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Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Healing After Tragedy: Sheila Gutman’s Story of Surviving the Highland Park Parade Shooting 8-27-25
00:17:17
In this episode, Highland Park Parade shooting survivor Sheila Gutman shares her powerful story of resilience, recovery, and the ongoing challenges survivors face.
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- [00:00]
A
This is Scott Becker with a special combined episode of the Becker's Healthcare Podcast. In the Becker Business Becker Private Equity Podcast, we're joined today by Sheila Gutten. And Sheila Gutman has a remarkable, remarkable story. And we're going to have her talk today about that story and about some of the lessons she's learned from it and a lot more. Sheila was a victim, and I don't think of her as a victim, but she's one of the strongest people I know. She was a victim shot in a mass shooting a few years ago out in a suburb outside of Chicago. Since that point in that shooting, several people died. She was fortunate not to lose her life, but has been through about 14 surgeries since this shooting occurred. And she's going to tell us a little bit about the story and the process of working through all the health care and then some of the mental and sort of trauma issues that somebody faces as they go through something like this. Sheila, we are so thankful for you spending the time with us today. Can you take a moment and introduce yourself and maybe tell us just a moment about the incident and then we'll spend more time on the aftermath, the surgeries, and just trying to deal with the post trauma of it all. Sheila, can you introduce yourself?
- [01:21]
B
Hi, I'm Sheila Guttman. And Scott, thank you so much for providing me an opportunity to be able to tell my story. I think my story is not only important because it happened to me, but because of so many others who have suffered from mass shootings and the aftermath that really isn't discussed and known to all people. I am 65 years old. I was at a parade in our town for the 4th of July with my entire family at the time. I had four grandchildren and three of my four children and their significant others. And we had a really good spot to view the parade. And a few minutes into the parade getting started, we heard pops, loud pops. And everybody kind of looked at each other like, what is it? Is it fireworks? That wouldn't have been unusual, obviously, on the 4th of July. And then people from across the street where we were sitting started yelling, shooter, shooter, shooter. And there was a shooter who was on top of a building shooting down in the direction of where my family and myself were seated on the ground. People next to me literally fell to their death from shots. And my family started running and thankfully all of them got away. My husband was with me and as I started running behind our family, something hit me. I thought I had just broken my foot. I didn't realize that it was A bullet. The pain was visceral. It. It took me down. I literally fell down and couldn't get up. And we ran to safety because obviously the shooter was still at large. And from about 15 minutes I sat watching my foot bleed. But again, I wasn't so concerned as thinking that it had been a bullet. And my husband knew, knew better. And he got somebody to bring a car around for us. And once we kind of got the sign that all was clear, even though shooter had not been apprehended but was no longer in the vicinity, we drove to the hospital. And that's pretty much what I remember from the day I was one of the first victims to get to this local hospital. We went to a hospital that wasn't in our town but a few towns over. And that's the way my journey began. I was overnight in that hospital and had a surgery there to hopefully save all of my soft tissue in my foot. And the next day transported by ambulance to Northwestern downtown. And from that point on, I was seen by two tremendous doctors. One was a microsurgeon and one was an orthopedic surgeon. Both which had joined their specialties and worked before together, not on anybody who had been shot, but on different people who had needed specialized surgery that required two of these physicians. And I spent the next 55 days in the hospital. Some time interaction, no weight bearing at all. And while in the hospital, underwent a number of different surgeries on both of my legs and eventually left the hospital with my foot intact. Still questioning whether or not my foot would survive the plastics piece. And still some questions as to whether I would walk.
- [05:03]
A
Amazing. And talk about now. Is it three years past now since the shooting? Two or three years passed?
- [05:08]
B
Yeah, it's three years. It was three years on July 4th.
- [05:13]
A
Amazing. And talk about sort of. You're walking again. We happen to know Sheila and the family. You look fantastic. We're talking about mentally and emotionally some of the toll that this takes on a victim and the victim's family.
