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Juan Velazquez and a group of North Texas artists traveled to Uvalde in 2022 to paint a mural in honor of 10-year-old Alithia Ramirez, who loved art and drawing.<\/p>\nBefore the spring of 2022,\u00a0Fort Worth-born artist Juan Velazquez had never stepped foot in Uvalde.<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn’t even know it was there or even heard anything about it,\u201d Velazquez said. \u201cI remember looking around and thinking like, man, I’m not even sure I’m ever going to come back here.\u201d<\/p>\n
But after the shooting at Robb Elementary that killed 19 students and two teachers, he and a group of North Texas artists traveled to Uvalde to paint a mural in honor of 10-year-old Alithia Ramirez, one of the student victims, who loved art and drawing. It was part of a project bringing together artists from all over the country to collaborate.<\/p>\n
He didn\u2019t expect the mural would be the reason he met his wife, April.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was the art,\u201d she said \u201cI saw a few of his paintings, and then I didn’t know he was the artist yet, and so I went on his page, and I saw that he did the mural of Alithia and I followed him.\u201d<\/p>\n
Juan Velazquez and a group of North Texas artists traveled to Uvalde in 2022 to paint a mural in honor of 10-year-old Alithia Ramirez, who loved art and drawing.<\/p>\n
The two followed each other on TikTok for a year before a chance meeting \u2013 right across the street from the mural. The meeting almost didn\u2019t happen. When Juan was in Uvalde painting the mural, April had traveled up north for a seasonal job.<\/p>\n
“One year later, I decided I’m not going to migrate anymore,\u201d she said. \u201cI’m going to settle me and the kids in Uvalde. No more back and forth — and then, you know, we met.\u201d<\/p>\n
April spent most of her life in Uvalde, her hometown, where her extended family lives. She described it as a beautiful place.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe rivers, you know, Concan, all the surrounding areas that make Uvalde feel like home,\u201d she said. \u201cEverybody knows that everybody can go to a gas station, and you can go to a grocery store anywhere, you’ll see at least four people that you know.\u201d<\/p>\n
After they met in person, Juan and April went on a formal date and were inseparable after that, driving and flying back and forth between Fort Worth and Uvalde.<\/p>\n
\u201cIactually added up all the miles that I’ve driven,\u201d Juan said. \u201cIt’s a lot, like, it’s the equivalence of driving from one side of the United States and back like six times.\u201d<\/p>\n
Both said they can\u2019t really explain what it was exactly that attracted them to one another. \u201cI think sometimes people make connections with people,\u201d Juan said. \u201cIf you think about it, it doesn’t really make sense. I live in a huge city, there’s plenty of people on the DFW.<\/p>\n
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Juan and April Velazquez have been married a year and a have a toddler daughter. They live in San Antonio.<\/p>\n
\u201cI remember telling her like, \u2018hey, we’re going to get married.\u2019 And she laughed about it then, you know, but we did end up getting married.\u201d<\/p>\n
April said the connection was instant. \u201cIt was never a bland conversation. It was never just, you know,\u2018what are you doing?\u2019 or \u2018what’s your favorite color?\u2019\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Juan and April have been married for about a year and now have a toddler daughter. They\u2019re raising their blended family in San Antonio.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe’re opposites but complementary opposites,\u201d Juan said. \u201cI have kids, she has kids and then we have kids together. So, you know, we have six kids in total. It’s a lot of kids.\u201d<\/p>\n
April said her connection to Juan is helping her heal from the tragedy. She has cousins whose children were killed in the shooting. She said Uvalde is still very much hurting four years later.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt’s still…a very heavy feeling around this time,\u201d she said. \u201cI see it all the time with my cousins that are posting that they miss their children, and it’s a very hard thing that I couldn’t imagine going through.<\/p>\n
\u201cHopefully there’s change with the laws and stuff. I know some of the moms are still fighting really hard for laws to change,\u201d April said.<\/p>\n
Juan and April want their story to be one of hope. \u201cFinding something good out of everything, which is, you know, where I’m at right now,\u201d Juan said, \u201cbecause now we’re married and, we have a daughter.\u201d<\/p>\n
And Juan \u2014 once a stranger to rural south Texas \u2014 said Uvalde is now his community, too.<\/p>\n
This <a target=”_blank” href=”https:\/\/fortworthreport.org\/2026\/05\/20\/brought-together-after-deadly-school-shooting-fort-worth-artist-and-uvalde-woman-find-love\/”>article<\/a> first appeared on <a target=”_blank” href=”https:\/\/fortworthreport.org”>Fort Worth Report<\/a> and is republished here under a <a target=”_blank” href=”https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-nd\/4.0\/”>Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License<\/a>.<img src=”https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/fortworthreport.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/cropped-favicon.png?resize=150%2C150&ssl=1″ style=”width:1em;height:1em;margin-left:10px;”><\/p>\n
<img id=”republication-tracker-tool-source” src=”https:\/\/fortworthreport.org\/?republication-pixel=true&post=562637&ga4=2820184429″ style=”width:1px;height:1px;”><script> PARSELY = { autotrack: false, onload: function() { PARSELY.beacon.trackPageView({ url: “https:\/\/fortworthreport.org\/2026\/05\/20\/brought-together-after-deadly-school-shooting-fort-worth-artist-and-uvalde-woman-find-love\/”, urlref: window.location.href }); } } <\/script> <script id=”parsely-cfg” src=”\/\/cdn.parsely.com\/keys\/fortworthreport.org\/p.js”><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"by Priscilla Rice | KERA, Fort Worth Report May 20, 2026 Before the spring of 2022,\u00a0Fort Worth-born artist…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":810692,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5138],"tags":[5229,7371,7372,358,3187,67,586,132,5230,68,2969,50625],"class_list":["post-810691","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-fort-worth","tag-america","tag-fort-worth","tag-fortworth","tag-texas","tag-tx","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa","tag-uvalde"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116608948730352793","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/810691","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=810691"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/810691\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/810692"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=810691"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=810691"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=810691"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}