How an Oscar became a symbol of grief and hope for one Texas family

dinhnganha
July 7, 2026

The gleaming Oscar sat nestled in a row of teddy bears on Jackie Cazares’ bed — a one-of-a-kind keepsake in a room her parents have left largely untouched since the 9-year-old died in the 2022 school shooting in Uvalde, Texas.

Beneath purple string lights on the ceiling, the golden statuette shared space with ordinary reminders of Jackie’s life. Across the room, a Ferrero Rocher and a brush tangled with strands of her dark hair remained on the dresser, where she left them four years ago.

The Oscar was for “All the Empty Rooms,” a documentary film that takes viewers inside the bedrooms of children killed in school shootings. Jackie’s family was one of four featured in the film.

Conall Jones, a producer on the film, was traveling to Texas this spring and gave the Oscar to the Cazares family to keep for a week as a tribute to the girl they lost.

The family made the most of the Oscar’s visit. Photos obtained by CNN, and published here for the first time, show the statuette making the rounds of places honoring Jackie. One shows the Oscar standing beside her dark granite gravestone. Another shows her mother, Gloria Cazares, holding it up beside Jackie’s mural. A third shows Jackie’s godfather, Manuel Rizo, cradling it over his heart.

Asked later about the experience, Gloria Cazares told CNN she would pause in the bedroom doorway and gaze at the Oscar among her daughter’s things, not sure whether to smile or cry.

“It was overwhelming,” she said about that week in April. “My first thought was this belonged to all of those children who left their empty bedrooms behind, not just Jackie. It wasn’t just an award — it was so much more.”

Far from Hollywood, the statuette felt more like a memorial than a trophy, Gloria Cazares said.

A month earlier, at the Academy Awards ceremony, Cazares delivered a tearful tribute to her daughter as she accepted the award with director Joshua Seftel on behalf of the four families in the film.

“Jackie is more than just a headline. She is our light and our life,” she told the theater audience and the millions watching on TV. “Gun violence is now the number one cause of death in kids and teens. We believe if the world could see their empty bedrooms, we’d be a different America.”

The Dolby Theatre buzzed with excitement that evening, but the four families were thinking about the children they’d lost. Gloria Cazares told CNN she wrestled with her emotions during the ceremony, and after. The Oscar meant Jackie’s story would reach a global audience. But she also knew she was there that night only because Jackie was gone.

“I kept thinking, ‘I shouldn’t be doing this. There’s no reason for me to hold an Oscar,’” she said. “But my biggest fear is her being forgotten, and we knew we had to be there to represent her.”

Her husband Javier Cazares told CNN if it meant more people would know Jackie, it was worth it.

“People were asking, ‘did you see any movie stars?’,” he said. “And I was like, ‘I’m not here for that. I could care less if I see somebody. I’m here for Jackie.”

Jackie Cazares had just redecorated her room

For Gloria and Javier Cazares, the journey to the Oscars started with a day they wish had never happened.

On May 24, 2022, Gloria Cazares was visiting patients when a co-worker texted her a brief message: Shooting at Robb Elementary. The home health nurse said she jumped into her car and sped toward the school, behind a convoy of police vehicles and fire trucks. Her husband followed.

Just hours earlier, the Cazares had been at Jackie’s school for an award ceremony, and the abrupt shift from celebration to chaos felt surreal. Panicked parents crowded behind police tape, desperate to find their children. Jackie and her cousin, Annabell, who were in the same classroom, never emerged.

“It was chaotic. Nobody knew exactly what was going on. It took us a few hours before we knew what happened,” Gloria Cazares said.

Relatives waiting at a nearby hospital later spotted an ambulance arriving with Jackie on a stretcher. A chaplain led Gloria and Javier Cazares to a private room, where they identified their daughter. She was one of 19 students and two teachers killed by an armed teenager that day. An additional 18 people were injured.

The hardest thing, Javier Cazares said, was knowing their daughter was never coming home.

Since the shooting, the parents can’t bring themselves to touch her room. Jackie had just rearranged and redecorated it weeks before she died, carefully choosing everything, including the purple wall paint and the unicorn mural beside her bed. It was her safe space, her parents said.

“She liked to play host, so anytime we had family staying over, they’d stay in her bedroom. She would have snacks and drinks for them and made sure that they were comfortable,” her mother said. “We wanted to share her story, and her bedroom was a really big part of her.”

Javier Cazares still goes there almost daily. Some days, he says good morning or goodnight as he walks by. Other days, he sits beside her bed and presses a button in the paw of one of her teddy bears, and her recorded laughter fills the room. Jackie loved animals and wanted to be a veterinarian. Her parents took the audio from an old video of her rolling on the ground with their dogs.

“It brings me comfort to go in there just to chat sometimes,” he said in the film.

For Gloria Cazares, though, it’s becoming harder to step into her daughter’s room.

“The more that I go in there, the more I realize how much she’s missing,” she said. “I think a lot about how much that room should have changed these past four years.”

The Oscar is now visiting other grieving families from the film

Seftel’s 35-minute documentary shows journalist Steve Hartman and photographer Lou Bopp visiting four families to document their kids’ rooms, capturing intimate portraits of how parents preserve their children’s spaces long after they’re gone. The four children in the film were between ages 9 and 15.

With each detail, the documentary points to their interrupted lives. An uncapped tube of toothpaste. Unmade beds. Piles of laundry. Hair ties looped around a doorknob.

One of the children, 15-year-old Gracie Muehlberger, was killed in a 2019 shooting at Saugus High School in Santa Clarita, California. In one of the film’s most emotional scenes, her parents found letters she’d written to future self, tucked inside a trinket box.

At the Oscars, the filmmakers kept the focus on the children. Hartman and Seftel wore tuxedo linings stitched with the names of the four kids featured in the film. All the parents featured in the film attended the event, and Gloria Cazares gave a 30-second acceptance speech after the families chose her in a straw poll.

The Cazares family were the first to keep one of the two Oscars awarded to the film — for its director and a producer. The film’s other families are now following suit.

The Blackwells just received one of the Oscars and plan to take photos of it this weekend at their son Dominic’s grave, said Jones, one of the “Empty Rooms” producers. The Muehlbergers have had the other Oscar for several weeks and will hand it off to the Scruggs in person next week in Tennessee, Jones said.

“Not that I could ever make up for what they’ve lost,” Seftel told CNN. “When we started the film, we told them, ‘we’re going to tell the story of your child. And if we do it right, the world is going to know your child’s story.’ Hopefully, winning an Oscar comes as close as you can to doing that.”

Meanwhile, Jackie’s room remains frozen in time.

A silver miniature Eiffel Tower – the same landmark etched onto her gravestone – still sits on the edge of her dresser. She always wanted to see Paris, and it’s become a symbol of her big dreams and a future cut short, her family said.

Every item in the room contributes to the story of who she was, Javier Cazares said, including her love for softball, dogs and singer Olivia Rodrigo.

To Jackie’s parents, moving them would feel like losing pieces of her all over again.

“I don’t think we could change it or clean it up,” Javier Cazares said. “There’s no way. Not right now. Not yet.”