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Michael Jackson was there for us when it mattered most. He didn’t have to, but that was the side of him that many people did not know. On a day when the City of Stockton was down for the count, Michael Jackson showed up out of the blue and resuscitated us back into existence.After a madman with a rifle killed and injured dozens of schoolchildren at Cleveland Elementary in Stockton, California, nobody would expect the world’s biggest musical superstar to take notice and make the effort to show up in person in January of 1989.

 

Patrick Purdy may have destroyed many lives that day, but Michael Jackson’s presence helped bring more attention and compassion to the victims than anybody else on planet Earth could have done in a hundred years.

 

I certainly remember the panic in the air around Stockton, the calamity and desperation of parents stopping everything they were doing and racing to get their kids out of school immediately. I clearly recall hoping desperately that the police got there fast and ended it in a hurry. The incident in Stockton led to a quick assault rifle ban in California and was the beginning of national campaigns and activism against these types of deadly guns, according to an analysis by Reuters. Michael Jackson played a major role by his presence there that day.

 

Michael Jackson, coolest pop singer on the planet, showed up in Stockton with “truckloads of gifts to the children” and helped comfort survivors of the attack, according to Diane Batres who worked for the district attorney’s victim witness department.

 

The Record newspaper of Stockton has reported that Michael Jackson went far beyond the call of duty when he visited the classrooms of Cleveland Elementary School and met with the injured survivors of the shooting.

 

20 yrs after the incident Darren had this footnote: ~ My most powerful and long-lasting memory of Michael Jackson was after that school shooting in my hometown when he showed up and brought doses of mesmerizing happiness and cool comfort that nobody else in the world could bring. At the height of his fame, he reached out to a community that needed help in the worst way.

 

Diane Batres wasn’t happy back in 1989 when she took a call from someone at MJJ Productions. “I thought it was someone wanting to make a movie. I was furious,” said Batres. The Cleveland School shootings had happened a couple weeks before and Batres was in charge of the District Attorney’s Victim Witness department. Then she learned MJJ was Michael Jackson, offering a Stockton visit to comfort survivors of the school attack.

 

“It was very kind of him to do this. He brought truckloads of gifts to the children and held children in his arms. He was genuinely concerned and expressed his sorrow,” said Batres. Jackson gave videotapes of his recent recordings to the children. One of the songs was ‘Man in the Mirror.’

 

Batres heard later from a grateful parent how much that meant. “One of the mothers called after the experience and said, ‘I’m so glad I saw that’ because she realized for the first time there were yellow tears, white tears, brown tears and black tears. Every tear was the same color. They all felt the same sadness,” said Batres.

 

Michael visited every classroom at Cleveland that day, stopped by Central Methodist Church to meet wounded children not yet ready to return to school and sat with two more children still recovering at San Joaquin General Hospital. Jackson gave all the children videotapes and T-shirts. “His presence made me feel like, ‘Oh, wow, the world is safe, and it is possible to dream, and there is hope after all,’ ” said Elizabeth Pha, 27, who as an adult is pursuing her own career as a singing star.

 

In a recent interview with former Record reporter Dianne Barth, Cleveland Principal Pat Busher said, “(Jackson’s) motivations were heartfelt. … It was to help children. And that event did a lot of good for the children.”