<v Speaker 1>I'm Jerry Broadway, and this is Anonymous America where we

<v Speaker 1>take a deep dive into American history to look at

<v Speaker 1>amazing people who did incredible things and then slipped through

<v Speaker 1>the sands of time. It really is a sad truth,

<v Speaker 1>but it's a truth all the same that every school

<v Speaker 1>in America has these now lockdown drills, response protocols. There

<v Speaker 1>are entire industries built around a nightmare that we've all

<v Speaker 1>been forced to watch play out in real time. But

<v Speaker 1>there's no drill, there's no protocol, there's no manual on

<v Speaker 1>any shelf in the world that covers this scenario. You're

<v Speaker 1>all alone in the front office of an elementary school.

<v Speaker 1>There are eight hundred children in the building behind you,

<v Speaker 1>and there's a young man standing in front of you

<v Speaker 1>holding a rifle and five hundred rounds of ammunition. On

<v Speaker 1>an August afternoon in twenty thirteen, in a suburb of Atlanta,

<v Speaker 1>that exact scenario happened, and it ended with every child

<v Speaker 1>and teacher safe and sound, and the gunman alive and

<v Speaker 1>in custody, not because of a weapon, not because of

<v Speaker 1>a tactical team, but because of the voice of a

<v Speaker 1>school bookkeeper. Her name is Antoinette Tough appropriately enough, and

<v Speaker 1>what she did in that office may be the single

<v Speaker 1>greatest feat of straight talk in modern American history. For

<v Speaker 1>Maddad Productions, this is Anonymous America. It's August twentieth, twenty thirteen.

<v Speaker 1>At the Ronald E. McNair Discovery Learning Academy in Decatur, Georgia.

<v Speaker 1>There are roughly eight hundred students pre k through fifth grade.

<v Speaker 1>Just a couple of weeks into the school year, Antoinette

<v Speaker 1>Tough was the school's bookkeeper. She handled purchase orders, budgets,

<v Speaker 1>lunch money, the kind of job you only notice when

<v Speaker 1>something's wrong with your paycheck. That day, she happened to

<v Speaker 1>be covering the front desk. And to understand what happened next,

<v Speaker 1>you need to know where Antoinette Tough was in her

<v Speaker 1>own life, because it matters. Her marriage had recently collapsed

<v Speaker 1>after decades. She was raising a sun with significant disabilities,

<v Speaker 1>Her finances were falling apart, and by her own account,

<v Speaker 1>she had sunk low enough the previous year that she

<v Speaker 1>had considered ending her own life. Now, if you had

<v Speaker 1>asked Antoinette back then how she was doing, she would

<v Speaker 1>have told you she was just surviving. She had no

<v Speaker 1>way of knowing that every painful mile of that road

<v Speaker 1>was about to become the most important qualification anyone has

<v Speaker 1>ever brought to a front desk. That afternoon, a twenty

<v Speaker 1>year old man named Michael Brandon Hill slipped through the

<v Speaker 1>school's locked security door behind a parent who'd been buzzed in.

<v Speaker 1>He had a history of serious mental illness, and of

<v Speaker 1>course he was off his meds. In his arms he

<v Speaker 1>held an AK forty seven and in his pockets were

<v Speaker 1>close to five hundred rounds of AMMO. He walked into

<v Speaker 1>the front office and suddenly the only thing standing between

<v Speaker 1>him and eight hundred children was Antoinette Tough. He told

<v Speaker 1>her straight out, this is not a joke. Everyone here

<v Speaker 1>is about to Antoinette Touff got on the phone with

<v Speaker 1>nine one one and a dispatcher named Kendrup McCrae answered, Now,

<v Speaker 1>that call was recorded, and if you've never heard it,

<v Speaker 1>I'd encourage you to find it because everything I'm about

<v Speaker 1>to describe is on that recording. Tough became the go

<v Speaker 1>between relaying the gunman's words to the dispatcher and the

<v Speaker 1>police response back to him. She was calm, she was steady,

<v Speaker 1>like she was reading off lunch orders. At one point,

<v Speaker 1>Hill stepped outside the building and opened fire on the

<v Speaker 1>arriving officers. Police fired back. He retreated back into the office.

