O'Fallon, Mo. (KSDK) -- As a community and a country now try to heal, here at home a teen has taken up quite a project to show his support for Aurora and its victims.
"I've been non-stop since 11 this morning," said Nate Williams, 15, on Sunday evening from the Starbucks at Laura Hill and Highway K, which is now his headquarters, after an idea he had following the news from Friday morning. "I immediately was just in shock because I'm always at the movie theater and all day it was driving me crazy. I was like praying about it and reflecting on it and I was really feeling a need to do something."
A day after he got out of an O'Fallon midnight showing of 'The Dark Night Rises,' Nate recalled an installation of origami cranes at the Oklahoma City National Memorial, the 1995 bombing site he visited just a few weeks ago.
"There's no power in the cranes but knowing that there's people throughout the world that are feeling your pain and coming alongside you as a community, that was big," explained Nate's mother, Cyndi.
So, since the Japanese proverb says "He that folds 1,000 origami cranes will be granted a wish," that's the goal - 1,000 to be sent to Aurora's Century 16 - prepared by those of Nate's friends and family who were willing and saw his plea for help on facebook.
"We just hope the families of the victims and those what were injured can see them and just find peace and know that someone out there really cares," he added.
Now, each crane also comes with a bit of Bible scripture about peace, that the group will write on them. They made 300 Sunday at Starbucks, but since it's summer, the group continued folding into the night at Nate's house.