Parents honor slain daughter’s mantra after Saugus school shooting

Gracie Muehlberger left behind a journal line that her parents now treat as a way to live, not just a memory to keep. “You only have one life to live, so why not live it great, real, and fill it with memories and experiences?” the 15-year-old wrote before she was killed at Saugus High School in Santa Clarita, California.

The shooting began around 7:38 a.m. on Thursday, Nov. 14, 2019, in the school quad. Law enforcement identified the gunman as 16-year-old Nathaniel Tennosuke Berhow. Two students were killed and three others were wounded before Berhow died by suicide later that day. Officials said the weapon was a .45-caliber semi-automatic pistol assembled from parts, the kind of gun widely known as a ghost gun or kit gun.

For Bryan and Cindy Muehlberger, Gracie’s words became a guide through grief. The couple created The GracieStrong Foundation to honor her memory and carry forward the energy, passion and strength they associated with her life. Cindy said the family tries to live by Gracie’s message now, turning a teenage journal entry into a daily framework for resilience.

Bryan Muehlberger later tested how easy it was for a minor to buy a gun kit online and was able to order one using Gracie’s name without proof of age. That experience pushed the family’s story beyond private mourning and into a broader fight over ghost guns and the failures that allow dangerous weapons to circulate outside the safeguards meant to protect children and schools.

The Saugus attack became part of a much larger national pattern. Since Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, more than 160 children have been killed in school shootings across the United States. Gracie’s family has tried to answer that scale of loss with a message rooted in one student’s own words, insisting that her life should be remembered not only for how it ended, but for the purpose her parents have drawn from it.

In Santa Clarita, that purpose has taken shape through remembrance, advocacy and a foundation built in her name. What began as one girl’s journal line now stands as a public reminder that families often transform private sorrow into a philosophy for living, especially when violence steals the future they had imagined.