Last month, on the morning of the Highland Park parade shooting, we were driving to Glenview for youth baseball tournaments. Organizers quickly sent us home as a precaution, and our hometown canceled its evening fireworks display.

On Sunday, the evening of the Great America shooting, we’d just arrived home from a weekend family visit, so although we again were on Interstate 294, it was just a bit too early to be amidst this particular swarm of law enforcement vehicles.

But as former Gurnee residents and season pass holders who once spent countless hours taking our boys through the park, we are intimately familiar with the facility, its security procedures and the parking lot where Sunday’s shooting happened. The Gurnee Police Department described the incident as a targeted shooting: a car entered the parking lot close to closing time, fired multiple shots at a specific group and then sped off.

It is unfortunately comforting to believe the attack was intentional and not part of an indiscriminate spree. It could’ve happened outside a shopping mall just as well as a theme park. It did, actually, on Nov. 27 at Gurnee Mills. Earlier this month police arrested a 33-year-old Texas man in Waukegan and charged him with second-degree murder for killing a 26-year-old Zion resident two days after Thanksgiving.

We live up the road from our county’s only Level 1 trauma center. Ambulances and helicopters are common and constant reminders none of us is guaranteed the rest of a given day, let alone tomorrow. Crime is a factor, but so are disease and terrible accidents.

My trite advice: Help where you can and don’t give up hope.

ON THIS DAY: The North River Steamboat embarked on a Hudson River journey from New York City to Albany on this day in 1807, the world’s fist commercial steamer service. Illinois is one of seven states to have a county named after steamboat inventor Robert Fulton, with dozens of villages, townships, schools, streets and other honorifics nationwide. None is more personally meaningful than the Illinois town in northeastern Whiteside County, where my wife was raised and began her teaching career.

You don’t need a family connection to enjoy Fulton, whether you’re in town for Dutch Days (the first weekend of May, when tulips are in full bloom) or a trip through time at Heritage Canyon, a lovely natural setting on the east bank of the Mississippi River dotted with 1800s era buildings that comes to life during special events involving the Early American Crafters or Civil War reenactors. Or take in a football game at Fulton High School, because when the Steamers score a touchdown a “steamboat” takes a victory lap in front of the crowd.

• Scott T. Holland writes about state government issues for Shaw Media. Follow him on Twitter @sth749. He can be reached at sholland@shawmedia.com.