About $20,000 tentatively earmarked for library memorial

CLOVIS — At least $20,000 in funds raised from private donors the past month have been designated for a memorial to the victims of the Aug. 28 library shooting, but details are still to be ironed out.

Members of the Clovis/Curry County Chamber of Commerce fundraising committee will defer to recommendations early next month from the Clovis-Carver Public Library Board, said Library Victim Advocacy Fund Committee chairman Scott Odom.

“Fundraising is still going on,” he said. “Right now we have about $20,000 for what we’ve tentatively earmarked as a memorial. We don’t know yet what the library wants so we are going to wait and get their input prior to anything.”

Library Director Margaret Hinchee said Wednesday the board would most likely propose “some kind of permanent memorial for Krissie Carter and Wanda Walters that will be housed inside the library.”

Carter and Walters were both employees of the library killed in the mass shooting, which also hospitalized four individuals and impacted dozens more.

Precisely where in the library or what form that memorial will take is yet to be determined, but the library board will develop more ideas at its Oct. 30 meeting and share them with the chamber committee Nov. 3, Hinchee said.

In just over a month the chamber committee collected about $50,000, $30,000 of which was authorized last week as an “Unmet Needs Grant” to the United Way of Eastern New Mexico.

In collaboration with Matt 25 and the 9th Judicial District Attorney’s Victim Advocate Program, UWENM will act as fiscal agent for distributing those funds to fulfill financial needs of the library victims otherwise unmet by insurance or the state’s victim reparations fund.

The most common of those needs are likely to be things like rent or utilities payment from lost income, or other material items, a UWENM representative said last week.

“When we started to fundraise we weren’t sure if we were going to have $5,000 or $20,000. And now we’re looking at $50,000,” Odom said. “We have had people donate checks that say ‘This is to be for a memorial fund only,’ and same with checks for victims’ families only.”

How long the grant funds now in the hands of UWENM might last is hard to say, but 100 percent of the money will go to the victims and their families, Odom said.

If at any point two months pass without any of the grant funds being expended, UWENM will send the remaining funds back to the chamber committee.

If the memorial project ends up costing less than $20,000 — or whatever amount is available after another few weeks of fundraising — the committee will seek a way to again put that money toward victims.

“That’s exactly where we’re at right now, is all those hypotheticals,” Odom said. “We’re really just trying to be very patient and let the process run itself. ... But everything is going either to the victims or the memorial fund.”