Instructor-coach went from room to room, warning others about gunmen in hallway

By Charley Able
Denver Rocky Mountain News Staff Writer

Heroes continue to emerge from the Columbine saga.

Take Robin Ortiz — special education teacher, baseball coach, junior varsity softball coach.

He braved gunfire that day, going from classroom to classroom, alerting students and teachers to the danger and evacuating them as shots rang out behind him.

In statement after statement, students told investigators that Ortiz had sounded a warning.

"Mr. Ortiz told the students in class, 'They have a gun, they have a gun, get out of here as fast as you can,"' one investigator wrote.

But Ortiz said Tuesday he really didn't do much.

"I simply did what I felt I had to do at that moment," Ortiz said. "Obviously, there wasn't a lot of thought or planning that went into that. It was just react and do what I thought was right. Hopefully, it was.

"It's that simple, to be honest."

After Ortiz cleared the east side of the school, he went outside to make sure students were safe.

That's when he saw a wounded student on the ground.

Ortiz asked a deputy to summon an ambulance for the young woman, but the deputy said he could not send for one at the time.

That wasn't good enough for Ortiz. He headed for an ambulance he saw parked on South Pierce Street. At the ambulance, Ortiz said, "there was a confrontation between myself and a paramedic and a fireman."

The ambulance crew had not been cleared to move to the site.

"I had an injured student that I was trying to tend to, and I needed them," he said. "But ... I didn't take the time to consider they needed to be cleared to enter into the perimeter the police were trying to establish.

"That just added to my frustration."

A deputy quickly found a way to divert the coach, handing him road flares and asking him to help divert traffic from the busy triage area.

"It was probably their way of keeping me out of jail," Ortiz quipped.

Ortiz had one more stop to make: Leawood Elementary School, where anxious parents waited to be reunited with their children.

By chance, Ortiz met up with his wife at the school. Fearing the worst, she had gone looking for him. The couple comforted parents — parents who had kids in Ortiz's classes.

"We spent time with them, just trying to help them get through the situation," Ortiz said, noting that his faith helped get him through that day and the days since.

Still, Ortiz shuns the role of hero, preferring instead to praise other teachers.

"I think something that needs to be made very clear is ... the teachers work hard, they put a lot of themselves into it and they do care about the kids," he said.