Long before she became the lead plaintiff in a concealed carry lawsuit against Illinois, Mary Shepard had fallen in love with guns.

It was 2007 when Shepard stumbled upon a story about women and guns in the local newspaper. What piqued her interest, though, was the note at the end. The community college was sponsoring a basic pistol-shooting class beginning the next day.

"I slept on it, and the next day I got up and called them. Then I went over there," Shepard, 74, said in her first major newspaper interview since winning a lawsuit in 2012 that forced Illinois to fall in line with the rest of the country and allow residents to carry concealed firearms in public.

The class was on a Saturday, and the following Monday she bought her first gun — a 9 mm Taurus PT92, which is similar to a Beretta.

"I bought it because it was pretty," she said. "It was silver, sparkly and perfect."

But that was just the beginning of her infatuation with firearms. A series of life-altering events transformed the soft-spoken grandmother who loved sewing and scrapbooking into an icon for the Illinois concealed carry movement.

Two years after she picked up her first gun, she was beaten and left for dead during a robbery at her church in rural southern Illinois. At the time she needed them most, her guns weren't there to protect her.

Before Shepard and her then-husband moved from the suburb of Midlothian to Cobden in 2002, she never had the slightest interest in firearms.

In Cobden, a sparsely populated village known for its apple orchards and annual peach festival, a gun-loving elderly woman like Shepard was an anomaly. But it didn't deter her passion.

Nothing could compare to the rush she felt holding a gun, her finger on the trigger, striking the target.

No one she knew seemed to understand the change. While living in Midlothian, Shepard worked for 24 years as the office manager at a Riverdale packing company. After moving to Cobden, she took a job as the church treasurer in nearby Anna.

Her granddaughter suggested that instead of shooting, she take up knitting. But such a docile hobby could no longer hold her interest.

So she bought more guns. She named the three cats she rescued from a shelter after her favorite firearms: Beretta, Ruger and Glock.

She signed up for every shooting class she could find, sometimes two or three a week. She took self-defense classes and joined a gun club, where she could also shoot on weekends.

Often she was the only woman there, but she held her own.

"I was on my soapbox. My main topic of conversation was shooting and guns. From the first class on, I told all the ladies that they had to get into this," said Shepard, a petite woman with grayish blond hair.

"I'd spend Saturday morning mowing the grass and the afternoon at the gun range."

With every shot, her confidence grew. Now divorced and living alone in her house off a narrow, sparsely populated road, she sees guns as her protectors.

She acquired concealed carry licenses from Pennsylvania and Florida, which had reciprocal agreements that allowed her to travel with her firearms in 32 states.

Shepard knew exactly what to do if an intruder broke into her house. But in Illinois, carrying a weapon outside the home was a felony. And when the time came that a gun might have saved her from grievous harm, she was at church.

'You never know what can happen'

There had been a half-dozen church break-ins around Union County in the summer of 2009. But the horrendous attack at the Anna First Baptist Church on Sept. 28 left everyone on edge.

Residents of Cobden, a community of about 1,000, wondered how something so vicious could happen just 5 miles away. They were shocked to learn the victims included one of their own.

It was near the end of the workday when church custodian Leona Mount, then 76, came into Shepard's office to empty the trash.

"She said she was going home after emptying the trash. I said, 'OK, Leona.' And that's the last thing I remember," Shepard said.

The assailant had entered through an unlocked door. According to authorities, he beat the two women mercilessly, fracturing Shepard's skull in four places and breaking both cheekbones. She suffered a concussion, shattered teeth and severe damage to her neck, shoulders and back.

Mount also survived but suffered a broken nose, a broken jaw and other facial fractures.

The robber took two envelopes of money from Shepard's desk and the cash in her purse — less than $300 total. Then he fled, leaving the two elderly women unconscious and bleeding.

The Rev. Tony Foeller, then the senior pastor, was in his office a few feet away, but with the door closed and the air conditioner running, he couldn't hear the ruckus.

"At 10 minutes till 4, I woke up on the floor and there was blood on the floor," said Shepard. "I remember looking at my purse and thinking, 'How did my purse get upset?' I picked it up, not noticing that my hand was bloody.

"I managed to get up and walk to the end of the hall. Then I collapsed. My bloody handprints were all along the wall. I had on a pale blue shirt, and it was covered with bloody footprints where he had stomped me repeatedly."

Foeller discovered the women and called 911. During the first seven days in the hospital, Shepard's family didn't know whether she would live.

A week after the attack, police arrested 45-year-old Willis Bates of Anna in a motel 25 miles away in Marion. Bates, who had a criminal history, pleaded guilty to two counts of attempted murder and was sentenced to 23 years in prison.

During the next two years, Shepard underwent four operations: extensive reconstructive surgery on her upper arm, surgeries on her rotator cuffs and surgical implants in the vertebrae of her neck. She endured months of physical therapy. Her bright smile reveals a mouthful of new teeth. She still has pain in her head every morning when she wakes up. And she has completely lost hearing in her left ear.

