Sometimes, Poway Mayor Steve Vaus says, a mayor must also be a minister

POWAY — 

In the days following last weekend’s shooting at the Chabad of Poway synagogue, Steve Vaus told the world that Poway was about love, not hate.

The community would come together, he said during the dozens of interviews, vigils and press conferences held in the wake of the attack that left one woman dead and three injured.

He hugged and was hugged by hundreds of strangers.

The son and grandson of ministers, whose three brothers were or are men of the cloth, the 67-year-old Vaus said it occurred to him that “sometimes mayors are ministers, too.”

Wednesday morning, in a coffee shop in Poway, he said he was just beginning to process the emotions of the previous days. He dabbed at his eyes and choked up several times as he recounted all that had happened since late last Saturday morning, when Poway became part of the tragic international narrative of hate-induced religious violence.

In the days that followed the shooting, Vaus may well have been the most famous mayor in America.

Wearing his trademark cowboy hat, Vaus appeared on virtually every major news network and was quoted in newspapers around the world. His message never varied.

“I felt it was my job to get up and talk about the real Poway,” he said this week. “The phrasing that I used over and over again was that we were going to put our arms around one another and we’re going to walk through this dark day.”

His wife of 26 years, Corrie Vaus, said she was in awe of the way her husband handled things.

“He stayed the course on every level,” she said. “His message was one of love for everybody and a sense of community. He stayed very much on the message because that’s what he believes. It’s what he believes to the very core of his being.”

During a vigil attended by at least 4,000 people Monday night, one Jewish leader suggested Vaus should be made an honorary rabbi for all he had done the past 48 hours.

“My Grandma Lilly would have been proud to hear that because she was Jewish,” Vaus said. “It would have made her smile.”

The week prior to the shooting, which left 60-year-old Lori Gilbert-Kaye dead, three others injured, including the rabbi, and a community reeling, had been busy.

Vaus had held a kickoff event for his campaign for county supervisor on Tuesday -- “it seems like a lifetime ago” -- and Friday he led a major meeting of the San Diego Association of Governments, which he chairs, announcing five “bold” transportation initiatives.

Later that afternoon, he attended a retirement party for Poway’s city manager, Tina White, unaware that they would be connecting again for a very different reason the next day.

Saturday was to be the first day all week he could spend with Corrie and her sister, who was in town visiting. They had decided to drive down to Mission Bay, rent some motorized scooters, and cruise around.

They had just left the house, which is located a half-mile from the Chabad, and were heading south on Pomerado Road around 11:30 a.m.

“I saw a black and white go by Code 3 followed by a fire truck a quarter-mile behind,” Vaus said. “I knew my phone was going to go off because I get a heads up about anything significant that’s happening.”

He had just starting driving south on Interstate 15 when White, who had been contacted by the sheriff’s captain in charge of the Poway station, texted him about the shooting. Vaus apologized to his wife and sister-in-law and turned around. The first reports of the shooting were at 11:23 a.m. A few minutes after noon, Vaus had already gotten a short briefing at the crime scene and within 20 minutes his phone began to ring with the media seeking comment.

Two hours later, the first press briefing took place from an intersection in front of the Chabad where the media had gathered. Sheriff Bill Gore and San Diego Police Chief David Nisleit described in brief what had happened. Then Vaus spoke. Snippets of his words, and those he said at a follow-up press briefing a few hours later, were featured on every national broadcast for the next couple days.

“This is not Poway,” he said. “The Poway I know comes together just as it did a few weeks ago at an Interfaith event. We always walk with our arms around each other. We will walk through this tragedy with our arms around each other ... Poway will stay strong and we will always be a community that cares for one another.”

Within an hour, Vaus had received messages of support and concern from all over -- from friends and strangers alike. Over the next week, he would hear from countless political and faith leaders as well as mayors of other cities where terrible shootings have occurred.

He also took a call from President Donald Trump from Air Force One while the president was heading to a rally in Wisconsin.

“He was incredibly gracious, very aware,” Vaus said of Trump. “Clearly, he had been watching the coverage. He said he had watched me on the news and said, “tell your family the president says you did a great job.”

About the same time, Sen. Kamala Harris left a message, which Vaus had saved on his phone:

“Mayor Vaus, this is Kamala Harris calling. I just wanted you to know I’m thinking about you and your city and the whole community. I’m so sorry about this tragedy at the synagogue. Let me know or my office know if there is anything we can do to support you. Thanks for your leadership.”

