Matt Gentry | The Roanoke Times

Kristina Anderson looks at a brochure in a glass case at the April 16 Memorial on the Virginia Tech Drillfield. Anderson, who has embarked on a tour to talk about her experiences, has spoken to CEOs, American Red Cross workers and school officials. She gave speeches in Washington, New York and Finland during her spring break last month.

The Roanoke Times | File April 2007

Kristina Anderson is carried out of Norris Hall by police on April 16, 2007. Anderson was in and out of consciousness after being shot twice in the back but remembers feeling cold when police placed her on the grass.

BLACKSBURG -- Kristina Anderson can finally talk in detail about the worst day of her life.

Some moments are difficult to recall and some memories she won't share -- things she said she wants to keep for herself. But she discovered that talking about April 16, 2007, is a way to gain control over a senseless and horrifying event.

The Virginia Tech senior can rattle off a series of memories that stick in her mind from the morning Seung-Hui Cho killed 32 people in two shootings before turning the gun on himself.

Waving to her friend Ross Alameddine as she and Colin Goddard came into French class late and took their seats in the back of 211 Norris Hall.

The shot that would have killed her had it been 3 inches lower. Instead it passed over her head and hit the wall, knocking debris on her arm.

The cold and sleepiness that overcame her as, shot twice in the back, she leaned against a chair.

The police officer standing over her, changing her triage status from "yellow" to "red." She wanted to argue with his assessment but didn't have the strength to speak.

Talking about that day has helped her heal. And Anderson said she feels compelled to help others by talking about the days since, as she reflects on the tragedy and continues her emotional recovery.

"I learned a lot from this," she said. "A lot of life lessons."

She's passing on those lessons -- advocating both practical safety measures and personal reflections about life -- through the Koshka Foundation. She and her family started it in late 2007 to promote school security, remember those lost on April 16 and inspire others facing challenges.

Koshka means "little kitten" in Russian -- a term of affection Anderson's mother, Inessa Anderson, still uses for her. Kristina Anderson was 8 in 1995 when they moved to the United States from Ukraine.

"I'm only 21. People have been through much worse things," she said. "I still have my whole life ahead of me. But if I can give someone a little bit of inspiration, you know? Because something bad will happen to you."

Anderson gave her first public speeches about the shootings during a busy spring break in March that took her to New York, Washington and Finland. She spread the word about her foundation and shared her thoughts on school safety with law enforcement officials, school leaders, CEOs and American Red Cross workers.

Anderson's safety message is a bottom-up approach to security. By training students and faculty in how to respond to emergencies -- everything from dorm fires to physical attacks -- they'll be empowered to react and prevent further tragedy.

She said she thinks Tech officials should have alerted people sooner about the first shooting in West Ambler Johnston Hall on April 16 and is glad they have adopted measures to alert students more quickly, such as installing electronic message boards. But warnings aren't very effective if those receiving them don't know how to respond.

"If this happened again, honestly, I don't know what would be different at Virginia Tech," she said.

The other half of her message is an appreciation for life and of each day's value. This includes obvious things people take for granted, such as a loving family, as well as more mundane moments.

"I'll be in traffic and I'm, like, so happy," she said. "I'll sit there and think about how grateful I am to be able to do this."

It's an appreciation she wants others to feel without going through what she did.

Recovery

Anderson had emergency surgery the day of the shootings to remove her gall bladder and most of her left kidney. The damage to her core affected her balance.

A bullet had also ricocheted into her foot. An avid runner, she has progressed from standing to walking to jogging. She still has occasional stomach problems and has to monitor her diet because of the loss of her gall bladder, but otherwise she is fully recovered.

The route to her emotional recovery wasn't so direct.

It didn't begin in earnest until December 2007 -- some eight months after Cho killed her professor and 11 classmates in that French class. Back at Tech for fall semester, she was happy to be back with friends and turned down offers to speak with counselors.

She had moments of anxiety and moodiness, was scared of loud noises and didn't like being alone or in the dark. Still, she thought she was doing OK.

But one Sunday night in December, she found herself sobbing in her Blacksburg apartment. She still has no idea what triggered it. She thought she was losing her mind.

"That scared me because I'm not a person who cries for no reason," she said.

Anderson met with a counselor at Tech's Cook Counseling Center the next day. It didn't go well. The counselor didn't know she had been in Norris during the shootings. The banging from construction outside of the center frightened her.

Tech's Office of Recovery and Support found her a Blacksburg therapist -- Jane Keppel-Benson. She still sees her regularly.

Anderson cried during every therapy session at first. She would show up late because she hated going. Keppel-Benson made her talk about the shootings and used the analogy of a trash can overfilled with garbage to explain to Anderson why she needed to talk.

"It never occurred to me that I was secretly still, like, holding back all these feelings and emotions that were never expressed until I had this like, basically, this breakdown," she said.