- [05:29]
B
Right. Well, that's, you know, that's really important to understand. I mean, the physical healing was long and brutal. I learned how to re walk. I navigated lots of complications, setbacks, exhaustion. Many times these surgeries required me again to be no weight bearing. So I would be back in bed in need of help and support from family members. And it's depressing, it's isolating. And on the outside, I look like I'm fine. And I appreciate you saying that, but it hides the truth. And the truth is that the psychological Wounds are still a part of my everyday life. For me personally, I use so much of my strength to heal my foot physically. And while it seems silly and many times I've heard people make the comment, oh, you're so lucky it was just your foot. Because I was shot with an automatic weapon. It totally destroyed the inside, all the bones inside my heel and a little bit above my heel, closer to my ankle, up my leg, my Achilles tendon. And so much of that was replaced with metal. But the, the physical part of it and the actual mechanical part of it is still limited. I don't have full range of motion in my foot. I have chronic pain in my foot. I have nerve pain in my foot. But forget all that. I'm lucky and grateful to have a foot. And I thought that I was coasting along and that I was kind of getting back to my old self and I recently have, since the sentencing, I would say, and maybe even in the anticipation of the reminder of the fourth of July, I have definitely started suffering from ptsd, which was never part of what my healing process was. I have more anxiety, I have flashbacks, I have an overwhelming sense of vulnerability. It's just shaken me in ways that I never expected. I felt like I had moved through forward and that all that was behind me. And in fact, I, I, I now know in talking to a trauma specialist that it's not something that just you're lucky enough to never have to face head on, that it's something with trauma and grief that you have to address the sadness, the loss and everything else. And you know, for me, I've noticed that, you know, all the people that have been incredible support to me have moved on as they should and, and as I once hoped I would be able to do. But I haven't really moved on. I'm not the same person I was before, where it appears to me that nearly everyone else in my life is. And this definitely creates a sense of loneliness and isolation.
- [08:16]
A
Let me ask you a question on that. Because as you go forward, there's these intense feelings of everybody's moving on with their lives, the kids are having kids, the family's doing all kinds of things and you're sort of a little bit, sort of like a bit mentally debilitated, if not still physically, because you've just been through something that's very traumatic and life changing. Therapy, other things that help, other suggestions for people, support groups, you know, what has been.
- [08:47]
B
Yeah, I mean, it's interesting you say that, you know, I, I, I want to acknowledge the incredible Support I had from my family and friends, literally from all over the country, from. And calls and suggestions for therapies, et cetera, et cetera. I think it gets old, though, I think when you're looking around and you carry this every day. And I want to talk about the fact that for me, that it's not over. But I'm not suggesting or trying to evoke sympathy for me. I just want to acknowledge that so many survivors, so many survivors continue to fight even with a good face on. You know, whether it's not being able to have a child because a bullet pierced your pelvis and you can't, you, you could never carry a child again, or one of the survivors who is a good friend of mine, you know, is paralyzed, his whole life has changed. I don't care about therapies, I don't care about trauma. I don't care about any of it. It's like, it's just the harsh realities that we live with and the headlines are gone in mass shootings after about a week. And the love and support moves on, as it should, because people get back to their own lives. But we have to find a way to re engage communities, ours in particular, because there are still so many needs in our community. And while our community still has homelessness and food shortages for people in our community, the reality is that this was a mass shooting. This happens all over the country all the time, and all these other problems, problems get attention and the aftermath for mass shooting victims does not. So, and I mean, you need community, you need people to understand what your battle is and that you don't feel alone and that you don't feel isolated, because when you do feel those things, it makes it virtually impossible to help yourself heal. So, yes, I have spoken with a trauma therapist who gives me exercises to practice all the time. You know, you, you also live with, you know, guilt that I'm better than others. You know, other people lost, people who died, other people have injuries that are far more significant than mine and will, you know, continue to last with them forever. But it's just, I, I just sit back and I think about things that are politically heightened and other struggles in our country. And I just think this one is a