STOCKTON, California — More than a week after 15-year old Stagg High School freshman Alycia "Lala" Reynaga was stabbed to death on campus in what Stockton Police called a "random" attack, it remains traumatizing for staff, students and first responders.
Along with high school and Stockton Unified School District counselors, clergy members were invited onto the school campus to pray with students and provide advice and support.
However, it begs the question as to how anyone connects with kids you have never met and are still in shock over the tragedy.
"One of my ways of connecting was, 'Hey, here's a bag of Takis, and I just want to show love,'" said Pastor Leon Scoggins, pastor at Stockton's Life City Church.
The youthful pastor is frequently at the aftermath of scenes of the city's most violent incidents, offering his services for those who want it.
As a way to connect with students, he borrowed an idea from a pastor friend in San Jose who used the popular chips "Takis" as a free giveaway.
Scoggins first asked his congregation the day after the stabbing to donate 100 bags of Takis. However, he quickly realized after giving them away to students at school that he could use more.
"I at least engaged with at least 500 to 600 students," Scoggins said.
He created a short video asking for donations to buy more Takis and posted it on social media. By the the end of the day, he had enough money to buy 1,000 Takis.
"After that encounter throughout the week, I was able to build a rapport with people, with the young people, with the staff as well as the students, and they would see me on campus, 'Hey pastor, how are you doing? Can you pray for me?'" Scoggins said.
Part of his message to those he counseled: some tragedies in life are simply unexpected.
"There are some things that we are not in control of, and we can only be better. We can only grow from here," he said.
Pastor Kevin White, who has 24 years as a Stockton Police chaplain, arrived on the Stagg High campus after the incident happened.
"It's one of those things you learn from experience, and I have had several years of experience in dealing with victims of crime," White said, who has been a pastor for 28 years and leads Crosstown Community Church of Stockton.
He knows first hand, having lost his brother Sgt. Timothy White of the Stockton Police Department.
In 1990, the officer was attacked, beaten into a coma and died two weeks later. White carried that experience with him when he offered his counseling expertise to students and staff at Stagg.
"Quickly found some conversations, some ways to start the conversations like saying which classroom were you in when this happened? And, did you know the student? And that gets them started talking, and once they start talking, they start unloading," White said. "One girl told me her dad was sobbing when she left for school Tuesday."
White says replaying traumatic thoughts or images in one's mind can lead to some people thinking that "they're going insane."
"One of the first things I told them is where you're at right now is not where you're going to be stuck for the rest of your life, so just know that," White said.
He also spoke to students about something he calls "brain science," and how terrible memories in the back of your mind must be dealt with in the open to help in recovery.
"When you verbalize it or when you hand-write like in a journal your thoughts and feelings about it, it moves those traumatic memories to the processing part of your brain. It's like taking a stack of papers and taking the time to file it where it goes," White said.
Of course, Stockton Unified School District counselors and counselors at the high school are also helping students deal with the trauma they experienced.
We reached out to the district requesting an interview with a Stagg counselor, but we were told, even for the counselors, it was still "too raw" to discuss.
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