Nine-year-old Ricardo Caldera lined up with the rest of his class for the Monday morning assembly, happy to leave his partly finished penmanship work sheet on his desk in Mrs. Bottger’s room.
Still wearing his camouflage vest, Ricardo walked with his partner to the Oakland Elementary School gym and sat quietly on the smooth wood floor.
The principal, Mr. Robinson, got up and talked about heroism and courage. A Denver police officer, wearing a big smile, stood next to him.
“Someone in this school, one of our fourth-graders, did something really, really brave and really, really smart,” Reggie Robinson announced.
He paused.
“Ricardo Caldera,” he said into the microphone.
Everyone turned to look at Ricardo.
Most of the 582 students at Oakland already had heard about the boy who got shot when he threw himself protectively over his 4-year-old brother, Esteban, after two masked gunmen broke into the Calderas’ Montbello home at 9:30 p.m. on Oct. 26.
When the boys’ mother, Rosa Caldera, screamed at her sons to hide in the basement bedroom, one of the intruders fired a gun through the window before running away. Without thinking or hesitating, Ricardo threw himself over Esteban, shielding him from the intruders, who still remain at large.
“‘Cause he’s my little brother,” Ricardo explained over and over when people asked him how he could be so brave.
The bullet burst through Ricardo’s lower back and went out his abdomen. It never touched Esteban.
The doctors at Denver Health Medical Center that night said none of Ricardo’s vital organs were hit, although the wounds still hurt.
For two weeks, Ricardo stayed home from school. Not home, exactly. The Calderas left their house on the night of the break-in and do not plan to return.
When Ricardo went back to school, hardly any of the fourth- and fifth-graders missed the chance to look at the angry red owies on his back and stomach. Some kids asked if the scars hurt.
“They itch,” Ricardo reported. The girls winced. The boys nodded understandingly.
Ricardo’s mother didn’t want him to talk about what happened on that October night. This was fine with Ricardo. He would rather talk about a memorable episode of “SpongeBob SquarePants” or calculate his silly name using the Professor Poopypants Name Change-o Chart 2000 from the popular Captain Underpants series.
So when everyone turned to stare at Ricardo at Monday’s assembly in the school gym, he seemed dazed, fumbling a little as he stood up.
Ricardo kept his face still. In front of all the kids and teachers, he walked over to Mr. Robinson, keeping his eyes away from the cameras of the TV people and photographers.
“He’s a really good kid,” the principal said. “A very responsible big brother. He instinctively did, in covering his brother that night, when most of us, including me, would have ducked for cover ourselves.”
Mr. Robinson handed Ricardo a white, blue and gold trophy. It has an angel, huge wings lifted high like St. Michael’s, in front of a see-through oval object with an etched starburst that makes rainbows when the light hits it right.
The trophy has his name in big letters on a gold rectangle. The police officer and Mr. Robinson stood with Ricardo and his trophy, beaming as the cameras clicked. Afterward, Ricardo, still looking dazed, sat back down, placing the trophy in front of his criss-crossed legs.
Along with the rest of the students, he watched a loud, bouncy video presentation about courage. Hilary Duff was on the video with some kids who stood up against bullies and protested a liquor store sponsoring a girls’ softball team. Nobody on the video talked about getting shot at.
Afterward, the TV people clustered around Ricardo. Was he excited to get the trophy? Did he feel like a hero?
“I guess so,” he muttered.
Was he afraid, that night he got shot?
“Yes,” he said quietly, “I was afraid.”
Holding the trophy gingerly, Ricardo kept his face calm as he mumbled the answers he figured they wanted. Back in Mrs. Bottger’s room, he let the other kids cluster to admire the trophy.
It was kind of a relief when someone from the principal’s office herded the media out of Mrs. Bottger’s room.
Ricardo sighed when he saw the unfinished penmanship work sheet still on his desk.
He had done all the easy parts before the assembly – crossing the T’s, dotting the I’s and writing the numbers. The hard part – the girlishly loopy L’s and M’s and S’s – still awaited him.
Staff writer Claire Martin can be reached at 303-820-1477 or cmartin@denverpost.com.
