Thursday marks 40 years since one of the country's first-ever mass shootings, which occurred at a San Ysidro McDonald's. On July 18, 1984, a gunman shot 40 people, killing 21 and injuring 19 others.
NBC 7 spoke with survivors, including a man who was working in the kitchen and later became a San Diego police officer because of that day. He said he gained a purpose to protect the community and hopes sharing his story will remind everyone of the devastating loss of life that still appears to be a present challenge in the country today.
There's no sign of the McDonald's that once stood on San Ysidro Boulevard, just a memorial honoring the 40 people impacted 40 years ago. The victims included an infant, families and McDonald’s employees.
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Wendy Flanagan, 57, was 17 years old at the time and was staying a few minutes after her actual shift to help when things got busy. But then it turned deadly.
She didn’t immediately process that a gunman had walked into the dining room and began shooting just after 4 p.m.
“I was coming back with the ice to put in the bin when I heard the first shot and saw into the dining room,” Flanagan recalled. “The girl that was at the cash register with me, Maggie ... She saw that I was not running, and she went behind me and she was pushing me the whole way as I ran."
Flanagan has spent a great deal of her life struggling with what happened next. At times, she told NBC 7, she turned to drugs and suicide attempts to block it all out.
"I imagined I was running through rain. I felt like I was running through rain. And I heard bing, bing, bing, because I believed now he was shooting with the machine gun, and he was shooting at us, and the bullets were ricocheting all over,” Flanagan said. “And then Maggie got really heavy, and she was keeping me from running, so she slipped from my arm, and I ran down the stairs into a closet, and she never came.”
But her colleague, Alberto Leos, came, and he was begging to let him in the closet. He had been shot five times while in the kitchen.
“I grabbed the shoelaces, and I used them as tourniquets to slow the bleeding down a bit, and I grabbed a cloth and bit on it. And as I’m biting on the cloth, and I’m seeing the blood coming out of my body, and I’m getting dizzy. And I’m starting to get the feeling that I might not make it, and so I just said a quick little prayer,” Leos said. “'God I just want to see my family one more time, and then you can take me away, and take me with you. But if you don’t take me with you, I’m gonna do something good with my life, something positive.'"
Officers eventually shot and killed the shooter and found the group in the closet. Flanagan recounts how the officers led them out through the horrific scene in a single file. While holding on to the person in front of her, she realized how lucky she was.
“I looked and saw there were a pile of bodies, and I saw the McDonalds uniforms. They were just thrown with the bodies everywhere. It was horrible, and then I realized that Maggie was being shot as she was shielding me,” Flanagan said.
Leos woke up a few days later in the hospital with his family by his side. That was the beginning of his journey to become a San Diego police officer, and later captain. He said it was a way to honor the community that helped he and his family recover.
“That was the changing moment of my life of what had happened. I wanted to be a protector. Protect the community, and help people,” Leos said.
Flanagan is using therapy to heal from those traumatic memories and overcome survivor's guilt.
“If I can help somebody else with something that I may have learned from that incident, here I am. I’m willing, and I’m grateful," Flanagan said.
The McDonald's was bulldozed shortly after the shooting and replaced with something else. But that doesn’t change anything for the survivors.
“I can still see the McDonald's there. I remember everything like it happened yesterday,” Leos said.
On this July 18 — 40 years later — he asks that we do, too.
This Thursday and Friday, Flanagan and Leos will be at Reading Cinemas Town Square in Clairemont. The 2016 documentary film "77 Minutes," which focuses on the San Ysidro McDonald's massacre, will be playing there from July 18 to July 25.
