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"Dawn Hochsprung died trying to save her students. Now her daughters, Erica Lafferty and Cristina Lafferty Hassinger, share their love and pain&amp;amp;#8212;and their message for all of us. .pullquote { border-top: 1px dashed #999999; border-bottom: 1px dashed #999999; font-family: &amp;amp;#8220;Haas bold&amp;amp;#8221;; color: black; font-size: 28px; line-height: 32px; text-align: center; padding:20px; margin-bottom:20px; width:33%; } After Newtown: &amp;amp;#8220;Mom always said, &amp;amp;#8216;Wear your heart on your sleeve and hold your crap together,&amp;amp;#8217;&amp;amp;#8221; says Erica Lafferty, right, a college-admissions counselor, with her sister, Tina, a mother of four. Erica Lafferty, 27, has a tattoo below her thumb. She got it 15 days after her mother, Dawn Lafferty Hochsprung, the principal of Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, was shot and killed, along with 20 of her six- and seven-year-old students and five of her staff, on December 14. The smiley face and heart, with the word Mommy in pretty script on top, was copied from a note her mother had left her years earlier, reminding Erica to stay safe. Today, two months after Newtown, Americans are asking: How can we stay safe? Erica and her sister, Cristina (Tina) Lafferty Hassinger, 28, are grappling with that question too. For answers, they are turning to the lessons their mother taught them. Before Newtown: Hochsprung, center, with Erica, left, and Tina at a wedding in 2010 ERICA LAFFERTY: I called my mom the other day&amp;amp;#8212;before I remembered. It&amp;amp;#8217;s still hard to believe she&amp;amp;#8217;s gone and everything that&amp;amp;#8217;s happened since I got a text saying there was a shooting at Sandy Hook. TINA HASSINGER: I was shopping at Target that morning with my two youngest babies when Erica called. ERICA LAFFERTY: I couldn&amp;amp;#8217;t get the words out. I was like, &amp;amp;#8220;Shooting&amp;amp;#8221; &amp;amp;#8212; gulp! &amp;amp;#8212; &amp;amp;#8220;at&amp;amp;#8221; &amp;amp;#8212; gulp! &amp;amp;#8212; &amp;amp;#8220;Mom&amp;amp;#8217;s&amp;amp;#8221; &amp;amp;#8212; gulp! &amp;amp;#8212; &amp;amp;#8220;school.&amp;amp;#8221; TINA HASSINGER: I left my full cart right there in the aisle. It was about 10:30 A.M. when Erica and I made it to Sandy Hook; we saw our stepfather, George, pull in at the same time. The three of us were holding hands, running up the hill toward the school when he stopped one dad who was walking out with his kid and asked, &amp;amp;#8220;Have you heard anything about the principal? We&amp;amp;#8217;re her family.&amp;amp;#8221; ERICA LAFFERTY: His son started to say, &amp;amp;#8220;No, she&amp;amp;#8212;&amp;amp;#8221; TINA HASSINGER: And the father clamped his hand over the little boy&amp;amp;#8217;s face and said, &amp;amp;#8220;I&amp;amp;#8217;m sorry, we haven&amp;amp;#8217;t heard anything.&amp;amp;#8221; None of us mentioned it, but we all saw it. We went and waited at the firehouse with all the families. ERICA LAFFERTY: That was the worst part&amp;amp;#8212;the waiting. We were there for hours. It felt like a lifetime. TINA HASSINGER: At one point the police said that they had just found two adults hiding in a closet. They didn&amp;amp;#8217;t release the names, but Erica looked at me and said, &amp;amp;#8220;There is no way Mom would be hiding in a closet.&amp;amp;#8221; ERICA LAFFERTY: Not when her kids were in danger. TINA HASSINGER: Around 3:00 P.M., Governor Malloy showed up to speak. He had no more information, so he said he wasn&amp;amp;#8217;t taking any questions. And one of the mothers stood up and said, &amp;amp;#8220;Well, I&amp;amp;#8217;m going to ask a question anyway: We were under the impression that we&amp;amp;#8217;re waiting to hear what hospitals the victims have been brought to.