One of the 12 people killed in last week’s Colorado theater shooting had served most of her military career at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam as an Air Force analyst and a language expert in Mandarin.
Rebecca Ann Wingo, 32, was "a helpful, happy person" with "a beautiful smile," said Janelle Akuna, director of the Cole Academy’s Kunia and Kapolei preschool operations. Wingo’s oldest daughter, Jaelyn, attended the Kunia preschool.
Wingo had two daughters: Jaelyn, 9, and Jewel, 5. Wingo was divorced, but she and then-husband Robert were in the Air Force and stationed in Hawaii for nearly 10 years, until 2008 when Wingo left the Air Force and moved from Hawaii, according to Air Force records and Colorado news media.
Wingo’s elder daughter attended Cole Academy’s Kunia preschool from 2005 to 2007 and left when she turned 5.
"She was really involved with Jaelyn," Akuna said, noting that Wingo accompanied the preschoolers on field trips and helped school officials set up displays.
"She was a great lady. She loved children," Akuna said.
A Hickam spokesman at the 15th Wing said Wingo was fluent in Mandarin and was an analyst and with the 692nd Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Group. Wingo enlisted in 1997, but the Air Force could not find a record of when she arrived at Hickam. She was discharged in August 2008.
Colorado newspapers reported that Wingo had been enrolled at the Community College of Aurora since 2009 and was working toward an Associate of Arts degree.
Friends Cody and Marq Shafer of Aurora described Wingo as a hardworking single mother who balanced work and school with raising her two daughters, The Associated Press reported.