While recounting the phone calls Wednesday, Vaus again choked up and dabbed at his eyes with a napkin.

“I should have brought my sunglasses,” he said sitting in the back of Franco’s Flapjack Family Restaurant on Poway Road, whose owner wouldn’t let him pay for his meal.

“I knew it was going to hit me sooner or later,” Vaus said. “I’ve been trying to take care of business and take care of Poway and those folks at Chabad and make sure they know we care about them. I guess I’ve just been focusing on the outward.”

Saturday night, the day of the attack, the first of three vigil’s took place, this one at a nearby Presbyterian church. Vaus said it reminded him of a night in early 2010, when hundreds showed up to a Catholic church just down Pomerado Road the night that missing Poway teen Chelsea King’s body had been found. She had been kidnapped and murdered while running at a community park.

Vaus said he was wound up after the vigil.

“I had a little bit of my favorite whiskey (High West), then finally tried to get to sleep around 11:30,” he said.
“Adrenaline was still coursing through my body. My heart beat was up around 100. I was still running at high RPMs.”

He said he catnapped until 3 a.m. when he headed back to the Chabad to conduct early morning interviews with the national television news shows: Good Morning America, The Today show, Fox, CNN, etc. Requests for interviews continued to pour in. Tina White, the city manager, who was with Vaus much of the weekend, said his phone never stopped ringing.

“There are many times I’ve been thankful for Steve,” White said. “Never more so than this past weekend.”

Sunday afternoon, Rabbi Yisroel Goldstein had been released from the hospital and conducted a press conference in front of the synagogue, his hands in bandages. Vaus, who had gotten to know Goldstein six months earlier during a gathering at the Chabad following the Tree of Life Synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh, was asked to escort Goldstein from his vehicle to the podium.

“We hugged long and hard,” Vaus said, again choking with emotion. “He’s an easy guy to love. A mountain of a man filled with compassion and charisma and dedicated to his flock and to his community.”

Vaus said Goldstein then delivered “as good a sermon as I’ve ever heard.”

That night a second vigil was held at Valle Verde Park in Poway, less than a mile east of the Chabad. An estimated 800 people attended the hastily organized event in the small community park. “There was a crush of humanity in all the best ways,” Vaus said. “I don’t remember what I said. What I do remember was at the end they asked me to lead the crowd in singing “God Bless America.”

Vaus is a Grammy-winning musician.

“It was a boisterous, almost defiant rendition,” he said. It took him 30 minutes to leave the park “because so many people kept stopping us and thank me. I said don’t thank me. This is Poway.”

Lori Kaye’s daughter, Hannah, was standing beneath a tree leaning hard on a family friend. “I was struck by the fact there were tears streaming down her face. But she was beaming. She said, ‘Thank you. My mother loved Poway’. She pointed toward a path and said her mother used to walk on the path all the time. She said her mother would have loved this tonight,” Vaus remembered.

Monday morning was again filled with interviews and he got a call from the Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations who expressed the gratitude of the prime minister.

He then attended Kaye’s celebration of life event, her funeral, at the Chabad. He again led the gathering in a solemn rendition of God Bless America to begin the program.

An hour later, he headed to the Poway High School football stadium where more than 4,000 people came for a third vigil in as many nights.

“I wasn’t sure how many people would come, having had the vigil the night before and the funeral that afternoon,” Vaus said. “Plus, there was a threat of rain and it was chilly. But people were streaming in from every corner. It was as if there was a train stop that had just let people off. Before you knew it, the stands were filled. It was astounding.”

A few commentators on media sites have criticized Vaus for wearing a cowboy hat. Poway is nicknamed “The City in the Country,” and while some residents do have horses, it is a mostly upper-middle class suburb of about 50,000 people north of San Diego.

Vaus has always worn cowboy hats and said he didn’t think about not doing so other than once, during Kaye’s funeral, when he shed the Stetson for a yarmulke.

He said there is a picture of him at the age of three wearing a cowboy hat while sitting on a horse.

“I grew up on a cattle ranch in Oregon,” he said. “It’s just kind of in my DNA. I love my hats and my boots. They’re just part of who I am,” he said.

“And in a way, the hat has turned out to be a blessing these past few days because it makes me pretty recognizable.”

Vaus has been mayor of the city since 2014 and was first elected to its City Council in 2012.

Vaus said it’s impossible to control tragedy when it strikes. “The only thing you can control is how you’re going to respond to it.”