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Michelle Vo, 32, a graduate of San Jose's Independence High School, was among the victims of the massacre in Las Vegas. (Courtesy of Vo family)
Michelle Vo was thrilled to attend last weekend’s country music concert in Las Vegas with some girlfriends.
But on Sunday, as they were prepared to leave, the 32-year-old insurance saleswoman decided to stick around on her own to watch Jason Aldean, the last act of the Route 91 Harvest Festival.
Then Vo, a graduate of San Jose’s Independence High School, headed off to the venue, where she met Kody Robertson, a 32-year-old auto parts salesman from Ohio. They hung out for a few hours, danced and laughed.
And as they stood next to each other amid some 22,000 fans, they heard the first pops echo across the Las Vegas Strip, just after 10 p.m. They thought it was fireworks, just a part of the show.
But as people started to scramble and push and tried to figure out what was really going on, a bullet pierced the left side of Vo’s chest, and she fell — one of 59 people who died from bullets fired by Stephen Paddock, the man who sprayed concertgoers with gunfire from a window on the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino.
“He threw his body on her when she was shot,” Cathy Warren, one of Vo’s two sisters, said Robertson told her. “I’m thankful that he was there, and we are grateful she did not die alone.’’
When the firing finally seemed to stop, Robertson said he worked with another man to carry Vo out of the venue — pausing for cover each time the gunfire resumed.
“Michelle, Michelle!” Robertson screamed as he and the other man took turns performing CPR on Vo, who was not longer responsive. “Wake up!”
Finally outside, Robertson spotted a white pickup truck whose driver was headed to the hospital. He set Vo down on the truck bed, then ran back toward the stage to help others.
He saw Vo’s purse on the ground in the area where they had been dancing. Her phone wasn’t inside, so he furiously called the number Vo had given him earlier until, finally, someone answered. Another group of concertgoers had picked up the phone as they ran for the exits. Robertson could pick it up at Planet Hollywood.
The phone rang and it was Jeremiah Hawkins, 37, the husband of Vo’s oldest sister, Diane, calling from the couple’s home in Washington state. He was frantic, asking Robertson about Vo and where she had been taken.
Robertson didn’t know, but he told Hawkins he would keep looking until he found her.
He called all the hospitals he could find. He dialed the information line set up by police. No luck.
Hawkins asked Robertson if he had tried Sunrise Hospital. H had not, so Robertson took a cab to the hospital.
When he described Vo to a hospital worker behind the front desk, he was told she might be there.
By 11 a.m., Robertson was led to a small back office. “Michelle didn’t make it,” one of the doctors told him. “The wounds were too much.”
Robertson called Hawkins with the bad news.
“She was a very beloved person and really full of life,” said Cathy Warren, who lives in Campbell. “Anyone she met — it didn’t matter who it was — she made you feel welcome.”
Charismatic, energetic and independent, Vo was born in Fullerton but grew up in San Jose with her two sisters, Diane and Cathy, and younger brother, Alex. Over the years, she became a huge fan of the San Jose Sharks and the Oakland Warriors. And she played a mean game of golf.
Vo also also volunteered at the Red Cross.
“If they had let her go everyday she would have gone every day,” Diane Hawkins said. “She gave blood religiously, and they had to tell her she could only come back every two weeks.”
Vo graduated from high school in 2003 and then attended UC Davis, where she majored in business and marketing, said Cathy Warren. And it was there that she met her husband-to-be, Tomo Swenson. (The two were separated.)
Returning to San Jose, Vo worked as an executive assistant to the marketing directors at companies like Synopsys and RichRelevance. But years later, during a downsizing at a firm, she was laid off.
That gave her the opportunity to travel for a few months in Europe by herself, before landing a new job at New York Life Insurance — this time, in Southern California.
On Tuesday morning, a colleague at the company in Pasadena who knew Vo called her “one of our tops agents — very ambitious and a very hard working person.’’
The woman, who asked not to be identified, described Vo as a very pleasant and outgoing person who was based in the company’s Glendale office.
Top agents, she said, have to be go-getters and well-organized — two of Vo’s strongest qualities. “Everyone is really upset’’ about her death, she said.
Vo loved all kinds of music, but was introduced to country Western by her brother-in-law Hawkins.
“Slowly she drifted toward it,“ recalled Diane Hawkins. “In country the theme of each song is so sweet she fell in love with it.”
Vo’s mother, father and sister Diane had fled Vietnam in 1985 in a canoe-like boat to escape the communist regime. They landed in Thailand, where Cathy was born, and a few years later made their way to Orange County, where the mother’s brother lived.
“It was the perfect American dream — an immigrant family, against all odds, persevering,” said Jeremiah Hawkins.
Vo’s father died at age 41; her mother moved the family to San Jose, where she remarried.
Vo’s relationships with her family remained especially tight, especially with her mother and sisters.
In the moments before the shooting, she’d been showing photos of her sisters to Robertson, and bragging about how beautiful they are. Her family said she was expected to come home to San Jose this weekend for a visit.
For the last 15 years, her mother, Hana Bui, has managed Dave’s Barber Shop in Cupertino. On Tuesday, she forced herself to go to work, hoping it would distract her from her grief.
Bui said she is leaning heavily on her Buddhist faith to help her cope with the loss of her daughter.
“I loved my husband before, and I loved my daughter,’’ she said tearfully. “And both are gone, but you continue to love them. That makes me feel better.”
Staff writer Mark Gomez, The Washington Post and the Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch contributed to this report.