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Officer Ready To Patrol Stockton School Where He Was Shot As A Child

STOCKTON (CBS13) — Decades after a student was wounded in one of the worst shootings in California history, he's ready to protect those same hallways for the Stockton school district.

Rob Young was only 6 years old when he was hit in the chest during the 1989 Cleveland Elementary School shooting. The now-33-year-old is now preparing for a big promotion as a sergeant assigned to protect that same school.

Before Newtown, Virginia Tech and Columbine, there was Cleveland elementary. A Stockton gunman's three-minute shooting rampage killed five schoolchildren and injuring dozens, including Young.

"There was like a handball wall in the middle of the yard and I remember I gotta get to that wall, and hide behind it," he said. "I didn't quite make it the handball wall."

Patrick Purdy's semi-automatic rifle shot Young in the foot. The second bullet hit the ground in front of him, spraying him with shrapnel he still lives with today.

Three decades later, Young says the scars aren't just physical.

"It helped make me the person I am today," he said. "It helps you appreciate life and realize that life is fragile and can be taken from you at any moment."

This first-grader turned tough.

"It's sad to think about, to have that mindset as a little kid because you're a child and supposed to have your innocence, invincible, but I learned that day that you're not," he said.

He learned he wanted to make a difference, to use his survival skills to protect and serve.

"I don't come from a family of law enforcement; it was just always something that was in me," he said.

That drive paid off. He's prepared to be officially sworn in as a sergeant for the Stockton Unified School District police department. He'll patrol the very playground that changed his life.

"It's definitely something I take seriously, and I just want to do a good job," he said.

And make his two children proud, even though it sounds like the already are.

"They call me Sgt. Daddy," he said.

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