by CARA SCHAYER and MARIAM AHMADI SIMPSON

“How many more miles to Blacksburg?” I asked the lady working inside the roadside convenience store. “Are we almost there?”

“Honey, you still have another hour or so to drive,” she answered sympathetically, sensing our weariness from the trip.

It was the last thing my fellow reporter Mariam and I wanted to hear after driving for three and a half hours on highways and country roads. We were anxious to arrive and begin talking to students, police officers and families about the nightmare unfolding in their quaint college town.

So we piled back in the car, and drove determinedly down Highway 81. Soon enough, convoys of police cruisers sped past us with their sirens wailing in the wind.

We were there.

We pulled over to the side of the road behind another vehicle, and stared at the university’s ominous gates - they were barricaded with officers flashing their lights and shaking their heads.

At that moment, Mariam and I thought the exact same thing. “We did not drive all this way just to turn around and come home. If we can’t get into the school, we’ll find another way to meet people. We’ll find another way to hear their stories.”

That’s when we met Alex, a sophomore at Virginia Tech who was buying snack food at a gas station, en route to his friend’s apartment, one block away from school. Before we knew it, we were assembling our camera and tripod inside his friend’s living room and listening as six friends recounted the mayhem at their school.

Ian Critz, one of the students, watched the news coverage on television as it described the West Ambler Johnston dormitory where the original shooting took place. “A couple of us live on the 6th floor of West A.J.,” he said.

“They got the elevators and staircase and everything taped off,” Jonathan Wrenn, another student.

As he watched a classmate being interviewed outside Norris Hall, Wrenn said, “It’s wild, I can remember some classes I’ve had in that building.”

When we asked the young men how they found out about the shootings in their dorm and at their school, Wrenn said his mom had called and left a message with the news. “It was pretty nerve-racking to wake up to that,” he said.

Several of the other students were also notified by friends and family members off campus about the shooting.

“The funniest thing to me is that my grandmother knew about this before I did,” said Stanley. “She sent me an e-mail at 7:50 this morning when I was even out of bed. And a friend of mine told me on Instant Messenger this morning at 10 that there was something crazy going at campus and I checked my e-mail and that was the first I knew about it.”

The friends began to debate the school’s notification to students, and whether the administration made the right call to not evacuate the campus. We heard their sentiments echoed in the press conferences we listened to on the radio as we drove down.

It was dark by the time we left the students’ company. Remembering radio reports from the drive in, Mariam and I headed towards the Inn at Virginia Tech, where press conferences and family reunions were taking place throughout the day.

The parking lot was overflowing with cars, news vans and emergency vehicles. Relatives and friends, many donning Virginia Tech sweatshirts, embraced in the hotel’s lobby. Students like Elliot, a graduate of Virginia Tech who declined to say his last name, did not know anyone personally but simply wanted to show his support for the victims and their families.

“If you don’t know someone directly, chances are you know somebody who knows somebody who is affected by this,” he said, referring to Blacksburg’s close-knit college community.

The solidarity among the visitors was evident as strangers comforted each other and empathized with their pain. One muscular student was particularly troubling for me as he screamed in disbelief and punched his fist into a stone pillar.

The battery on our camera died at 10 p.m., and we took it as a sign that it was time to leave.

I phoned my mom and dad every half an hour on the way home to tell them we were safe on the road. In the aftermath of what I just saw, I could not help thinking how lucky I was to be making that call.