The therapy became the highlight of her week and her friends notice she's in a better mood after a session.

Her friend, Tech senior John Welch, jokingly refers to therapy as "probs", short for "problems" as in, "Did you go to probs today?" Anderson likes the term because it makes it seem less serious.

Tough questions

Anderson is a good-natured, optimistic person who's quick to laugh -- attributes her stepfather, Eric Anderson, said she's always had.

"It's not like it changed who she was," he said. "She's always been a very brave, very generous, very diplomatic, very courageous and very loving person. She's always been that way. When someone goes through such a crisis their true colors get to shine brighter."

Anderson was Kristina Heeger at the time of the shootings but has since taken her stepfather's last name. She has known him for more than a decade and refers to him casually as "my dad."

Kristina Heeger gained fame not just as a victim but as the student shown being carried out of Norris in one of the iconic photos of the tragedy. The image was sent all over the world and was one of the first things Anderson saw when she awoke from surgery. She recognized herself on the small television in the corner of the hospital room. She was on CNN.

In addition to her work with the Koshka Foundation, Anderson is president of Students for Non-Violence at Virginia Tech. The group was formed in affiliation with Tech's Center for Peace Studies and Violence Prevention, created after the shootings and led by Jerzy Nowak. The Tech horticulture professor lost his wife, Jocelyne Couture-Nowak, in the shootings. She was Anderson's French teacher.

Welch, who is also an officer in Students for Non-Violence, said he could see the stress on Anderson's face when they went to dinner early this semester. He knows that despite her chipper disposition she is sometimes just putting on a happy face for others.

Work with her foundation and the new student organization -- which is bringing in "Three Cups of Tea" author Greg Mortensen to speak at Tech on Wednesday and raising money for "Pennies for Peace" -- has been wearing on her as the anniversary draws near.

Anderson will be prominently involved in several of the university's anniversary events, as she was last year.

She described the feeling of the first anniversary as "heavy" but said she's looking forward to the second anniversary to see how the community has progressed and come together over the past year.

Welch knew Anderson before the shootings and said her personality and sense of humor haven't changed. But her drive has.

"She's very invested in what she's doing now," he said. "Her priorities have changed a bit."

Anderson said she realizes her work has led people to identify her with the shootings, but there are some questions she doesn't appreciate. She doesn't use Cho's name and doesn't like questions about whether she's forgiven him, become religious or blamed God for what happened.

Other people have admitted to Googling her after hearing about her experience. One person, doubting that she was shot, asked to see her scars. She prefers the term "victim" to "survivor" because every person who experienced the shootings was a victim.

"It does really bother me when people use words like, 'lucky' or 'thankful.' I mean, I am thankful and I was lucky but I also faced the reality of it," she said. "And I saw people around me who were not as lucky. And so I can never attribute anything -- I mean, those words almost imply that I did something. And I didn't do anything. The complete randomness of it is still something I can't get over."

Speaking in public

Talking to her therapist about April 16 and speaking in public are two very different things. Anderson said she was nervous as she prepared for her three spring break trips. Two speeches were scheduled for March 5.

The first was in Nanuet, N.Y., as part of the National Student Safety Summit. Nowak was the keynote speaker and Anderson spoke about school safety and the aftermath of violence to a group of law enforcement and school officials.

The second speech that day, in Washington, was a more personal recollection of the events and how they affected her.

When she wrote a draft of the speech she left a gap in her timeline from about 8 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. on April 16. The shooting in Norris began shortly after 9:30 a.m. and lasted fewer than 15 minutes.

Anderson's mother encouraged her to go back and include the difficult parts. The most difficult things for her to discuss involve her mother.

Anderson called out her mom's phone number as she was about to go into surgery and told someone to call her. Inessa Anderson received the call while at a dry cleaner in Northern Virginia. The doctor told her that her daughter had been shot and needed to go into surgery immediately. Her knees gave out under her.

"Me not being able to call my mom is one thing I can't let go. I wish I was able to tell her I was OK," Kristina Anderson said. "I haven't forgiven myself for that. You think, 'What if? What if I had died?' "

She rehearsed the speech on her drive home from Blacksburg at the start of spring break, crying most of the way. When it was time to give the speech, she realized she couldn't look at her family without choking up. She opened the speech with a joke, imploring the audience not to "Google her," and focused on a man near the front who was an active listener, nodding as she spoke.

She took the audience through the day of the shootings and her recovery, which she admitted is still continuing. She closed with what she thinks is the biggest lesson she took away from the shootings.

"Whatever control you might think you have in your life, whether in personal or business or just getting here tonight, is an illusion," she said. "But your outlook on life, the way you react to things, that will be the guiding light."

Those are the words that appear in the written draft of her presentation. Anderson said something to that effect but doesn't know if that's exactly what she said.

She had disregarded her notes a couple of minutes into her presentation and just told her story.