AURORA | When wildfires tore through Colorado Springs last summer, Jessica Redfield Ghawi couldn’t help but want to do something.
With the help of her friends, the aspiring sports journalist collected used sports equipment for kids who lost everything in the fires, hoping to give them back some of the normalcy the fires took.
“She knew that if the children had lost their bicycles, or hockey gear or golf clubs, whatever, they were going to be suffering,” said Sandy Phillips, Ghawi’s mother.
Then, on July 20, before she could gather all the equipment and give it away, Ghawi was gunned down along with 11 others inside an Aurora movie theater.
“We just wanted to make sure that the hopes and dreams of her’s didn’t die,” Phillips said.
This weekend, Phillips, along with A Precious Child, Kroenke Sports Charities and several others are gathering used sporting goods to give to the wildfire victims and other needy Colorado children. The drive is scheduled for 7 a.m. through noon Saturday in the parking lot of the Pepsi Center in Denver. Cash donations are also accepted.
Phillips said the event is a way to honor her daughter.
“Jesse was on the brink, right on the edge of fulfilling all of her dreams and all of her hopes,” Phillips said. “To be able to say, ‘That’s one on your bucket list, honey, that we all took care of,’ that’s big, that’s huge.”
Phillips said giving sports equipment is a particularly special way to honor her daughter because the equipment will have a lasting effect on the children and their families who receive them. Ice skates, for example, they be can passed along to a sibling or another child several times.
“They really do last forever,” she said.
Carina Martin, founder and executive director of A Precious Child, said sports are also a good way for children who are going through a tough time to make friends.
“It’s so tough in school as it is to find your place and where you fit in, and sports provide that,” she said.
In the days after her daughter was slain, Phillips said she noticed that the shootings had a massive ripple effect, touching every family and every friend of the hundreds of people in the theater that night.
With Saturday’s event, she hopes to have a similar effect, touching several families in a positive way.
“The good this will do will have the same ripple effect,” she said.
Phillips said the good has already rippled out and touched another victim’s family. Tom Sullivan, whose son Alex was killed in the theater, has agreed to donate his son’s hockey equipment.
“They were both killed literally feet from each other and never knew each other,” Phillips said. “And here they both are, now helping others.”