Greensboro, NC -- The Triad chapter of the Virginia Tech Alumni Association already had plans to meet Thursday night for its holiday social.
Turns out it was a night they especially needed the comfort of being with fellow Hokies.
Proudly wearing their maroon and orange, the graduates of all ages shared their thoughts and feelings about Thursday's shootings that killed a campus police officer and another person.
"I heard somebody say there had been a shooting at Virginia Tech and I thought, 'no that can't be,'" said Jim Goff, who graduated in 1975.
"I heard two people had actually died, so it was incredible," he added.
Mark Whitehouse, who graduated in 1980, said, "My wife called me in my office and said there's breaking news."
"It just really hurts that people, when they hear shooting or hear Virginia Tech, they think of shooting," he added.
Kate Lehmkuhler, who graduated in 2008, was on campus during the 2007 shooting spree that killed 33 people.
"All the sudden you hear the shots ring out and you have all these police officers with shields and rifles turn around and they started running at us and they just told us, 'run, run,'" she recalled.
She found out about Thursday's shootings via email.
"All it said was another VT incident and then I opened up the email and there was a link to the story and I didn't even want to click it because my first reaction was, this is some sort of bad joke," she said. "There's a feeling of almost helplessness, like is this going to keep continuing at our school? Are we a magnet for that now?"
Chad Noonkester, who graduated from Virginia Tech in 1997, said, "You started to see more and more Twitter feeds roll in, gunman, shots fired and you start to realize it's serious."
"Who's hurt, how bad, was it a student?" he said.
Thursday's shootings reopened a wound in many alumni.
"When it was over, just a relief that that was it for today. Please don't let anything be as bad as it was in the past," said Noonkester.
Whitehouse said, "Thank goodness it was only two people this time."
At at time with Hokies are thanking people who have reached out to them, they are helping the community. At their event Thursday, they collected food and backpacks to give to people in need.