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In this photo provided by Eden Ivie, Melody Ivie of Farmington, New Mexico rides the subway during her family vacation in Colorado in 2021. Melody Ivie, 73, was one of those killed when a gunman opened fire on a busy street in Farmington on May 15, 2023. (Eden Ivie via AP)
SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) — Gwendolyn Dean Schofield hopes to live to be 100, and she’s almost there.
But on May 15, in what appeared to be a final act of kindness, Schofield and her daughter pulled over on a residential street in the northwestern New Mexico city of Farmington to help a woman who was randomly shot and killed, and they were also killed. Shot and died.
“I guarantee that 10 times in this situation, they would stop,” said Schofield’s grandson, Dallin Dean.
Schofield, who grew up during the Depression and became a teacher during World War II, is a month shy of her 98th birthday. Daughter Melodie Ivie runs a kindergarten called “Ivie League”, aged 73. The woman they stopped to help was Shirley Voita, a 79-year-old retired school nurse who often volunteers at morning mass to help people file their taxes.
Each woman led an active professional and civic life centered on family and faith, leaving an indelible mark on a city of 50,000 near the border of New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado and Utah .
Together they have 64 grandchildren.
They were laid to rest this week at a two-day memorial service in a community. An 18-year-old went on a rampage on the eve of his high school graduation, injuring six people, including two police officers. Police shot and killed the gunman.
At a joint memorial service for Schofield and Ivey on Thursday, Dean looked out to the crowd and told them that if they survived, his aunt and grandmother would be the first to forgive the shooter.
Due to a shortage of teachers during World War II, Schofield began teaching in the remote lakeside town of Valliere, Montana. There she met her first husband, Raymond Dean, a crop duster pilot. They married in 1946 and had four children.
Schofield moved on to other teaching jobs, was drawn to small towns in Wyoming and Idaho, and then settled in Farmington after Raymond Dean’s death in the 1990s, farther from his family. close. She remarried but became a widow again in 2020 after 20 years.
Gwendolyn Dean Schofield, a retired teacher from Farmington, New Mexico, poses for a photo in this undated photo provided by Aubrey Ivie. On May 15, 2023, a gunman opened fire on a busy street in Farmington, killing 97-year-old Schofield. (Aubrey Ivie via AP)
Dean said his grandmother — affectionately known as “Grandma Dean” by her 26 grandchildren — was self-reliant. She loves gardening and growing her own food, and always stockes up on a stack of canned goods.
At 97, Dean said, his grandmother is still alive and well. Relatives who attended the memorial service said Schofield did so because he lived with “a love free from anger and criticism” and a “forgiving heart.”
Dean said his family was already talking about her 100th birthday party before the shooting.
Ivie followed in her mother’s footsteps as an educator. For decades, “Mrs. Evie” has brought hundreds of Farmington children into her home, where she has run the Evie Union Preschool and prepared generations of children for kindergarten.
Longtime preschool teacher Melody Ivie (far right) in Farmington, New Mexico, poses with some of her students, including 4-year-old Jalen Pickering (top center). Jerron’s father, Sheldon Pickering, grew up in several of the houses Ivie and her family had. Ivie was one of three older women who died on May 15, 2023, when an 18-year-old gunman began shooting indiscriminately at vehicles in the Farmington neighborhood. (Sheldon Pickering via AP)
Neighbor Sheldon Pickering, 42, said he grew up a few houses away from Ivie’s and was there often, playing the piano for Ivie whenever she wanted to hear a song.
“She really makes you feel like part of the family,” Pickering said.
When Pickering became a parent, he enrolled his daughter and son in Ivy League kindergarten, where they learned to tie shoelaces and count, and Ivey taught Pickering countless lessons there, he said. The course changed the way he thinks about parenting.
At one point, Pickering recalled being embarrassed after buying her daughter a pack of gum and sending her to a school that banned it. When Pickering apologized and said he shouldn’t say no when his daughter asked for candy, Ivey assured him parents should say yes to the little things.
“That’s what your kids will remember,” Pickering remembers Ive saying. “So say yes to the little things when you can.”
Ivey and her husband Dennis raised their eight children in Farmington.
Relatives said the couple served as senior missionaries in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Ghana in their later years and offered to sponsor students. Ivy’s husband passed away last year.
Dean said Ivey and Schofield became particularly close in recent years after Ivey moved her mother into her home.
On the morning of the shooting, they were driving together to pick up one of Ivey’s grandchildren from school, Dean said. They never arrived.
Police said the gunman did not appear to be targeting anyone. Instead, he started by firing indiscriminately from outside his home, then walked around the neighborhood and punched cars and houses with three different guns. A video recently released by police contains what authorities believe is the gunman’s voice, urging officers to kill him.
On Friday, police released a new series of body and dashcam videos that paint a graphic picture of the shooting. Authorities also provided recordings of hundreds of frantic calls by witnesses to emergency dispatchers documenting the atrocity and its aftermath, including a call from one of Voita’s daughters.
Friends and acquaintances said Voita, who was shot in her car, began her day with morning mass at St. Mary’s Catholic Church as part of a routine involving a strong commitment to faith and community service.
Her memorial service was held at the Sacred Heart Catholic Church, of which she has been a member for nearly 50 years. Relatives of Ivie and Schofield were among those gathered in her memory.
Voita and her 57-year-old husband have five children, including the current San Juan County tax assessor-elect, 14 grandchildren and a great-granddaughter.
Mary Johnson, who has been a friend of Vojta for 25 years through community service activities and prayer groups, said Vojta “does everything she can to help people.”
That has included volunteering at a senior center, helping residents file their taxes and participating in anti-abortion marches. She also enjoys skiing, tennis, pickleball, and trips to Lake Vallecito, Colorado.
Voita spoke with ease about death and redemption, Johnson said.
“She was always expressing her love for Jesus and how we really need to be ready all the time, you never know when our time is coming,” Johnson said.
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Yamat reported from Las Vegas.
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