A woman from California is crediting a Kevin Sears with saving her life during the mass shooting in Las Vegas earlier this month.
Last Friday Deena Hancock Chapman from Temecula, California put out a nation-wide Facebook post searching for a man and woman from Vancouver, Canada.
“My goal in finding this man was to make sure he and his wife were alive and if so to thank him for my life,” Chapman told the Tribune Wednesday.
In her Facebook post, Chapman used a still photograph taken from a video of the crowd at the concert. It had a large red circle drawn around Sears who was wearing a cowboy hat.
“A high school friend who works at Jimmy Kimmel was able to pull out the still that helped me find him,” Chapman said. “I randomly found the video. It was contained in one of the FB Route 91 survivor groups.”
Sears said before the concert he and Coleen talked with Chapman and told her they had 17 and 20 year old sons back home.
“She was joking that they were going to throw a party at our house,” he said.
Chapman said within 10 minutes of posting on Facebook, her friends found Kevin’s GoFundMe page, as well as a print article and a video interview featuring him.
“The picture that was posted in the print article was the picture of Kevin, Coleen and their friends that I had taken of them that night as we met before Jason Aldean began playing.”
She messaged him on Facebook and then at midnight she called him on the phone and they talked for an hour.
During their conversation Chapman told Sears she was very glad that he and Coleen were OK and happy she had connected with him, Sears said.
“We are both healing,” he added. “She was shot in the shoulder. The bullet went down into her chest cavity and she still has the bullet lodged in her.”
After the phone call, Chapman updated her Facebook post to say she’d found Sears and the post went viral, Sears added.
“There has been lots of chatter on social media and talk that I’m some kind of a hero for saving their friend, sister or daughter,” Sears said as he insisted he just did what any normal guy would do. “I wasn’t even jumping in front of any bullets. I was just protecting them and took one for the team. It is what it is.”
In an earlier interview Friday, Sears told the Tribune when a second barrage of shots came upon them during the concert a lady behind him said she felt like she was shot so he went to help her out.
“A third barrage of shots came upon us and that’s when I got hit,” he said.
Chapman, however, said Sears shielded her head with his torso while they were both shot at.
Sears grew up in Williams Lake and still has some family there.
“I have lots of Tribune clippings from me in the past as I was one of the boxers with coach Leif Albrechtsen for about 10 years,” he said. “I was one of the scrappy-type guys up there in Williams Lake.”
The couple usually visits Williams Lake two or three times a year, however, the wildfires prevented a summer visit and they were thinking of visiting for Thanksgiving until he was injured in the shooting.
Chapman said she told Sears and Coleen to start conspiring about a reunion.
“There is, of course, a great deal of healing that needs to still happen,” she added.
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