KANSAS CITY, Mo/WICHITA — From near and far, thousands of families hit the road last Valentine’s Day as the Kansas City Chiefs celebrated their second Super Bowl in a row.
It started as a day of building happy memories with loved ones.
After hours on the road, their paths crossed in Kansas City.
"We were just excited to be together as a family," said Trey Filter.
He, his wife, and his kids left Wichita early to join the rally in front of Union Station.
However, the day didn't go exactly as planned. They left home late and spent longer than expected at a restaurant.
But they believe it all happened for a reason.
“Every step we took that day mattered,” said Casey Filter, Trey’s wife.
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Alyssa Marsh-Contreras drove with her dad, Paul Contreras, and her sisters from Omaha to KC. She remembers the first hours of the day with a smile on her face.
“Thousands of people, people climbing in trees,” said Marsh-Contreras. “The atmosphere was just crazy.”
But the day took a turn. They ended up on a road no one was expecting.
"We heard like... pop, pop, pop, pop, pop," Marsh-Contreras said, remembering the moment she heard the shots.
They didn't want to believe that was happening. It turned out to be a devastating aftermath.
In the middle of the chaos, Contreras and Trey, who didn’t know each other at that point, saw someone they believed was one of the suspects in the shooting.
"Before I knew it, I was on him, tackling him, taking him down,” said Contreras, remembering the moments of courage.
"I wasn't completely in charge of what I did, I don't feel," Trey said.
His wife says the days after that were long.
“It felt like that Wednesday lasted all the way through Sunday,” Casey said.
Since then, they’ve received multiple recognition for their bravery.
A year later, it’s still hard to put the feelings into words.
"It could have gone badly for us," Contreras said, holding back tears.
Still, he feels blessed.
“We're still here.”
Healthcare workers helped
Contreras and Trey were not the only ones who chose to stay and help while most were running from the danger.
Jessica Dean, who drove from Wichita with her family and friends, also heard the shots.
"You try to convince yourself, like, OK, that could be fireworks."
Suddenly, she found herself doing something she never thought she would in the middle of a celebration—performing CPR on a person she says had around ten gunshot wounds.
"At some point, I started just trying to hold pressure on where we could tell the blood was coming out the most,” Dean said.
Her black shoes turned red, but she didn’t care.
“There was just something in my heart that said, you might be able to help. At that point, I couldn’t just leave," Dean said.
From where she was, she could see a group also helping another person who had been shot. It was Jessica Dagel, Alexis Brockman, and their friends, who were all healthcare workers.
"We’ve always been caring and giving, I mean, as a career, that's what we do, we give to other people,” Brockman said.
All of them say they’ve been struggling mentally since last year’s parade. But therapy and medication have been helping.
"We're never going to be able to live a normal life again because of that," Dagel said.
“We’re very aware that after that drive home, our world was going to be a lot different,” Dean said.
Looking back in the rearview mirror, they say they wouldn’t change the roads they took and would do it all again.
"I didn't know how many people felt so differently about the coming out that the person I worked on was one of the shooters," said Dean. "Seeing some of the responses to that is disheartening a little bit, but I don't think it ever swayed me into believing I didn't do the right thing. It's not my job to decide who lives or dies in any situation."
"I would hope anybody would do that for us if we were in the other position," Dagel said.
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