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A mom with a mission
Five years after her son was wounded, ex-Caledonia cop crusades for gun safety

By: Phyllis Sides

RACINE - For Shirley Lochowitz, gun safety in the home became more important than ever Aug. 10, 1995. On that day, Lochowitz was on patrol as  a Caledonia police officer when she received a call about a shooting on Nicholson Road about a half mile from her home.

The address was familiar. It was the home she had given her oldest son permission to visit that day. When she got to the scene Lochowitz discovered her 12-year-old son, Nick, had been shot.

"I thought he was going to die right in front of me," Lochowitz said.

Nick had been shot with his 14-year-old friend's rifle. It had been stored loaded under his bed with his parents' permission, Lochowitz said. "He was showing it to Nick and another boy. I thought everybody thought the way I did. When I was at home my gun was locked up separately from the ammunition," Lochowitz said.

Since the shooting, Lochowitz left the police department and became an advocate for gun safety. She has been sharing the events of that August day and its aftermath with others in the hope that her story will prevent it happening to another family.

"If an activist or advocate is a person who works to change something then I guess I am. I am working to keep guns locked away from children," she said.

Today at 4 p.m., she will share her story again at the Silent Shoe March in Milwaukee. Lochowitz will speak at the War Memorial Center, 750 N. Lincoln Memorial Drive.

The Silent Shoe March is a national campaign that uses empty shoes as its symbol. The shoes are designed to be a visual reminder of gun violence. In Wisconsin, 422 pairs of shoes were collected to represent the number of people killed in the state by firearms in a year.

This week the shoes were taken on a 422-mile funeral procession around the state. This afternoon, the police-escorted procession will travel down Wisconsin Avenue in Milwaukee to a rally at the War Memorial on the lakefront.

"It is ironic," Lochowitz said. "Nobody really cared five years ago. Now it's becoming a big political issue."

About a year after the shooting, Lochowitz and Nick went to Madison to testify at a hearing about the storage of firearms.

At that time the law carried Class A misdemeanor penalties of up to nine months in jail and a $10,000 fine for adults who permit the reckless storage of loaded firearms within the reach or easy access of minors under the age of 14.

The important thing about their story, Lochowitz said, is it shows that these type of things do not happen only in bad neighborhoods. "Children are getting killed everyday. They happen in both neighborhoods. It tests people's perception of what is safe."

In May, ABC News asked her to share her story. When she was in Washington, she met President Clinton and some of the participants from the Million Mom March.

She was a little concerned about meeting them. "I talked with some other moms whose children had died. I thought I wouldn't fit in, because my son didn't die. But it's the same emotion; as mothers we shared the same pain."

With the attention gun violence has been attracting Lochowitz feels the NRA will have a hard time this election year. "Their biggest thing is gun safety education. And that trigger locks should be voluntary." Lochowitz said.

Education is fine. But kids don't always do what they are supposed to do, even if they know better.

"Why would anyone want to put a child in that position?" she said.

Lochowitz wants trigger locks to be mandatory and encourages more parental responsibility for children.