Ashok Kolla walked past the news cameras at the Allen Premium Outlets on Sunday, phone to his ear, trying to find the woman from Hyderabad who was unaccounted for after the deadly mass shooting at the mall a day earlier.
“Can you tell me which hospital she is at?” Kolla said into the phone.
Kolla is a volunteer with the Telugu Association of North America, or Tana, an Indian American nonprofit. When Indian immigrants are hurt or killed, Kolla springs into action, tackling bureaucratic and logistical challenges to connect victims in the US with their families back in India.
He lives in Frisco, Texas, just a few miles from Allen. After a gunman killed eight people, injured seven others and was shot dead by police on Saturday, Kolla got word: at least two victims were members of his community.
Kolla had found one, a man who had been shot three times and was awaiting surgery at a nearby hospital. But a 27-year-old woman, Aishwarya Thatikonda, was missing.
Across the globe in Hyderabad, her family anxiously waited to hear more. Thatikonda’s father is a judge in India. She came to the US five years ago to study engineering, and was working for a company in Texas. Her family began to worry when she stopped answering calls Saturday.
By Monday, they learned Thatikonda was among the dead at the mall. But Sunday morning, they were unsure. Her brother, Srikanta Reddy Thatikonda, took calls from Kolla, trying to learn what he could.
“We are unable to digest what is happening,” he said in a short phone call Sunday. In the room, people talked loudly and multiple phones chimed over and over. “We are praying to God she should come safely. I’m sorry, I can’t talk more now.”
With the family thousands of miles away, trying their best to stay connected, Kolla is the intermediary. He stands in to serve as a de facto relative, trying to get whatever information he can back to the family in India.
He had to try to find Aishwarya – for them.
“She’s not at the hospital,” Kolla said. “She’s not at any of the hospitals. That’s why we came here.”
•••
Thirty years ago, Allen was a small, rural town with about 20,000 people. Today, it is a booming, wealthy suburb north of Dallas with more than 100,000 residents – and a growing south Asian population.
The proportion of Asian Americans living in Allen has gone up nearly 10% in the past decade, and nearly 220,000 Indian Americans live in the greater Dallas-Fort Worth region.
Tana, Kolla’s organization, serves that diaspora. It supports new immigrants from south India, brings cultural education about Telugu people to the US, and offers networking within the community.
The group also has a team dedicated to respond whenever a crisis involving a Telugu immigrant occurs. They are trained to help with visa problems or property crimes, but most often they are dispatched for a death or major injury.
For Kolla, it will be a full two or three days of work, so he starts early. On Sunday morning, he and other Tana volunteers began with the hospitals. When he could not find Aishwarya there, they went to the Allen Premium Outlets mall to talk to members of the press and police.
There was no new information at the mall. So Kolla had just one last, awful place to check. A few minutes later, he and a few other Tana volunteers arrived at the Collin county medical examiner’s office.
In the back of the brick, ivy-covered building, a Texas public safety department corporal told Kolla and the others to wait outside, but he asked for anything that could identify Aishwarya. Were there any tattoos, birthmarks or scars that could help him determine if she was among the eight dead inside the mall?
“A mole?” Kolla asked.
“Yeah,” the deputy replied. “A mole, a scar, any surgeries.”
Kolla showed the corporal a photo of Aishwarya. He said a woman inside looked similar, but he couldn’t be certain.
“Is she … our skin type?” Kolla asked.
“Yes, she’s Indian,” the corporal said. “It is close, but we need to know for sure.”
•••
Outside the medical examiner’s office, Kolla and a few others talked on their phones nearly non-stop. Calls came in and went out. WhatsApp groups were pinging with questions and information.
The men spoke in a blend of Telugu language and English: “Family … body … shooting … roommate … confirmation.”
With each call, they received more details from friends and family here and in India that could help identify the woman inside.
In the early afternoon, a call came in from the Indian consulate in Houston.
“Hello? Mmm. Good, good. Since the morning I’ve been here,” Kolla said. “Yeah, here at the medical examiner. We are trying to identify a girl. We’ve been exchanging information, just waiting on the confirmation. She’s not in the hospital – that’s for sure.”
Kolla has been volunteering with the Tana team for years, he said. Every week, the group is tasked with a new catastrophe. He has dealt with car wrecks, drownings, even the occasional shooting death. This was his first mass shooting.
A half-hour later, the corporal was back, asking for more information. He wanted to know what Aishwarya was wearing, or if she had any jewelry.
“The earrings, they’re real piercings, right? Not clip-ons?” he asked.
“Yes, real,” Kolla said.
“Both sides?”
No, just one. It’s a Hindu tradition, Kolla said. He also reminded the corporal that Aishwarya has a scar over one of her eyes. The officer said it was hard to tell with the injuries on the body inside.
“They’re horrible, the faces?” Kolla asked.
The corporal nodded. “Yeah.”
As the corporal took notes about the new information, another family arrived. A young woman stepped forward, wearing a bracelet from one of the hospitals where the victims of the mall shooting were taken.
“We’re the Cho family,” she said. “This is her father.”
The corporal was expecting them. He brought several of the family members inside. The young woman waited. After a moment she walked away, turning her back to the building.
“They lost a family of three,” Kolla said quietly.
•••
Hours ticked by. The corporal said the team inside was working through each body one at a time. They wanted to be certain before saying if one of them really was Aishwarya.
If so, a lot would need to be done. First, the paperwork. There were a couple funeral homes in town who are familiar with it all, so that would be one of the early calls. A death certificate would be needed. Then the Indian consulate in Houston would need to cancel the late person’s passport. Then, Tana would buy a plane ticket, so the body could take one last flight home.
But for now, outside the medical examiner’s office, all that was on hold. Afternoon became evening. More Tana volunteers arrived, some bringing snacks and bottles of water. Kolla never left the brick building. He waited there, because Aishwarya’s family could not.
“The families are thousands and thousands of miles away,” Kolla said. “I just do it.”
Then, six hours after Kolla arrived at the office, there was news. The office had finally managed to take fingerprint samples from the body inside, and they had an answer. The prints matched Aishwarya’s.
After a long day and night of ringing phones in Hyderabad, one more call came in. No one answered. Kolla left a message.
Soon, the waiting would be over. Soon, they would know for sure that the unimaginable had happened.
