Feb. 11 started as a typical day for Oglah Gatamah.
Gatamah, the owner of Keller Williams Legacy Realty in Orlando, Florida, rolled into the parking lot of her office at 10 a.m., ready to tackle a packed schedule of meetings, trainings and coaching for 118 agents. As she walked through the doors, Gatamah was elated to hear her team already hard at work — the training room was packed, her top agent closing another deal, and her administrative team was getting organized for the day.
However, an unsettling noise caught Gatamah off guard, erasing her trademark smile from her face.
“I’m literally carrying my purse and my laptop bag, and I hear raised voices at the back of the brokerage,” she told Inman. “I walked right down just to figure out, because it’s not normal. It’s not our culture to use that kind of raised, agitated voice in the brokerage. My instincts immediately jumped in. I got really alert.”
The unsettling noise was coming from an unknown young man, who’d gotten intoxicated and walked into the office. His words were slurred, bumbling and rapid, making it difficult to understand what — or who — he was looking for.
Oglah Gatamah
“I could tell that he’s irate. I can tell that he’s upset. So I went straight to him and I said, ‘Young man, please come with me,'” she said. “And he’s like, ‘Why do you want me to come with you?’ And I said, ‘Just come with me to the front. I’m the owner of the brokerage.’ At that point, I’m not even thinking of separating him. I just want to take him away from an area of productivity where I know my agents are lead generating, and they don’t like to be disturbed.”
As Gatamah walked the intruder to the front, she made eye contact with her productivity coach, signaling her to stay at high alert. Gatamah kept talking to the young man and offered him a seat near the front desk, hoping to calm him down. As Gatamah got settled, she made eye contact with her coach again, who darted her gaze towards the floor, where a loaded gun clip had fallen from the intruder’s pants.
“And I tell you, my body went cold,” Gatamah said, attempting to suck down tears. “The first thing I thought was just my people, my agents. I could hear them in the conference room. I couldn’t communicate with my team. I couldn’t make eye contact with anyone, as I was now facing him. And in that moment, I just started talking to him, and in the back of my mind, I just knew that my team, because we were all so close, would try to do something in the back if I could engage this man as long as possible.”
In her peripheral vision, Gatamah noticed her admin, silently guiding a group of agents, through stares and hand gestures, toward the back of the office.
“By God’s miracle, he got a call from his mom,” she said. “I looked at my phone real quick, and I just texted, ‘Everybody to get out. Don’t worry about me. Everybody get out.'”
The next 45 minutes were a blur for Gatamah, who kept the man occupied until all of her agents left the building.
She offered him water and asked the man about his life — he was an Army veteran who’d been deployed several times and suffered from post-traumatic stress syndrome (PTSD).
After airing his grievances, the gunman stared at Gatamah and pulled out his gun.
“I started thinking about my children, and then I started talking to him about my children,” she said. “I said my children’s names to him. I told him my children’s full names, and I said my oldest one was almost his age. He really just started looking at me, and I could tell he was gone. He was intoxicated. But he put the gun down.”
Gatamah seized another chance to text her team, who’d called law enforcement. She asked them to direct officers to the back of the building and keep their sirens off, as she planned to lead the gunman out of the rear exit door.
“It was a little bit quiet, and he was kind of just thoughtfully looking at me at that point,” she said. “I said, ‘Hey, let’s go find everybody else because I don’t know what happened.’ I had no plan B. I just knew, in faith, the policemen would be outside the exit door.”
“He walked with me, and then when we went around the corner, he stopped and said, ‘Oh, I left my weapon,'” she added. “I told him, ‘I own the brokerage. Don’t worry about it. Nobody’s coming in.’ I then opened the exit door, and there were policemen with their guns drawn. I just ran to the left, and they were able to apprehend him.”
Gatamah said she and her team broke into tears, grateful that they’d survived.
The following months involved police interviews, court hearings, counseling sessions, and safety upgrades, including the installation of additional security cameras and coded entry for the front doors.
“Thank God I’ve been in the big people business for a very long time. I’ve had crisis response training as a store director at Target and a hospitality leader at large hotels. There was great training around that,” she said.
“It was also spiritual alignment. I live my life fiercely through my faith, and I know that I’m here to help people not just achieve their true potential, but to genuinely love them. You can move them, not just with your words, but also with your energy and vibration. So I leaned into all that in that moment.”
Keller Williams honored Gatamah’s bravery and humanitarian efforts in Kenya in August with the Mo Anderson Cultural Excellence Award.
Gatamah said her healing isn’t over, as she occasionally has flashbacks of the incident. However, she’s striving to transform her pain into a lesson for other leaders, so they can successfully guide their teams through emergencies.
Gatamah’s safety tips.
“I would never ask anybody to put their life on the line for anybody, obviously,” she said. “And yet, leadership comes with a responsibility, and sometimes in the day-to-day of how we run our businesses, we can become dull or maybe desensitized to what we stand for as leaders. We are not just protectors of our cultures and helping other people grow through building wealth through real estate, but we also have a responsibility to have a deeper connection with our team, so that in times of crisis, we can protect each other.”
“I highly recommend that every real estate brokerage evaluate its crisis response and have a great partnership with your local law enforcement. There are so many free resources available for businesses,” she added. “Businesses are very vulnerable to mass shootings, and there’s a very thin line between customer service and safety. And as a leader, you’re constantly going to have to figure out the balance.”
