Each day when Michelle “Micki” Emmett arrives at work, she sits down at her desk, looks out the window and sees Kishwaukee Community Hospital. It was there one year ago Saturday that her life changed forever.

“There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t think about what happened on Feb. 14,” Emmett said, who is a former NIU vice president for Student Affairs and current executive director of the DeKalb County Chapter of the American Red Cross.

Emmett is one of a number of NIU administrators who worked non-stop after the Feb. 14 shootings, putting their own mourning aside for the betterment of the student population.

Emmett, who wears a Feb. 14 memorial pin, said she has had nightmares the past couple of weeks.

The scene at the hospital that day was hectic. People were rushed to the emergency room. Families and friends of injured students waited to hear news about their loved ones. All the while, Emmett attempted to relay information back to NIU.

Luckily, Emmett is good at keeping her composure. While the world around her is crumbling, she has the ability to stay collected in the face of it all. She did just that in the days following Feb. 14.

“I pretty much turned off the emotional switch. I didn’t cry for six weeks; until the end of March,” an emotional Emmett said. “I don’t know that I ever dealt with all the emotional stuff from Feb. 14, 2008.”

Her original job interview with the Red Cross was scheduled for Feb. 16. When asked if it was harder to leave NIU after everything that happened surrounding Feb. 14, she said, point-blank, “Yes. Yes. Yes.”

“I’ve been with Northern for 26 years. I’ve been in student leadership for 10 years,” she said, still referring to her time there in the present tense.

At NIU, Emmett worked with the Association of Campus Religious Organizations for many years. On Feb. 14, she connected ACRO members with students, and they later started the Peace Room in the Holmes Student Center together.

“She takes her faith very seriously,” said ACRO President Rev. Marty Marks, who saw firsthand how Emmett was affected by Feb. 14. “She put her own needs aside. She didn’t sleep well. She didn’t get the rest she needed. It had a profound effect on her.”

Emmett will attend the memorial service on Saturday. She looks toward that day with trepidation about the memories it will bring back. In the meantime, she’ll continue to come to work every day for the betterment of the community she loves and stare out at the window at what she calls the “new” hospital, remembering a time she and many others won’t soon forget. For Emmett, what stands out most about that day is the work of the Kishwaukee staff.

“Everyone that came to that hospital made it,” Emmett said, referring to the victims of the shootings. “These people worked miracles over there with some help from the Lord above. See, I’m getting the chills,” she said, touching her arms.