When Dayna Klein came face to face with the gunman who stormed her Belltown office, she made a split-second decision and prayed she would be right.

As the gunman pointed his handgun at her, Klein's left arm flew down to cover her pregnant belly. The bullet tore through her arm and grazed her leg. She collapsed to the floor in pain, but her baby was all right.

Though the pain was great and the gunman threatened to kill anyone inside the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle who called for help, Klein crawled back to her office and grabbed a phone. She said years of crisis training while working at a Boston-area Red Cross chapter echoed in her head, and she knew she had to call for help. "I knew I had to reach a phone and call 911. The pain was horrible, but it was worth the gamble to me," Klein said this morning, speaking publicly the first time about the July 28 shootings. "I never thought to get myself up and walk to the door. If someone wants to do that, that's great, that's just not me."

Within seconds, the gunman, Naveed Afzal Haq, 30, was in Klein's face and pointing a gun at her head, according to court papers. He told Klein she was his hostage and that he didn't care whether he killed her and her unborn baby.

Once again relying on her crisis training, Klein said, she deliberately spoke "calmly," "slowly," "quietly" and "nicely" to the 911 dispatcher in hopes of calming the gunman. She told the dispatcher what the man wanted her to repeat: rantings about his hatred of Jews and U.S. foreign policy.

Klein said she wanted to get him on the phone with the 911 dispatcher.

"I started to tell her what he was telling me," Klein said. "Then I took a deep breath and said, 'It's OK for you to tell her what you want.'."

That's when Haq grabbed the phone and told the dispatcher to connect him to CNN, according to court papers. He complained about Jews, Israel and the U.S. role in the Middle East and the war in Iraq. He said Muslims "are very upset at you [the U.S.] sending bombs to Israel and very upset that you [U.S.] stay in Iraq," court papers say.

When the dispatcher told Haq she couldn't connect him with the media, he put down his gun, walked outside, lay face down on the sidewalk and was arrested, according to court papers.

The Seattle Times / Klein family

Dayna Klein during a visit to Marsala, Sicily, in April.

Once Klein was confident the gunman had left, she got up and began looking for other victims. She found 23-year-old Layla Bush crouched on the floor, sobbing and bleeding profusely from her stomach.

Klein said she grabbed a blue infant shirt with the federation's "live generously" slogan written on it — a gift someone brought Klein for her unborn baby. She pressed the shirt against Bush's stomach. Klein then went back to her office and called 911 again.

Within minutes, police stormed the federation offices and rescued the women.

Bush remains in serious condition at Harborview Medical Center in Seattle. Fellow federation employees, Christina Rexroad, 29, and Cheryl Stumbo, 43, are in satisfactory condition. Five women were wounded, and one, Pamela Waechter, was killed.

In addition to aggravated first-degree murder, Haq has been charged with five counts of attempted murder, kidnapping, burglary and malicious harassment. Prosecutors have not said whether they will pursue the death penalty.

Though Seattle Police Chief Gil Kerlikowske calls Klein a hero, she doesn't want to be considered one.

"I'm just a person who was in the wrong place and the wrong time," she said. "I'm feeling very lucky to be alive, and my baby is alive. I'm just thinking an awful a lot about my friends who are in the hospital and my very good friend Pam Waechter."

Klein was released from Harborview last week. Doctors said her baby was fine but that the bullet had shattered a bone in her forearm.

She spoke by telephone this morning from New York, where she is visiting family, seeing hand specialists and preparing for an upcoming interview on television's "Today" show.

In the week and a half since the shootings, Klein said, she has rarely given any thought to Haq. She said he's not worth it.

"I know there's anti-Semitism in the world, and it's very sad, but it's very true," she said. "I'm not a person who focuses on hate or focuses on anger. I'm a person who takes this and makes one hell of a glass of lemonade."

That glass of lemonade, she said, is her push for office workers to be better trained to handle crisis situations. She said such training saved her baby and helped her respond quickly.

"My goal out of this whole thing is to get better but to get out there and talk about the importance of taking advantage of police services so, if God forbid, if someone is in the situation that I was in they can react," Klein said. "I'm happy I was able to do what I was able to do. I'm happy my reaction saved my baby. I'm really proud of what I did."

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