Because of the coronavirus pandemic, Nicolas Toledo hadn’t seen his family in Highland Park for about three years.
Finally last summer, his children thought it was safe, and he came from Mexico to stay with them, bouncing among their homes. He might spend a day fishing with one of his sons or coloring with his grandchildren at the home of one of his daughters.
“We all felt happy,” says Fabiola Toledo, one of his daughters. “We were grateful to God that we saw him alive and were able to welcome him with a hug after everything that happened with COVID.”
Last July 4, the family decided to do what they’d done every July 4 for 20 years: go to the Highland Park Fourth of July parade.
They met that morning at the home of one of his sons not far from the parade route, then headed over and settled into their usual spot, with the father at the center of 12 family members.
“My dad loves horses, and he, in that moment, he was clapping when the horses passed by,” says Josefina Toledo, another daughter. “He was happy, enjoying the parade.”
Then, the shooting started. A gunman fired on the crowd from the roof of a business.
Surrounded by his family, Nicolas Toledo, 78, a father of eight, was killed, along with six others. One of his sons was wounded and is still recovering.
“They were all standing there right next to each other, and they’re all right next to my grandfather, and to know that he really took the bullet for every single one of them is really mind-blowing,” says Kimberly Rangel, one of Toledo’s granddaughters. “I think that he died a hero. He really saved the rest of our family.”
Rangel had planned to join her family with her toddler daughter, but a marathon that was being run that morning through her neighborhood kept her from getting there. Her mother Fabiola Toledo was working and also missed the parade.
Fabiola Toledo says that, in the days after the shooting, she’d find herself awake late at night, thinking, if not for chance, she could have lost her entire family that day.
“My dad was an angel,” she says, speaking in Spanish. “He saved them because the bullet could have hit one of my [nieces]. God was there, protecting them so nothing would happen to the rest of them.”
The Toledo family is among those who have filed lawsuits over the mass shooting against gun-maker Smith & Wesson Brands, two gun dealers, Robert Crimo III, the suspect charged with the killings, and his father Robert Crimo Jr., who has been charged with reckless conduct for sponsoring his son’s 2019 application for an Illinois firearm owner’s identification card. The younger Crimo was 19 then and needed a parent’s signature to be able to legally buy guns.
One aspect of the lawsuit, which is pending in federal court, challenges the way the gun manufacturer marketed its products.
Toledo’s children and grandchildren have leaned on their faith and on therapy to help them get through the year since the shooting.
Fabiola Toledo says they are coping better now. But, for a while, she says the sound of a tire blowout or other loud noises would set off panic and worry that it was gunfire again.
Highland Park won’t be holding a parade this year. Instead, there will be a series of events to commemorate the anniversary of the shooting. The sisters plan to go to some of them.
And, as they have for years, the family plans to spend time with each other — this year to remember Nicolas Toledo.
“We’re all still a little bit scared knowing that the Fourth of July is coming up, and we don’t know how to feel,” says Rangel, who still has a hard time going to downtown Highland Park. “We don’t know how we’re going to feel in the moment. For many of us, that was probably, like, the worst day of our lives.”
She says she can’t imagine ever attending another Fourth of July parade.
Nicolas Toledo was from Morelos, Mexico. He’d worked as a rancher and in the agriculture industry there. But it was tough to support his big family, according to Fabiola Toledo. In the 1980s, he moved to Los Angeles to work and send money back to his family. The family later settled in the north suburbs.
Nicolas Toledo worked in restaurants and in landscaping before retiring about 15 years ago. He’d been splitting his time between the United States and Mexico. Family members say he was a hard worker who dedicated himself to helping his children and grandchildren achieve the American dream.
His trips to the United States would see him rotate among the homes of his children. Josefina Toledo says he’d joke and ask them whose turn it was to have him.
He loved the outdoors and hunting and fishing with his sons.
Fabiola Toledo says he’d usually be up and going each day by 6 a.m. and liked walking around Highland Park, sometimes through a park.
Rangel says she’s glad that her grandfather got to meet her daughter last summer. He got to spend time doing coloring with her and watching TV with her.
“He always wanted to stay busy,” Rangel says. “My aunt and my mom and my entire family is that way.”
Two days before he died, he finished coloring a booklet the family bought him. And, on her refrigerator, Josefina Toledo still keeps a picture of a deer her father colored blue because he liked the color.
“Those are memories that he left us,” she says. “Something really lovely.”
Elvia Malagón’s reporting on social justice and income inequality is made possible by a grant from The Chicago Community Trust.