&amp;amp;#8221; He said there was only one victim at a hospital who was still alive. And all of the mothers in that room just went insane. ERICA LAFFERTY: Yelling and screaming. TINA HASSINGER: There were paramedics with oxygen masks. It was horrible. ERICA LAFFERTY: I was sobbing too. Here they&amp;amp;#8217;d just told us &amp;amp;#8220;only one victim&amp;amp;#8221; at a hospital, and we knew there was no one left alive in the school. But they couldn&amp;amp;#8217;t say that our mom was murdered? Like, just tell me. Don&amp;amp;#8217;t trap me here in this room and say nothing. TINA HASSINGER: Somewhere along the way we pulled out our phones to see what was going on. The women we lost: Clockwise from top left: Rachel D&amp;amp;#8217;Avino, 29, therapist for autistic children; Victoria Soto, 27, first-grade teacher; Lauren Rousseau, 30, substitute teacher; Mary Sherlach, 56, school psychologist; Anne Marie Murphy, 52, special-education teacher; and Dawn Lafferty Hochsprung, 47, principal. &amp;amp;#8220;They&amp;amp;#8217;re all heroes,&amp;amp;#8221; says Erica. ERICA LAFFERTY: Facebook and Twitter had more info than we did. There was already a memorial page created for our mom on Facebook by 2:00 P.M., although we didn&amp;amp;#8217;t get the official word until hours later. TINA HASSINGER: We learned more about our mom&amp;amp;#8217;s last moments in the days afterward: She was meeting with a few people in her office when they heard loud sounds. After telling everyone to hide, she and Mary Sherlach [the school psychologist] went running into the hallway. ERICA LAFFERTY: When Mom saw the killer, she yelled, &amp;amp;#8220;Shooter, stay back!&amp;amp;#8221; Then she lunged at him. TINA HASSINGER: That&amp;amp;#8217;s what state police and teachers who talked to George told us. ERICA LAFFERTY: Like a crazy mama yelling, &amp;amp;#8220;Don&amp;amp;#8217;t hurt my kids!&amp;amp;#8221; TINA HASSINGER: When I found out, I thought, That stubborn bitch! [Laughs.] Why couldn&amp;amp;#8217;t she have just hidden under the table? ERICA LAFFERTY: Right! But am I surprised? No. Not at all. She was a great mother to us too. Even when I was living at home, she&amp;amp;#8217;d mail cards to the house, just so I had something to open. TINA HASSINGER: Every day as she was leaving work, she&amp;amp;#8217;d call me. Now I&amp;amp;#8217;ll glance at the clock around that time and suddenly feel lonely. ERICA LAFFERTY: And George, he was great for Mom during the last 10 years; it sucks they didn&amp;amp;#8217;t meet earlier. Now I&amp;amp;#8217;m getting married in July without her. We chose the gown together, and it&amp;amp;#8217;s being altered&amp;amp;#8212;I don&amp;amp;#8217;t know how I&amp;amp;#8217;m going to pick that dress up. But if she taught us anything, it&amp;amp;#8217;s to wear your heart on your sleeve and hold your crap together. &amp;amp;#8220;Because of our mom, we always put teachers on a pedestal. After this, the whole world should.&amp;amp;#8221; &amp;amp;#8212;Tina Lafferty Hassinger TINA HASSINGER: And to move on. That&amp;amp;#8217;s what we&amp;amp;#8217;ve been trying to do. There are so many pieces to stopping the next massacre. Talks about gun control are definitely necessary. And more mental health awareness and addressing the desensitization of our culture to the graphic violence in video games. For us, we decided to put our efforts into creating the next generation of exceptional teachers, because you can inspire tomorrow&amp;amp;#8217;s adults. ERICA LAFFERTY: Tina set up the Dawn Lafferty Hochsprung Memorial Fund to give a freshman scholarship to high school seniors going into education. We hope they&amp;amp;#8217;ll turn out like the staff at Sandy Hook. The six adults who were killed put everything they had into protecting those kids. But the survivors deserve just as much recognition. They had to get through it. And they&amp;amp;#8217;re going to have to live with the memories every day for the rest of their lives. They are all phenomenal. If they hadn&amp;amp;#8217;t been so heroic that day, this tragedy could have been so much worse. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.glamour.com/inspired/2013/02/our-mother-was-the-sandy-hook-principal-glamour-march-2013>