At the time of the Tech shootings, Evelio Contreras was a community sports reporter at The Roanoke (Va.) Times. Three months later, he joined the staff of roanoke.com as a multimedia producer.

WHEN I WALKED THROUGH THE FRONT DOOR of the New River Valley Bureau that Monday morning, I knew something was wrong.

Editors had sent reporters to Virginia Tech, 10 minutes away. An editor and a reporter huddled near the police scanners.

I asked an editor, "What can I do?"

She told me to wait. About 15 minutes later, the urgent voices coming from the scanners made it clear there was no time to wait.

My editor told me to grab a camera and shoot video at Tech.

As a reporter, it was my first experience shooting video for The Roanoke Times. I parked near campus and ran toward the drill field. Students ran toward me and kept running past me.

I did a couple of interviews and met a pair of Swedish students visiting Tech for the first time. They were sequestered in a building near Norris Hall and videotaped the scene outside during the second shootings.

I brought them back to the bureau and learned that we didn't have the cords that worked with their European cameras. So I drove the pair around Blacksburg in search of a computer store that was open.

It was strange, I thought, that I would be looking for computer hardware that morning and not looking for more people to interview.

Before April 16, the thought of using multimedia to tell stories had never really crossed my mind. I was that guy who thought words could do it all.

That week, I was paired with multimedia editor Seth Gitner, and soon realized that what I wanted to do with print I could also do with video and audio slideshows. Seth taught me a lot about journalism that week and has been a mentor of mine since.

I have never felt more part of a team as I did that week working with online and print reporters and photographers.

Four months later, I'm now a multimedia producer shooting video and working with reporters to do the same.

The Virginia Tech shootings showed me, on a personal level, how important it was to bring the story home to our audience, in ways that they can relate to. *