My editor’s notes generally recount fun little stories, usually about something that happened along the route of making the magazine you are holding, something to entice you to keep reading. This time, I’m struggling to find the lighthearted words I need to paint a bright and sunny picture of our state. In the final days of producing our Summer 2025 Icons Issue, a mass shooting unfolded on the campus of my alma mater, Florida State University, in Tallahassee leaving two people dead, six injured, and thousands of students and staff traumatized.

It was just another Thursday afternoon when my phone started blowing up with texts. 

“Luke is on lockdown next to the student union. Active shooter,” my best friend messaged me about her oldest son, a freshman.

Seconds later, my daughter, who is a high school senior here in Ponte Vedra, texted me. “Did you hear about the FSU active shooter? It’s really bad.” Almost in real time, videos were circulating on social media of victims lying shot on the ground before the breaking news had even made its way to the homepage of CNN. “Idk if you want to watch those, Mom,” she wrote.

Frantic status reports and Facebook posts from friends and neighbors letting the world know that their people were OK flooded my phone and my social media feed all afternoon. 

Flamingo had our own people to think about. Our intern was on campus—safe but hunkered down at her sorority house. One of our Flamingo columnists, an FSU English professor, was on lockdown in her classroom for three hours.

This isn’t the first time I’ve watched helplessly from the Flamingo offices as one of the institutions of my youth was ravaged by a gunman. I graduated from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in 1995, 23 years before the tiny South Florida town of Parkland would become a household name and David Hogg and X González (born Emma González) would emerge as national voices in the March for Our Lives movement.

I didn’t hear the gunshots or barricade inside a classroom, but I still carry the emotional weight of them in my own way.
—Jamie Rich

At the time, Governor Rick Scott responded by signing the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Act into law. It brought about positive legislative changes, like raising the minimum age to purchase a firearm and enacting red flag laws meant to keep guns out of the hands of those deemed a danger to themselves or others.

But some of those protections are now being reconsidered or rolled back. Meanwhile, horrible things keep happening.

In fact, some of the current students at FSU also lived through the Douglas attack in 2018, when 17 people lost their lives. It’s hard for me to talk about this topic with people because it’s so politically polarizing. It’s hard to find words more meaningful to say than, “it’s awful” or “it’s sad.” It’s like living in a state of numbness, not allowing myself to fully emote. After all, I wasn’t at the shootings. I didn’t hear the gunshots or barricade inside a classroom, but I still carry the emotional weight of them in my own way. 

Every parent’s worst fear is losing a child—mine is losing a child in a school shooting. I’m not the kind of person to let fear rule my life, but I’m constantly badgered by the question: What should I do? I want something to change so we can all feel safer. Over the years, I’ve marched, written letters, donated—and tried to prepare my own children. They now carry Kevlar shields in their backpacks. I know other friends have taken different paths toward the same goal: wanting to feel like we’ve done something. Yet it never feels like enough.

By the time this print magazine lands in subscribers’ homes, a month will have passed since the FSU shooting, and the news cycle will have moved on. Unfortunately, it’s only a matter of time before it happens again somewhere else. Today, what I’m doing is simply sharing—sharing my thoughts as an alumna of FSU and MSD, sharing my fears as a mom and sharing my heartbreak as a Floridian. To that end, I’d love to hear from you. Tell me how these events are impacting you and your loved ones and what you are doing to bring about positive change. We all need the space to connect as human beings.

To email Jamie, send letters to jamie@flamingomag.com.

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For more letters from Editor in Chief Jamie Rich, click here.

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