He looked at me… and pulled the trigger

“I’m like, why would you need that?” she recalls, “That's so crazy that you would need to have this much security.” As she quickly found out, however, responding to possible threats was a regular part of her new job.

In her first few months, Layla says she had multiple situations where she needed to call the police. Incidents ranged from strangers leaving unmarked bags in the lobby to swastikas being painted on the building. She regularly fielded hateful phone calls. “The guy I was dating at the time told me, ‘you're gonna get hurt working there.’ I'm like, ‘You're crazy,’” she says, “You know that the Holocaust happened so long ago?”

Despite interacting with hate as part of her job, Layla enjoyed the work and her organizational skills quickly impressed the full time staff. She was offered a permanent position on the team, and she accepted.

On the afternoon of Friday, July 28, 2006, Layla had plans to go hiking after work. She was in the back room making copies when she heard the door buzzer ring, and the voice of Cheryl Stumbo, one of the employees' 14 year old niece who helped out at the front desk, asking to be let in. It was 4:00 PM.

“A lot of Jewish people go home early on Friday afternoons,” Layla told Respect America in an interview, “so it wasn't all that busy in the office, and I buzzed her in.”

What Layla didn’t know was that Cheryl had a gun to her back, and opening the door also let an armed man named Naveed Afzal Haq into the building.

By the time he surrendered to police at 4:15 PM - Haq had shot and killed one of Layla’s coworkers, a woman named Pamela Waechter, and wounded three others. He shot Layla once, then came back again after shooting the others. “He looked at me,” Layla says, “looked me straight in the eyes from point blank range, and pulled the trigger.”

Waking Up

“There is a moment of intimacy in that moment that is really… it's indescribable,” Layla continues, "because this person is wanting to do deadly violence to you. It's just weird. It's like that realization of how much someone just wants to kill you and do violence to you for really no reason at all.”

After Haq’s surrender, Layla found herself in the back of an ambulance with a lifetime of physical challenges ahead of her, and the beginnings of an awakening that would change the way she sees the world.

The hollow point bullet fired from Haq’s legally obtained handgun “hit just about every organ that it possibly could.” Layla says, “part of the bullet ended up shattering one of my vertebrae and causing nerve damage.”

She spent the next month in the hospital. Multiple attempts to remove her breathing tube failed, a lung infection ensued, and she would later need another surgery to remove the bullet which was leaking lead into Layla’s spinal cord fluid.

“I didn't know what had happened in the aftermath of the shooting, and I was kind of behind everyone else.” Layla says, “everyone else was more conscious for a lot of the things that had happened in the aftermath. That was difficult, not being able to process everything at the same time. Not being able to share in that mourning in the immediate aftermath, in the same way.”

From that tragedy, however, Layla also found a new community. Despite not being Jewish herself, she was offered an outpouring of support.

“I have been fortunate in that the nature of my shooting meant I was at a Jewish organization when I was shot. The Jewish community really has a lot of support mechanisms, what I would call, mutual aid systems to help each other, because they're used to this.”

A former political progressive, Layla expressed how the support she received from the Jewish community opened her mind to a better path:

“There is so much more compassion from this idea of mutual aid and helping your community, as compared to the government, which is kind of obligated to do these things, but they're always suspicious of you. It is always assuming that you're lying and assuming that you're a fraud.”

Layla’s experience is consistent with the Principle of Human Respect. Voluntary support brings about stronger community, uplifting the Good, True, and Beautiful - while the use of force or violence diminishes happiness, harmony, and prosperity

“[Government treats you like] something to be manipulated or used or just in a way that isn't human, and whenever that happens, it just hurts part of your soul. It really does”

The Seattle Jewish Federation shooting was directly attributable to a lack of human respect, both in the shooter’s actions, and his justification for taking them.

Layla recalled her shooter standing in front of her ranting about the then unfolding 2006 Lebanon War between Israel and Hezbollah. That conflict had led Haq to search “something Jewish” online. The Seattle Jewish Federation he attacked was the first search result.

“The source of this violence was war thousands of miles away from where we are,” Layla said, “When America makes a choice, when our country makes a choice to engage in a non-peaceful manner, by selling bombs to people, by helping them in killing, that has an impact on all of us in America.”

Consent is Compassion

A young woman when the shooting occurred, Layla now sees herself as a fundamentally different person. “So much of my perspective on life has been shaped by this event, the shooting that happened.” she explains, “I was 23.”

While her understanding of collective blame, the danger of treating people as part of a group rather than as individuals, and the use of violence have each become part of her personality - she has also had to reconcile these awakenings with the necessity of using the American medical system to lead a fulfilling life.

“When it comes to the psychological impact, the medical system has been far more intrusive than the shooting. The shooting is over. I don't have to experience that again, but the medical system, I have to continue to engage with.” Layla told Respect America, “That has also increased my frustration about the way the medical system works, and how, in a lot of ways, consent and compassion are not really part of the formula.”

This, like violent foreign intervention, she says, is the result of government intrusion and well intentioned efforts to help people that instead end up violating consent.

“I live in Washington State, near Seattle. It is very, very blue here, and I try to explain to a lot of my friends that the government has this idea of helping, but it is not actually compassionate.”

To avoid the arduous requirements around opioid drug prescriptions, Layla pays out of pocket for medications. If she took government “help,” she would have to jump through legally required hoops like mandated drug testing and frequent doctors visits. Layla knows what she needs to stay active, and can work with her doctors independent from bureaucratic overreach. Not everyone in her community of those who suffer from chronic pain are so lucky:

“I've met those people through my journey and hearing their stories of how the state tries to control what they can do with their bodies,” she says, “how vulnerable it makes them feel, and they just can't get the treatment that they feel they need.”

Layla knows that mutual aid and voluntary cooperation are better options, because she has seen them firsthand - and she speaks confidently about the failures of government efforts to help.

“The whole system is structured in a way that is designed to dehumanize you and designed to make you feel small and irrelevant, and that is very different from the human connection that you get from other people. Being able to compare those two side by side, from the Jewish community and then the government, it's so black and white.”