Victoria Soto was 27 years old and taught first grade at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. On the morning of December 14, 2012, an armed young man named Adam Lanza entered the building and began shooting.
In her classroom, Soto did not have much time to think. She hid as many children as she could, and when Lanza reached her door and asked where her students were, she told him they were in the gym, on the other side of the school.
They were not there. They were only a few feet from her, in silence.
The lie bought her students time. It did not buy any for her.
Some children, driven by the instinct of fear, ran out from where she had hidden them. Soto moved toward them, put her body between the bullets and the children, and died there, on that same December 14, 2012, at the school where she had spent years teaching children to read.
That day, 20 children and six adult staff members lost their lives at Sandy Hook. She was one of those six.
In 2013, she was posthumously awarded the Presidential Citizens Medal. In Stratford, her hometown, an elementary school was named after her.
Her mother, Donna, and her sister Jillian have repeated the same thing ever since. Victoria had always wanted to be a teacher, and she had always said that she would protect her children with everything she had.
That day, she proved it with the only thing she had left.
