The mother of a child slain in the Texas school shooting works as a writer for the local newspaper and has requested that her late daughter’s obituary be written by her editor.
After her 10-year-old daughter Lexi was one of 19 students slain at Robb Elementary School on Tuesday, Kimberly Rubio texted Craig Garnett, owner and publisher of the Uvalde Leader-News, asking if she could write a memorial to her.
‘Can I have two pictures?’ Kimberly said, according to Garnett. ‘You can have a whole page,’ the publisher claims he told Kimberly.
Earlier in the piece, Garnett paid tribute to Kimberly saying that he invited her to apply for a job as a reporter with the twice-weekly newspaper while she was working as a receptionist.
Garnett said: ‘I said, ‘You know, if you love to read that much, you can write.’ And, by gosh, she didn’t let us down.’
One of the many tragic stories to emerge from Uvalde, Texas, this week centered around Kimberly and her husband Felix, a deputy with Uvalde County Sheriff’s Office.
The couple had been at the school for an awards ceremony in which their daughter was named to the honor roll and given the school’s good citizen award a short time before Salvador Ramos began his massacre.
Not long after the attack began, Felix Rubio would be back at the school in a professional capacity as a sworn officer with the Uvalde County Sheriff’s Department.
The image of Felix attempting to console his wife as they learned that their daughter had been killed was beamed across the world.
Later, Felix said in an interview that he was at the school when Ramos was killed by a border patrol agent.
The New Yorker’s Rachel Monroe wrote that she arrived to visit the newspaper’s office shortly after staff learned that Kimberly’s daughter was among those who were killed.
Monroe described the atmosphere at the newspaper as ‘stricken.’
At the beginning of May 2022, Kimberly received an award in leadership from St. Mary’s University in San Antonio. While in March 2022, Kimberly was the recipient of the 2022 Alice Franzke Non-Traditional Student Scholarship Award at the school.
In a profile on St. Mary’s website, Kimberly is described as pursuing a history degree. She is referred to as an award-winning journalist, having won prizes with South Texas Press Association for work as a reporter and editor with the Uvalde Leader-News.
On her Instagram profile, Kimberly features a quote from author Elizabeth Stone that reads: ‘Making the decision to have a child is momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body.’
In the aftermath of the shooting, Felix and Kimberly Rubio sat down for an interview with ABC News.
Kimberly explained in the interview that she was at her job at the Uvalde Leader-News when she heard talk on a radio scanner about police activity at Robb Elementary School.
During the same interview, Kimberly said that the couple rejected the opportunity to meet with Texas Governor Greg Abbott.
Kimberly said: ‘My Lexi doesn’t even like him.’ She added: ‘It’s not what Lexi would have wanted.’
The couple also went into their stance on gun reform saying: ‘There’s no reason for just an average citizen to have these types of weapons. What for? What do you need them for? Is it worth my kid? These kids?’
Felix said that he thought that some in his department would turn against him for supporting gun reform laws.
Kimberly wrote on Facebook after posting the image of her family following the award ceremony on that fateful morning: ‘My beautiful, smart, Alexandria Aniyah Rubio was recognized today for All-A honor roll. She also received the good citizen award. We told her we loved her and would pick her up after school. We had no idea this was goodbye.’
She would later tell ABC News that she feels that the parents should have signed their daughter out of school following the awards ceremony.
Kimberly said: ‘It wasn’t done on purpose, but it’s still a mistake because I made it, otherwise she’d be home with me. I left my baby at that school.’
This was echoed when Kimberly and Felix were asked about the fact that Ramos’ rampage was allowed to continue on for 77 minutes before he was engaged.
Kimberly said: ‘I have enough ‘what ifs’ on my end, so I am not interested in reading about somebody else’s mistakes, because I already have to live with my own.’
The parents earlier told CNN in an interview: ‘She was kind, sweet, and appreciated life. She was going to be an all-star in softball and had a bright future, whether it’s sports or academic. Please let the world know we miss our baby.’
Felix also told the network in a tear-filled interview: ‘All I can hope is that she’s just not a number. This is enough. No one else needs to go through this. We never needed to go through this, but we are.’