Santa Fe, New Mexico – Gwendolyn Dean Schofield wanted to live to be 100 and she was almost 100.

But on May 15, in what appeared to be one last act of kindness, Scofield and her daughter pulled over in a residential neighborhood in Farmington, New Mexico, to help a woman who had been shot indiscriminately. She got shot and she died.

“It would have stopped 10 out of 10 times in that situation,” said Scofield’s grandson Darrin Dean.

Schofield, who grew up during the Great Depression and became a teacher during World War II, was a month away from his 98th birthday. His daughter Melody Ivy, who ran a kindergarten with the catchy name “Ivy League,” was 73. The woman they stopped to help, Shirley Voita, a 79-year-old former school nurse, was a regular at morning Mass and volunteered to help people. declare taxes.

Each of them led an active professional and civic life centered on family and faith, leaving an indelible mark in a city of 50,000 people near the intersection of New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado and Utah.

They had a total of 64 grandchildren.

They were buried this week during a two-day memorial service in an area still grieving after the catastrophe. 18 year old assault It happened the night before a high school graduation ceremony, injuring six people, including two police officers. Police shot the shooter dead.

At a joint memorial service for Schofield and Ivy on Thursday, Dean looked over the crowd and said that if they were alive, her aunt and grandmother would have forgiven the shooter first.

Scofield began teaching in the remote lakeside town of Valier, Montana during a teacher shortage during World War II. There she met her first husband, weeder pilot Raymond Dean. They married in 1946 and had four children.

Ms. Schofield moved on to other teaching jobs and gravitated to small towns in Wyoming and Idaho after Raymond Dean died in the 1990s before settling in Farmington to be closer to her family. She remarried, but after 20 years, in 2020, she was widowed again.

Dean said his grandmother, affectionately called “Grandma Dean” by her 26 grandchildren, was independent. She loved gardening and growing her own food, and she always stocked up on canned food.

Dean said her grandmother was still in good health at 97. Relatives who attended her memorial service said Schofield had lived with a “loving heart without anger or criticism” and a “forgiving heart”.

Dean said the family had already discussed her 100th birthday party before the shooting.

Ivy followed in her mother’s footsteps as an educator. For decades, “Mrs. Ivy” has welcomed hundreds of Farmington children to her home, where Ivy runs the League’s kindergarten, where she has brought generations of children to kindergarten. I let you through.

Neighbor Sheldon Pickering, 42, said he grew up several houses away from the Ivy family and was often at home playing the piano whenever Ivy wanted to hear him sing.

“She really made me feel like part of the family,” Pickering said.

When Pickering became a parent, he sent his daughter and son to an Ivy League preschool where they learned to tie shoelaces and count, and Ivy taught Pickering countless lessons there. He says it changed his perspective as a parent.

At one point, Pickering recalled buying her daughter a box of gum and sending her to school, and then being embarrassed because chewing gum was prohibited. After Pickering apologized that she should have said “no” when her daughter asked for candy, Ivy reassured her parents should say yes to small things. .

“That’s what your kids will remember,” Pickering recalled Ivy said. “So say yes to small things when you can.”

Ivy and her husband, Denise, raised eight children in Farmington.

In their later years, the couple served as senior missionaries for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Ghana, according to relatives, after which they offered to help students. Ivy’s husband died last year.

Dean said Ivy and Scofield have become particularly close in recent years after Ivy let her mother move into their home.

Dean said they drove together to pick up one of Ivy’s grandchildren from school the morning of the shooting. they never arrived.

Police said the culprit did not appear to be targeting anyone. Rather, he fired indiscriminately from outside his home, then roamed the neighborhood, punching holes in cars and homes with three types of guns.A video recently released by police contained the audio of the suspected shooter urged the police to kill him.

On Friday, police released new bodies and dashcam video recounting the circumstances. Clear photo when shooting. Authorities also provided audio recordings of hundreds of frantic calls to dispatchers by witnesses to the rampage and its aftermath, including a call from one of Vojta’s daughters.

Boita, who was shot in her car, according to friends and acquaintances, began her day with morning Mass at St. Mary’s Catholic Church, which involves a deep commitment to faith and community service. It’s part of her daily routine.

Her memorial service was held at the Sacred Heart Catholic Church, where she was a member for nearly 50 years. Her relatives at Ivy and Scofield were among those who gathered in her memory.

Voita and her husband of 57 years had five children, including the current San Juan County tax assessor, 14 grandchildren and one great-grandchild.

Mary Johnson, who has been friends with Boita for 25 years through community service events and prayer groups, said Boita “did everything he could to help people.”

This included volunteering at senior centers to help residents pay their taxes and participating in anti-abortion marches. She also enjoyed skiing, tennis, pickleball, and trips to Lake Vallecito, Colorado.

Boita spoke lightheartedly about mortality and salvation, Johnson said.

“She always expressed her love for Jesus and the real need for all of us to be prepared for that moment,” Johnson said.

___

Yamato reports from Las Vegas.