WaPo | Two days after nine people were shot and killed at the Twin Peaks
restaurant here, Oddissie Garza can’t seem to shake a single, unnerving
thought:
“I was supposed to be there,” she told The Washington
Post on Tuesday as she lingered on her porch in a solemn mood. “That
keeps running through my mind. I was supposed to be right there at the
front where all the fighting was.”
Garza, an easygoing
18-year-old with a shock of pink hair, was often the first person
customers saw when they walked into Twin Peaks. She began working at the
new restaurant in September as a waitress and was promoted to hostess
five months later, placing her just past the front door at the
restaurant.
“It
was my first job and I was nervous in the beginning, but I found out I
had a bunch of sisters in plaid,” she said, referring to the servers’
infamous uniform. “After I got pregnant, I kept this job because of the
other girls.”
When she thinks about Sunday’s violence she is less
concerned with her own safety than the person she would have been
carrying with her. Garza is eight months pregnant with a baby boy, a
fact that may have saved her life, she said.
After a long shift
on her feet Saturday night, Garza’s legs were swelling and she asked a
co-worker if they could trade shifts the next morning.
Her
co-worker agreed. The next time she heard from anyone at the restaurant
was when they were locked in a freezer as gunfire erupted. Garza got a
call from her mother saying something — possibly a shooting — had
occurred at work. She immediately texted her friends at Twin Peaks,
hoping the rumor was some sort of joke.