It used to be easy for her to get in her car and drive six hours to Chicago to visit relatives. Now she can't do that. She even sold her John Deere riding mower because she can't exert herself cutting grass.

But the thing she missed most was not being able the shoot for two years. Though she has returned to the range, the weakness in her arm makes it difficult to fire heavy guns like the Taurus.

"I don't remember the actual assault, but I do remember the pain, the suffering, the doctor visits and the changes in my life," said Shepard.

"It goes to show, you never know what can happen. I walked into the church that Monday morning thinking it was the safest place in the world."

The face of a movement

As Shepard recovered at home, Illinois became ground zero in the heated battle over gun rights. In June 2010, the U.S. Supreme Court forced Chicago to abandon its 28-year ban on handguns.

Encouraged by the victory, the National Rifle Association prepared to bring a lawsuit against the state of Illinois, seeking to knock down the last state statute in the country that kept law-abiding citizens from carrying handguns.

What the NRA needed, though, was a lead plaintiff. And here was Shepard, a 5-foot-2 woman trained in self-defense and licensed to carry in two other states, yet unable to use her gun to protect herself against an attack by a 6-foot-3, 245-pound man.

When the NRA began asking around, Shepard's friends in the gun community led them to her.

In the summer of 2011, Mary E. Shepard and the Illinois State Rifle Association v. Lisa M. Madigan, et al., was filed in U.S. District Court in Benton, Ill.

"We'll never know for sure, but if I'd had the right to concealed carry, I might have been able to defend myself," said Shepard, who received her Illinois concealed carry license in March. "With all the classes I'd taken, I didn't like that the state told me I couldn't."

At the same time, the Second Amendment Foundation in Bellevue, Wash., was moving ahead with an almost identical suit. Michael Moore, the lead plaintiff, was a 60-year-old former Cook County Jail corrections officer and then the superintendent of the Champaign County Jail.

The 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals combined the two cases before striking down the Illinois statute in December 2012. Rather than have the state appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, the General Assembly voted in July 2013 to allow concealed carry in Illinois.

Even before the lawsuit, Shepard was known in the area as a gun enthusiast. After the attack, residents in Cobden held fundraisers and offered other support, but the assault became a rallying cause for the pro-gun community.

In spring 2011, supporters wanted Shepard to travel to Springfield and address lawmakers debating a concealed carry bill, but her doctors would not allow her to travel.

So concealed carry advocates videotaped her sitting in a rocking chair in her living room urging lawmakers to pass the bill. They put together a packet, including a DVD and pictures of Shepard's swollen, bloodied face, and presented it to every member of the General Assembly.

The DVD and pictures eventually landed on the Internet for everyone to see.

Valinda Rowe, spokeswoman for IllinoisCarry, a plaintiff in the Moore lawsuit, testified at the hearing, telling Shepard's story on her behalf.

"You need real people to get the message across," said Rowe, who had met Shepard prior to the attack. "You couldn't find anyone better than Mary."

Shepard became the face of the concealed carry movement in Illinois. Though she refused interviews with the media, she became a sought-after speaker on the pro-gun circuit.

She had no formal training, but Shepard knew the subject well. Mostly she targets women, in an attempt to convince them that it's their responsibility to defend themselves.

"Being trained to carry a gun made me feel empowered, and I try to get that message across to women. Usually, they give me the same line: 'I've got a husband,'" she said. "But what if something happens to him or he's not around? What if the attacker takes him down first?"

She received a standing ovation last spring when she gave the keynote address during Illinois Gun Owner Lobby Day at the state Capitol.

"It was easier to talk to 8,000 people than giving the treasury report to 240 people at church," she said.

"They treated me like a queen, from the time the bus took off from Marion. They said, 'You're a hero.' I wasn't prepared for all of that."

There are plenty of people who don't believe that carrying a gun makes anyone safer. They argue that guns increase the potential for a confrontation to escalate, putting more people in danger.

So far, Shepard said she hasn't run into anyone in public who has challenged her. The most they will do, she said, is ask why she wants to carry a gun. Her answer is straight and simple.

"I tell them that I don't want to be a victim again," she said.

The place where she sometimes feels the most opposition, she said, is at her church. She is no longer the treasurer, but she's still a member. With a new pastor and a changing congregation, there are few members who were around when the attack occurred.

There has been an ongoing debate in the church about whether they should post signs prohibiting firearms. If that happens, Shepard said, she will likely look for another church.

A bill sponsored by Sen. Dan Kotowski, D-Park Ridge, prohibiting firearms in places of worship is pending in the General Assembly. If it passes, it would be an ironic twist of fate for Shepard.

"People don't think anything can happen in church. They think it's safe there. I did too, before the attack," Shepard said.

"I survived a horrific beating. From it, I became stronger. I wanted something good to come out of this, and I think it has."