AURORA, CO - Over the past week, she’s been remembered in dozens of articles across the nation, often described by friends and family as a loving soul with a bubbly personality and fearless attitude.
Rebecca Wingo was 32. The mother of two was one of 12 killed in last Friday's shooting at an Auroro, Colorado movie theater. She graduated from Ford High School in Quinlan in 1997, later becoming a linguist with the U.S. Air Force.
"She wanted to work with foster children who are aging out of the system and have no where to go," Wingo's mother Shirley Wygal tells Anderson Cooper.
Her ex-husband, Robert Wingo, told the Denver Post, "A lot of people say, 'Oh this person was amazing.' It wasn't that, it was that Rebecca was a catalyst. She was the person who walked into a room, and then everything is going to happen. She would brighten a room, and take you in a direction. Rebecca, she kind of had her own gravity to her, and that's why so many people like her.”
Several existing charities have been tapped and new funds established for those wishing to provide assistance to the victim’s families. One fund for Wingo, created by childhood friend Michael Bird, had generated nearly $19,000 as of Friday morning.
"I just thought a great goal to start would be somewhere around $20,000 just maybe to put something into a college fund and help out with some immediate expenses they're going to have to have," Bird said in an interview Tuesday with KETR.
Two other victims from last week’s massacre had ties to Texas. Funeral services were also scheduled Friday in Austin for Texas-born father Gordon Cowden and Saturday in Jessica Ghawi’s native San Antonio.
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