Hello, friends of Phil and neighbors.
And as always, welcome back to another edition of Live like Fred
and I am pleased to be joined by Jessica de
Torre.
She is a first grade teacher at the uh
Woolen Hills School District just outside of Pittsburgh.
And she also started a uh camp, a nonprofit,
excuse me called the Hoop Alliance are also known as helping out our people,
which helps families that have been affected by gun violence.
Jessica. Thank you so much. Take
some time out of your day.
Thank you for having me. I love it. What is the Hoopa
line?
Um The Hoopa Alliance stands for helping out our people
and it was a group started by me and
another person who um lost our brothers to gun violence
and we got a um a good bit of other people on board with us. Um
but we mainly reach out to families that have been affected um by gun violence
and we offer support, um mentoring
and um
just kind of are there for them. We check in with them.
We have different events throughout the year. Um
That helps honor our families that have been lost to gun violence.
So we have a honorary peace block every year.
Um
We, we make hoop alliance,
make some ourselves present at pretty much every single community event.
Um
We're always there.
We have a monthly grease support meeting for our families. We also have um
we also check in monthly by giving birthday
candles to our families and um thinking of you
sympathy cards cause every month our families are
either celebrating a birthday or a death date.
Um And those are anniversaries that are hard.
So we just offer those supports to them.
Now, Jessica, uh you yourself have been affected by gun violence.
Would you really mind telling us a little bit about um your um experience?
Sorry.
Um In 2017, it was a Monday evening
that I got to call
that my brother had dialed 911 from his cell phone.
Um I,
I didn't really know what to expect.
Um So I rushed over to his apartment to find out that he was killed by gun violence.
Um It was a double homicide and um
I was the first on scene
um with my brother
and um he was my only biological brother and we had a great childhood growing up.
I never thought that
gun violence would affect myself or my family, but it did.
And um
I realized, you know, with, through my grief process that
I needed to make something positive out of this negative situation.
Um And I also realized that um
being a teacher that this,
this trauma has affected many of my students.
So I realized that um
through my grief and their grief, I could do a lot of good
and I can help a lot of people.
Um
And sometimes it's just good knowing that I've experienced
the same thing as some of my students.
So it's not necessarily something that we always need to talk about.
It's just knowing that we both share
um
a similarity and that we've lost somebody in such a tragic way.
Um
Also,
you know, losing somebody in such a traumatic and um
heartbreaking way
has really encouraged me to not take life for granted.
I try to live every day
to the best of my ability and really try to
make positive changes in the world.
Um And I try to walk every day in honor of my brother Robbie.
Um I know he's shining down on me. I know he's proud of me. I know he's right here with me
and um I miss him dearly. But in doing the things that I do in the community
and in the classroom, I really feel like I'm living
not for him, but I feel like there's times where he's,
I'm doing things for him in a way that
I'm just honoring his life. And um
it's been, it's been a journey
and I'm, it's not a journey that I plan to be on. But
I am doing the best that I can with it
and trying to make the best changes that I possibly
Jessica.
I am so sorry that you though, but I am sure your brother will be very proud of you. Yes.
Yes. And I miss him dearly, but
I know he's with me.
So if you are familiar with Mr Rogers neighborhood,
you would probably know that the musician Yo, yo Ma was featured
on the show a few times and there was a uh connectivity with starting with the UBA
lines, Jessica. Do you think you can tell us more about it? I would love to. So, um Yo
yo Ma
um and his campaign, art across arts across America chose to do a art installation
um and bratic representing and honoring all of
our men and women lost to gun violence.
So, um he looked to us to find these uh men and women
get their families involved, get pictures and consent forms. So
we looked at the list of families that we've
lost since 2006 and the number was overwhelming.
Um We've lost over 80 families in our community.
So we knew right then and there we had to
start calling these families and kind of researching them,
finding out their numbers.
Um
a little bit information about their loved ones
and in doing so and making these phone calls and spending numerous hours on
um making these calls, we realized that the families really just wanted to talk to us
and they wanted to tell us about their loved ones and tell us stories about them and
um they wanted their loved ones to be honored.
So it was from there,
we realized we need to create a group that
we could help um our families in our district.
Um But the event itself was beautiful. We had a
mural of um pictures that the families submitted of their loved ones.
And some of the pictures had little quotes of um what their loved
ones would be saying or a little interesting fact about their loved one.
And yo, yo, Ma played in front of the mural and we were able to invite our families.
And um it was really an amazing event, an event and yo, yo, Ma gave us that platform
to start hoop
and we hope that he can come back and do um some more things for us.
What does it mean for you to live like Fred Jessica?
Um I think that Fred Rogers lived a life of kindness and giving back
and I feel like that's what I do every day with my career.
Um I am very kind to my students and I show that like I said, I lead by example. So
um me being kind, greeting them,
the kind smile is just a small thing that I
can do to make them feel good about themselves.
And I let that carry over into my everyday life.
I just always treat people with the way that they would want
to be treated or the way I would want to be treated.
And I just feel like that's just a natural
um, gift that I do. Um,
so I think that's why I live like friends.
What makes this nothing you do for you just,
um, a snappy new day, I think, um, being productive,
um, you know, doing something positive every single day
and just smiling. I think a smile goes a long way
and um you even, you can brighten up the day by giving someone a smile.
So I think that's, those are my three top things productive kind and to give a smile,
you know, I always, y you know,
people always tell me about like just putting a smile on
your face can just make the world a better place up
Jessica. Thank you so much for taking some time out of your day to be with us.
We wish you nothing but the best with the
hoop alliance and also with your teaching career.
Thank you
so much.