His name is Eddie Meltzer and he's 34 years old, though according to NPR's Ari Shapiro, he looks about 10 years younger. But it's his humanitarian act to assist many families of the victims of the Orlando shooting massacre that brought him to Shapiro's attention.
Meltzer tells Shapiro that he'd left Pulse nightclub just five minutes before the shooting began. The next day, as relatives of the victims — many of whom don't speak English — met with FBI and other law enforcement officials, Meltzer volunteered as a translator and liaison, interpreting dialogue from English to Spanish and back again for all parties.
The Orlando community is slowly shifting from a sense of shock to a deeper understanding of what happened and who the people were that were affected by the tragedy. Shapiro spoke with Meltzer in Orlando about his role in helping to bring some measure of comfort to the grieving families.
Interview Highlights
On how he narrowly escaped the Pulse nightclub before the shooting
I got really lucky. I got really hungry, and I was like, I just don't want to be here; I think I'm going to go. And I left my friends there. I went to eat, and I woke up in the morning and found out that, you know, this was going on.
On what he did the day after the shooting
I helped translate for the Latino families. I helped with a lot of grieving. I got yelled at as well. It was a lady. They announced the name, and she said, "Oh, that's the people that are doing OK." And I said, no, they're talking about the people that didn't make it. And she yelled at me, "You don't know what you're talking about." And she just went crazy.
And I grabbed her, and I said, "I'm so sorry you're going through this." And I just helped her grieve. And she yelled at me, but she was yelling at me with, like — she knew it wasn't my fault. She was just yelling. ...Out of grief, yeah.
On whether there are many families of victims that don't speak English
I wouldn't say it's half and half. There was just a lot of people that are not from this country, and some people are — their kids were born here. They're not from here. This is Florida. A lot of people don't speak English when they can get away with Spanish.
On whether there were things authorities told him that he didn't want to be the one to tell a family
I had some people that said, my son wasn't there because he doesn't go to these kinds of places. And I was like, well, I have a lot of straight friends that come here, you know? And I had some people that, they were like, well, if he was there, you know, he was probably with a girl or something, you know? It's like they were in that shock. They're just saying whatever they can say to not relate their son to this event.
On the kinds of reactions people had
You know, I saw everything. I saw a woman hyperventilating. I saw people that stayed very together and had moments of euphoria, and then they will go back to normal. Then they will get very mechanical. So where do I get the belongings? What is the phone number I call? What do I do?
This gentleman — he was writing the phone number down for something that he needed to do, and I was like, what is he writing down? It was just scribble because he probably was in just a state of shock that he was just writing whatever. He was trying to write a number, but it was, like, a mess. And I grabbed it, and I wrote the phone number for him because I can tell that he couldn't. In his mind, I mean, they're not there. They're somewhere else. I was there yesterday constantly thinking that these parents could have been my parents. To some extent, it's like. ... I looked around, and all I could think is, that could have been my dad. And that was tearing me apart. I was so close. It could have been me.
On whether he had any training to prepare him for such situations
I don't think there's anything will prepare you for this. You know, people keep arguing if this is a terror attack or a hate crime. I'm like, it's both. It doesn't matter what it is. It's horrible. That's what it is. And I think nothing can prepare you for this.
But today I decided to have a new ideology. And I decided that I needed to not give in to the hate of what these people want. They want chaos. They want us to suffer. So one of the reasons I did some of the interviews was because I wanted to show them that they did not get through us and that we're going to go party as soon as we get better, party really hard, be very gay, have a lot of fun.
And we're going to rebuild from the ashes today stronger, and I'm not going to put tears anywhere. I'm going to show them that I came out stronger with more love. And that's ... what gets you through it.
On whether he lost any close friends during the massacre
I did. Two friends that were a couple, another friend that I knew for a long time. I lost another friend also that I was supposed to meet there. Another one died on the way to the hospital. So ... five and one acquaintance that was injured. I just got word that he's doing really well in the hospital after surgery, so that's happy news.
I'm just not going to subscribe to fear. We're a strong community. You know, we're gay men. We ... live in a world where we get a lot of hate. We take a lot of hate. And we know how the world feels about us. And we're strong people because we live in a world that wasn't made for us. And if tomorrow somebody took over this country and said, we're going to kill all the gays, I will be the first one in that square saying, shoot me with my big flag all over the place because I would rather die for what I stand for. You can't kill me. I'm an idea, I'm timeless.
Eddie Meltzer is set to begin a new career as a nurse this fall.
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