<v Speaker 1>Back to Antoinette Tough understand what that moment was. Shots

<v Speaker 1>had now been exchanged. This was now, by every definition,

<v Speaker 1>an active shooter situation at an elementary school. Nearly every

<v Speaker 1>one of these stories ends one way, and everyone in

<v Speaker 1>that building knew it. And that's when Antoinette Tough did

<v Speaker 1>the thing no protocol on earth would have advised. She

<v Speaker 1>started talking to him, not as a threat to be managed,

<v Speaker 1>but as another human being in pain. She told him

<v Speaker 1>about her own life, about how her marriage fell apart

<v Speaker 1>after all those years, her disabled son, and then she

<v Speaker 1>went further. She told this armed stranger that she had

<v Speaker 1>once been so low that she tried to end her

<v Speaker 1>own life, and that she had recovered and come back

<v Speaker 1>from it. We all go through something like this in life.

<v Speaker 1>She told him, You're gonna be okay. As they talked,

<v Speaker 1>she called him sweetie, she called him baby. This young

<v Speaker 1>man had walked into this building promising death, and this

<v Speaker 1>woman was talking to him the way a mom talks

<v Speaker 1>to a child with a skin knee and then she

<v Speaker 1>started negotiating a surrender. No one had even asked her

<v Speaker 1>to negotiate. She told him if he gave up, she'd

<v Speaker 1>stay with him. She'd make sure the police didn't hurt him.

<v Speaker 1>She told him, you haven't heard anyone yet. You can

<v Speaker 1>still stop this. She even told him she loved him,

<v Speaker 1>and there was something about her calm demeanor and soothing

<v Speaker 1>voice that cut through whatever noise was in Michael Hill's

<v Speaker 1>brain that day. She talked, He listened, and then something

<v Speaker 1>incredible happened. Michael laid the rifle on the counter and

<v Speaker 1>emptied his pockets, got down on the floor, put his

<v Speaker 1>hands behind his back, and allowed the police to take

<v Speaker 1>him without another shot being fired. Eight hundred children walked

<v Speaker 1>out of that school untouched that day, every teacher, every

<v Speaker 1>staff member, even Michael Hill himself, alive to face justice

<v Speaker 1>and hopefully treatment. And only when it was over, with

<v Speaker 1>Hill and custody in the building safe, did Antoinette Tough

<v Speaker 1>finally let go. On that nine one one tape, you

<v Speaker 1>can hear her voice break as she tells the dispatcher

<v Speaker 1>She's never been so scared in all her life, and

<v Speaker 1>who wouldn't be in that situation she'd been terrified the

<v Speaker 1>entire time, she just never let the shooters see it.

<v Speaker 1>After the dust had settled, President Barack Obama personally called

<v Speaker 1>Antoinette to say thank you. She did a few interviews,

<v Speaker 1>she wrote a book, and she started a nonprofit to

<v Speaker 1>help kids. And then time does what it does, and

<v Speaker 1>the new cycle rolled on and people got on with

<v Speaker 1>their lives, and Antoinette Tough quietly returned to be a

<v Speaker 1>name most people can't recall. There's no statue in her honor,

<v Speaker 1>there's no Antoinette Tough Day. There's just the memory of

<v Speaker 1>a woman in an impossible situation who made the impossible happen.

<v Speaker 1>Think about what actually happened in that office. Everything we

<v Speaker 1>spend billions on, the hardware, the tactics, the drills, and

<v Speaker 1>what saved eight hundred children that day was nothing more

<v Speaker 1>than empathy. A woman who looked at a young man

<v Speaker 1>holding a rifle and made a choice to not see

<v Speaker 1>a potential mass murderer, but instead to see a hurting kid.

<v Speaker 1>And the most amazing part of this story, well, every

<v Speaker 1>qualification she needed that day came from the worst chapters

<v Speaker 1>in her own life. The failed marriage, the struggles with

<v Speaker 1>her son, even the darkest night of her own despair.

<v Speaker 1>She didn't just tell Michael Hill it was possible to

<v Speaker 1>come back from the bottom. She was living proof, standing

<v Speaker 1>right in front of him. Her pain turned out to

<v Speaker 1>be her preparation. Now, most of us will never know

<v Speaker 1>why we go through the trials we've all faced at

<v Speaker 1>one time or another. But Antoinette Tough found out on

<v Speaker 1>an August afternoon at a front desk with eight hundred

<v Speaker 1>children's lives in her hand. That's Antlinette Tough, and that's

<v Speaker 1>anonymous America.