Lives came to a standstill in Omaha as a tragedy struck the Von Maur store at Westroads Mall. Who can forget December 5, 2007?

For Gary Joy's mother, Inez, Alzheimer's keeps her memory away.

"At times, she doesn't remember it happening," says Lorraine Hedman, the victim's aunt. "In a way, it's a blessing because she doesn't dwell on it and that's better for her."

Lorraine Hedman remembers her nephew well. She keeps some of the reminders on her dresser. "Every Christmas he would buy me a pin in the jewelry department. When we were cleaning up his apartment we saw the pins that had never gotten to us."

Gary Joy's legacy may be his final act of courage after the Von Maur gunman began his rampage. "This lady was going up the escalator and he said, 'you can't go up there.' he stood in front of them and just that quick -- he was shot," says Lorraine Hedman.

He kept Mandy Hyda and her young son out of harm's way...And they're forever grateful. "He was her angel because he saved her little boy. He gave us a wooden angel."

For many of the 200 people inside the store that day, every day since has been a struggle. As a survivor of the tragedy and former Von Maur employee, Heidi Cvilikas says Christmas will never be the same.

"Honestly, my heart’s not in it. I'm just trying to get past this holiday."

On that day, Cvilikas had just finished talking with Gary Joy when the shooting started. "I look over and Gary gets shot and goes down. I dropped and then ran out of my shoes and then I realized, oh my God."

Robert Hawkins had opened fire two floors above. Joy was one of his eight victims. "The shooting kept going and then the shooting kept going and as the shooting kept going I realized that we weren't safe."

Cvilikas hid in a storage room with others, unaware of what was happening around her. "I just said you know what, get small, get little, get in the corners and shhh, be quiet."

Cvilikas eventually wandered out to see what happened. It's a memory she'll never forget. "It was just like an eerie silence. The piano had obviously stopped playing. The automatic music was on, but it was like everyone had vaporized.”

By this point Hawkins had killed himself and fatally wounded eight others. "The smell of gun smoke and that recording, it looked like everybody had vaporized. There were shopping bags, purses, there were shoes. There was nobody there. It was so eerie. It was like a bad movie."

Cvilikas escaped, but those memories still wake her up at night. "I mean I can hear those gunshots. I can see Gary's face, questioning it. I can see it like it's slow motion."

To look at her a year later, to see her home alive with the season, for Cvilikas things look the same, but now she's very different. She says she has a better appreciation of life now, a blessing she learned from those who on December 5, 2007 weren't so lucky: Joy, Angie Schuster, Maggie Webb, Janet Jorgensen, Diane Trent, Beverly Flynn, Gary Scharf and John McDonald.

Cvilikikas returned to work at the store for three months after it reopened. By March, the full weight of the event hit her. She's been in counseling since and now works elsewhere in retail.

For Gary Joy, the 56-year old employee who loved poetry, there's someone, somewhere benefiting from his organ donation. He died on the way to the hospital but his bones and skin were usable. It made his mother proud. "She was pleased that he did something for someone else."