miss. You know, I just think we have not paid enough attention and there's nobody to connect you. I have never, other than sitting in court with all the named victims during the sentencing, have never had an opportunity to be in a room with those victims to share our experience. We, on that day, when we were all in court together, we cried, we held each other, we looked at each other. We understood each person's story in a way that, that nobody else could. Those kind of opportunities are not presented by anybody because there's nobody organizing any kind of grief sessions for people like us. And when we talked to the state's attorney's office and we were all being interviewed for a plea agreement, et cetera, we asked for an opportunity to talk with other victims and see how they felt about what was going on in what was going to happen. And that never happened. So there's not, there's nothing like fema. There's nobody that comes in and tells a town, especially a town like ours, which is incredibly low in violence, how to manage a mass shooting. The contributions that come in investing in people's future, who need money, not only at the immediate point of the shooting, but certainly after, there's nobody to tell you what to do with victims. People are so worried about respecting privacy, but we need, and I speak for myself, I can't speak on behalf of the other victims, but I have spoken to other victims. We need, we don't need privacy. We need support and kindness. And it's hard to, again, three years later, expect people to know that unless they hear about it, unless they see evidence of it, unless they ask. And that's what I'm hoping that my message evokes, is re engaging people to realize that victims of mass shootings just should not be left behind.
- [13:24]
A
No, 100%. And it really is one of those kind of things where everybody is sort of left to their own devices to figure out what to do and how they're going to do things and stuff like that. It really feels like that's the case. I know for so many other ailments and issues and situations, there are so many support groups for this. It seems like there's really not. Not. No, Sheila, Absolutely. In any sort of final thoughts that you'd like to leave with listeners about this or about what can be done or what should be done. Any final thoughts at all, Sheila?
- [13:57]
B
Well, the only other thing, you know, being that you're a healthcare platform, you know, that you and I briefly discussed too, is so I had two phenomenal physicians. Probably many other hospitals would never have provided me the creative care and saving my foot. Even one of my surgeons had suggested, after one of the initial flaps failed to just amputate my foot because further damage would sacrifice both of my legs, not just one. But he didn't. And I, I don't think that these physicians who have become really my heroes signed up for this. I think that their specialties and what they studied in medicine and what they hope to become as doctors were people to help people with needs and cancer survivors and serious physical orthopedic injuries that are devastating for children. My orthopedic doctor works in third world countries, savings limbs and helping children even walk again. And the microsurgeon does these incredible repairs for people have had surgery and have become deformed. And that's what they signed up to do. That's what they are committed to doing. Mass shooting victims? I don't think so. I mean, while they did everything possible with every minute of time, and when I say that, I mean 16 surgeries later, they have given me time to talk about the surgeries and time to operate with me and been there during my recovery. There wasn't a day in those 55 days I was in the hospital that both of them didn't appear. But how our country is going to sustain these doctors if mass shootings keep happening and this is the work that they're forced to do or have to do or want to do just to save somebody like me. I don't think it's sustainable. And to think about how much it cost my insurance company to take care of me over the last three years. And it's continuing because there's still physical therapy, there's still ongoing suggestions of further surgeries. And I, you know, I think it's a bigger issue and I think it has to be looked at as well.
- [16:17]
A
So thank you so much. And Sheila, is it okay to give a shout out to Northwestern Medicine, Northwestern Healthcare, I think where the surgeons were located at.
- [16:26]
B
Yes, it is. I mean, first I was seen by tremendous microsurgeon Dr. Chantevin out of Lake Forest, and then my two training doctors at Northwestern, Dr. Jason Koh and Dr. East Kadakia, and honestly, everybody who worked with them too, became my family. You know, when you spend that much time in the hospital, their assistants and their surgical staff and their residents and everybody, and many of them visit me, visited me when I was home after this. And many of them stay in touch with me. And I just feel so grateful for the care that I got at Northwestern.
- [17:03]
A
Thank you very much. She thank you so much for joining us today on the Becker's Healthcare and Becker Business podcast. Thank you very, very much.
- [17:14]
B
Thanks, Scott.