10/21/2026
Since Thursday shattered our community, I’ve struggled with feeling lost, alone, and vulnerable. I was in Oklahoma when a text pierced my naive “safety” bubble and burned it to the ground.
I have tried my best to come up with words to say “I’m so sorry for your loss,” but everything falls miserably short. How could anything sufficiently say “I’m so sorry you will never hug your baby again?” There’s no amount of “you’re in our thoughts and prayers” that heals the parents of the babies lost (including Megan’s parents- she was their baby, too), or that takes back the fear that parents held in their throats for the hours they were separated from their kids, and the fear of those who love the survivors who are still recovering.
I’m heartbroken for who and what our community has lost, including our sense of trust in others. But nothing I say helps… so I decided to do something.
I designed these shirts to honor our Bend community and, with input from my DI teacher friend Kolina Watts-Garcia, they help honor our community’s diversity; to remind us that we are all in this together, despite our age, school, language, and political opinions. I asked many local screen printing companies if they would be willing to create 100 shirts next-day… and N The Zone Ink delivered. RoseHaven Home Loans sponsored/paid for the first 100 shirts, and almost all were given away so fast… but now my heart has a new goal.
What if we could give a shirt to every student and teacher at Silver Rail? What about Bear Creek kids? Silver Rail kids are not the only ones who are feeling unsafe, scared, nervous and utterly wrecked. All of Bend’s kids are dealing with this, in one way or another. What if the community showed up, and everyone was wearing the same thing: showing our kids that we are here for them, we mirror them, and they are loved?
It’s a big dream… I think there are 16k kids in Bend, plus another 1k teachers. To get each of them a matching shirt would be $170k, and I’ll be honest, my company just doesn’t have that kind of money lying around. But what I can do, and what I feel like the community would support, is a Toms-like strategy: for every shirt purchased, one will be donated to a Silver Rail kiddo, until we’ve clothed them all, then move on to the other schools. In batches of 100, they each cost $10 to create, so if I charge $20 per shirt, the $10 extra would sponsor a student or teacher in Bend receiving a free shirt of their choice. (I still have some available now, but will be ordering more soon.)
Who’s in? Text me at 541-525-3391 or email me at [email protected]. Just tell me what size (kiddo or adult), language, and color you want, and let's start a movement for our kids, our familia, and our community.
