APEX - Capt. Jacques Gilbert of the Apex police department had just arrived at church on a recent Sunday morning when his phone rang.

That sound - and the ensuing message from a voice on the other end of the line - told him of the chaos: Miles away, at 11:13 a.m., at Super Target in the Beaver Creek Commons shopping center, patrons were fleeing in a frenzy at the sound of multiple gunshots.

"A Sunday morning in Apex is typically pretty quiet," said Gilbert, head of Apex's patrol division and a 20-year veteran of the department. "Citizens are usually just conducting their normal business."

But not on this Sunday. Two people had been shot, he learned, and other officers already were headed to the scene.

Five law enforcement agencies - including the Wake County Sheriff's Office, the state Highway Patrol, and the Cary, Raleigh and Holly Springs police departments - helped Apex officers redirect traffic, field phone calls from concerned citizens and search cars in the parking lot, among other tasks. Because he was the first ranking officer on the scene, it was up to Gilbert to run the show.

He rushed home, where he traded his Sunday best for a uniform and rushed to the scene.

"My mindset was that we train for this all the time," Gilbert said. "My level of concern was for the officers who were already there - how were they doing, and were they being effective in their training."

Apex Police Capt. Ann Stephens, meanwhile, had just returned home with her family from The Creek Church in Cary that morning when she grabbed her cell phone from a kitchen counter. Minutes prior, Stephens, head of administrative services for the Apex police department, had missed multiple calls from fellow officers and fire personnel.

"I knew something had happened if that many people were trying to call me," she said.

Her first returned call was to Gilbert, with whom Stephens coordinated a massive police response to the shooting.

Stephens temporarily served as the chief of police in the absence of Chief Jack Lewis, who returned to North Carolina hours later after cutting short a family trip to Virginia. And as the department's public information officer, she also kept the media informed of updates as the day wore on.

Gilbert, meanwhile, helped establish a command structure and a strategic response to the situation.

Guadalupe Rosas, a cashier at the Super Target, and Mervin Mims, her former boyfriend, already had been shot and killed in an apparent murder-suicide upon his arrival, Gilbert said. But police weren't certain at first if Mims, who reportedly shot Rosas multiple times, had acted alone.

"We weren't sure if there was a second shooter because of information presented to us by one of the original shoppers who fled the scene," he said.

Teams of officers swept through the store in search of any other suspects. They found only a handful of frightened shoppers.

"At the end of the day, it's obviously emotionally draining and physically draining doing so much in a short period of time," Stephens said. "Your adrenaline is rushing so much, and it's especially emotionally draining once things calm down. It's unfortunate that, in the heat of the moment, you have to separate yourself from the emotion of the moment because you're thinking about keeping the scene safe. But ultimately, we're human too."

Lewis, the police chief, praised Gilbert and Stephens for their ability to balance the emotions of the day with their duties as police officers.

"What you have is two people who are in their jobs for the right reasons," Lewis said. "They're both people who understand the responsibility of what police do, their level of command and their responsibility to the town of Apex."