. Dancing. Remembering their lost friends. Perhaps a little bit of healing with every twirl. With every beat. With every step.
They are among the many survivors of the shooting who gathered Sunday at World Seafood Restaurant evening to celebrate their “rebirth” on the one-year anniversary of the shooting.
It was the culmination of a day of remembering 11 of their friends who died in the shooting, a day that included a candlelight vigil at Monterey Park City Hall. But even amid the vigil’s solemnity and the lingering psychological trauma of what happened, many survivors embrace ballroom dance as a healing force.
That was clear on Sunday night.
“When the shooting happened, I was 10 feet away from the shooter, I’m one of the lucky men,” said survivor Lloyd Gock, who organized the event with Eric Chen, a pastor from San Gabriel.
After the tragedy, Gock formed a group of around 30 to 40 survivors who “are as traumatized” as he was. Throughout last year, the group met in regular meetings to support one another and to navigate the aftermath, he said.
“At the beginning, I said to myself, if we make it through the year, we are all going to celebrate together,” Gock said. “So tonight, I’m seeing a lot of people out here that were there that night, and to see them dancing here again, that’s the message, the positive message: Nothing can kill our spirit for dancing.”
On that night…
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