MONTEREY PARK, Calif. — Nearly one year ago, the community of Monterey Park was left shattered when a gunman opened fire at Star Ballroom Dance Studio, killing eleven people and injuring nine others.

Struck by the tragedy, 13-year-old Drexel Ngo and 14-year-old Alina Ramos felt a need to help their community regain a sense of safety that had been lost. 

It’s a tight-knit community and for Ngo, the mass shooting hit close to home as his grandparents used to frequent the dance studio in past years. 

“The shooting was very traumatic. I mean, me and Alina, we both live and go to school in Monterey Park. The shooting was only a few miles away from us,” said Ngo. 

Ramos shared that trauma as she processed the news and thought about the active shooter drills they had at school. 

“It’s scary how close it was. It makes you really think, wow, this could actually happen to us,” said Ramos.

Not wanting to feel helpless, they started brainstorming how they could help people faced with a similar situation. 

“We decided to use our coding skills to create an app that could save lives with just one touch of a button,” said Ngo. 

They had some experience creating apps, the year before they had entered and placed second in the Congressional App Challenge hosted by Rep. Judy Chu, D-Pasadena. This time around, they wanted their submission to be a resource for others. 

Although just teenagers, they already have years of experience coding.

They are both 8th graders at Brightwood Elementary in the Alhambra Unified School District and have been coding together since they were about seven and eight years old at Let’s Code Inc.

An academy Ngo’s mother started after seeing a lack of coding programs available for kids in their area. 

It’s also where they spent every Wednesday after school and their summer days, working endlessly to develop the emergency response app they had in mind. 

“In our app, you can just press one button and then you can go hide and you have that reassurance that you can get help right away,” said Ramos. 

She says in the moment, there is a lot to process and very little time. The app allows one to add important contacts, and if there is ever an active shooter situation, the person could press one button and the app would send a message along with your exact location to local law enforcement and everyone on the contact list. 

“Sometimes you don’t have that opportunity to talk to 911. We wanted to take that part off of how do I talk to a 911 operator and still be hidden, still be safe,” said Ramos. 

(Spectrum News/Vania Patino)

With that in mind, they got to coding but soon realized they were in for a challenge. Lack of funding meant they each had to work on the app separately and bring it together, instead of using a more expensive software that allowed for collaboration. 

Ramos describes the moment their work crashed, and they lost everything they had created, having to start all over. 

“That willingness and wanting to help was pushing us to make a difference. And sometimes our moms would be like, ‘You know, it’s okay, you don’t have to finish it.’ And we’re like, ‘No, we want to finish it.’ We have to finish it because we want to show that we’re making a difference. We want to show that we’re doing our part,” said Ramos. 

That need to do their part is also why they wanted to honor the victims through the name of the app.

“We named the app Red-11 because the red it represented the red flag law, which is essentially a law that confiscates firearms from people who are deemed a threat... And the 11 parts of our app was to honor the eleven victims that passed in the shooting,” said Ngo. 

Beyond carrying the name, they were able to honor the victims in front of the community when they received an honorable mention in the Congressional App Challenge.

“These coders are only in middle school. I am amazed by their resilience and perseverance after such a terrible tragedy. We were very impressed with their motivation, superb presentation and agree there is a real need for an app like this,” said Rep. Chu of Ngo and Ramos. 

The City of Monterey Park also recognized their efforts at a City Council meeting last December, while their teachers and peers at school also commended their initiative. 

“Drexel Ngo and Alina Ramos show us that healing requires an action step. The healing action step for these two 8th grade Brightwood School students was to spend months inventing an app to save lives in an active shooter situation. They tenaciously withstood huge hurdles, losing all their data, and kept going to deliver app RED-11 to honor the 11 lives lost on Jan 21, 2023, and to showcase CA Red Flag laws to prohibit gun sales to those with history of violence or mental illness. We are cheering these students!” said Alhambra USD Superintendent Dr. Denise Jaramillo. 

Now the students are looking to making the app available on the app store, but say they need around $12,000 annually to make it free for everyone. Still, they are hoping to launch later this year. 

“Maybe this new generation can make a difference. Think of some new ideas. At least that’s what I hope,” said Ngo.