‘I’m safe. I’m okay.’: Ten minutes locked in a bathroom at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner
As chaos erupted outside the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, I found myself hiding in a restroom, texting loved ones, listening to gunfire and repeating the same words for days
“I think I’m gonna use the bathroom before everything gets started,” I whispered to my friend sitting next to me. Or at least it was something like that.
He and I strategized my best route out of the crowded ballroom, where the president sat on stage looking out upon thousands: journalists, celebrities, members of his administration and scholars.
I was invited to the White House Correspondents’ Dinner as a scholarship recipient. The tables of college students who had received the scholarship spent the 24 hours leading up to the dinner living by the saying, “hurry up and wait.”
At 6 p.m., when the WHCD reception opened, we finally stopped waiting and started enjoying ourselves. I floated around the terrace level with a glass of wine, introducing myself to anyone willing to listen.
After the reception, we went downstairs to the ballroom. Salads were laid out on hundreds of closely packed tables, but this was no time to eat.
My friend and I gawked around the ballroom, trying to spot anyone we recognized. It was a who’s who of remarkable journalists and celebrity First Amendment advocates.
We toured the ballroom. We squeezed between invitees wearing tuxedos and gowns for the better part of an hour before returning to our fellow scholars.
The event began.
I watched as the WHCA board and high-ranking White House press officials filed into their seats on the stage. I heard lukewarm applause as the vice president, first lady and president made their way to their assigned chairs overlooking everyone.
After a ceremonial start, they told us to begin eating.
Within a few minutes, I rose from my chair and searched for an escape route to the bathroom.
It took me two or three minutes just to leave the ballroom. When I broke free from the main room, I ascended the stairs back to the terrace level. I knew I had spotted a women’s restroom next to the walk-through metal detectors.
Without thinking much, I walked to the far end of the restroom and picked a stall.
A minute or so later, I heard commotion break out on the other side of the bathroom door. Two women rushed in, and I could hear their terror, even though I couldn’t make out what they were saying.
The chaos mounted within seconds. I heard someone yell something to the effect of, “Stay quiet and stay locked inside.”
“Do not come out.”
I knew my parents were watching C-SPAN’s live coverage of the event 1,500 miles away. I texted them immediately.
POP! POP! POP!
There could have been more or less, but all I heard was something loud, unfamiliar and close.
After a couple of minutes of quivering in my stall, I poked my head out and whispered, “What’s going on?”
My tearful face met a woman in a TSA jacket looking at me from a few stalls down.
“Do you want me to tell you the truth, or do you want me to lie?” she asked.
And I knew. I told her to tell me the truth anyway, but I knew.
She told me someone had barreled through the metal detectors and run through the group of TSA agents, Secret Service officers and police.
He was right outside. He had a gun.
I didn’t know anything at that moment. My phone was barely connecting, and all I could think was, “I don’t want to die like this.”
I called my friend in the ballroom, but the only words we could make out were “I’m safe.”
It was nearly 10 minutes from the time I entered the bathroom until officers finally flooded in and started yelling for us to follow them out of the hotel.
I exited the bathroom and was guided to the left, but a one-shoed Wolf Blitzer to my right was distracting me.
When we got outside, the cold pricked my skin. I couldn’t tell if the shaking was from the 50-degree air or my nervous system working overtime.
I called my parents the second we were ushered outside to the driveway. I stood between the hotel and Secret Service vans.
I don’t remember what my parents said or what we talked about.
Fear was pulsing through me, holding me back from absorbing any actual information my family had learned by that point.
Over the next 45 minutes, those of us in the restroom were pushed farther from the hotel as law enforcement’s perimeter grew.
Helicopters whirred overhead. My senses were overloaded. My phone was getting messages from anyone I had ever spoken to. I switched between answering texts and taking phone calls.
“I’m safe.”
“I’m okay.”
It’s been four days, and I’m still saying those words — even if only to myself.