20 Years Later: Jewish Community Center Shooting Victim Visits Those Who Saved His Life

MISSION HILLS (CBSLA) — It's been 20 years since a white supremacists opened fire on the North Valley Jewish Community Center in Granada Hills as hundreds of children played inside.

A shooter killed a postal worker and wounded a counselor and three children Aug. 10, 1999. One of those children was 5-year-old Ben Kadish who arrived at the hospital without a pulse, without measurable blood pressure and clinging to life. On Wednesday, he returned to the hospital where doctors and nurses saved his life.

"Chilled to the bone," Ben's mother Eleanor said of that day. "I felt like ice was running through me."

She remembers the paramedics who saved her child's life.

"They went against protocol of actually going into the unsecured building where Ben was lying in a hallway crumpled up losing blood, and they went to him and they got to him and they basically saved him," she said.

Ben said he was sad that shootings like this are still happening, but his father Chuck said he is shocked to see what has happened since.

"I was kind of told by numerous people that we're going to get through this and we're going to fight this and we're going to get gun legislation, and everybody was on top of it 20 years ago," Chuck said. "And what have we done? It's worse now than it was then."

Ben's parents remember the extreme emotions they experienced that day — the horror of the event and the heroism of those who risked their lives to save Ben.

And on Wednesday, the family celebrated the good — the trauma nurses, the paramedics, the doctors and Ben who survived because of their brave actions in the face of unspeakable horror.

"There's definitely more good than there is bad," Eleanor said.