It was still dark early on a Thursday morning in a quiet neighborhood of Southwest Bend, but the lights of the Grinols’ home were on.

Melissa Grinols was stacking green grapes into a lunch box while her two kids, Della, 4, and Dale, 6, abandoned their bagels on the dining table to run around the kitchen island.

The Grinols family has clung to this familiar routine in the days since tragedy upended their community. On Oct. 15, a teenager fatally shot four people inside an elementary school about three miles from their home. The school, Silver Rail Elementary, will remain closed through at least Nov. 6. But like many kids enrolled elsewhere in Bend-La Pine Schools, Della and Dale have already returned to classrooms.

Grinols works from home, and her husband Blair is a general contractor. Their flexible schedules allowed them to be with their kids when school was cancelled following the incident. But as their kids headed back to school in the days after the shooting, the Grinolses, like many parents, were worried.

The first day back was emotional, said Melissa Grinols, while she was relieved to see a law enforcement officer posted outside her kids’ school at drop-off.

“It made it feel safe — but still scary, and that’s never the feeling you want to feel when you’re taking your kids to a place they’re supposed to be safe in,“ she said.

Dale goes to Elk Meadow Elementary school, just a few blocks from their home. Before leaving, Della, who goes to preschool nearby, said she was looking forward to seeing her friends at school.

“I wanna be the brave one and show them that there’s nothing to be scared of, but I know that I don’t feel that way truly in my heart, so that’s hard,” Grinols said.

She hugged her son tightly before leaving him at the back door of the school. The tears didn’t come until she got back home.

“I don’t know if I’ll ever not feel this way,” she said through tears. “We’re just starting public school so there’s so many more years of school to go so just have to sit with it you know, I don’t know what else to do.”

Grinols signed a petition started by other parents, calling for additional resource officers at every campus, among other things. After the drop-off, she said she was disappointed to see that there was no safety officer at the rear entrance of the school like there had been the day before.

In the wake of the shooting, she went to her first city council meeting, where several parents and community members called for action from city leaders.

Many parents spoke about their fears and to say they want to see more security measures in place.

“Somebody said something along the lines of: ‘We have cameras to monitor traffic and car accidents and banks. Why don’t we have security cameras in our schools to protect our kids?’” she recalled.

Two weeks after the shooting, Grinols said school drop-off and pick-up have become less emotional for her. But the feelings of sadness, anger and fear linger. She referenced mixed feelings among other parents in her circle as the community navigates grief while looking to the future.

“Continuing routine I think helps the grieving process but I also hear on the other side that it feels like we’re just moving on. And we don’t want that, we’re not ready for that. We’re not ready to just pretend nothing happened,” she said.

As Tuesday’s midterm election nears, school safety is top of mind for her. There is no question that the issue will influence her vote.

“I would always like to think that that’s been a top priority for the people who are making laws and distributing funds for those types of things but I think now definitely, it’s got some more attention,” Grinols said.

News Source : https://www.opb.org/article/2026/11/01/bend-grinols-family-after-shooting/