EL PASO — Four days after an unimaginable attack on this border town, the people of El Paso continued to solemnly pay their respects to those killed in a racially fueled mass shooting.

High school cheerleaders cried as they read the messages of condolences, support and resilience at a makeshift memorial Wednesday night outside the Cielo Vista Walmart where a shooter opened fire Saturday, killing 22 people and injuring nearly two dozen others. Humbled state lawmakers looked on helplessly at the flowers, balloons, candles and posters laid at the memorial to 22 of their constituents and neighbors taken before their time.

Pray for El Paso, the signs read.

If you only got to know our people, our streets, our culture, then you would've seen how precious our city is, another read in an apparent message to the shooter.

Hate is loud but Love is stronger.

A young man walked around offering free hugs. A community tried to heal and pull itself out of deep despair.

Then, wearing his familiar blue dress shirt and carrying a bouquet of roses — like a son bringing an offering to a mother he’d been away from for too long — Beto O’Rourke joined the throngs of memorial visitors in the El Paso night.

“Beto! Beto!” the early astute observers yelled. “Welcome, Beto!”

Soon, he was surrounded by adoring El Pasoans all pushing up against one another to shake hands with their favorite native son. In that moment, O’Rourke, the former congressman, once Senate candidate, now struggling presidential candidate, returned to the identity that has always most defined him: El Pasoan.

His quarrel with President Donald Trump, whose anti-immigrant rhetoric was reflected in the shooter’s manifesto, melted away during the brief visit to the memorial. Trump also visited El Paso on Wednesday, with some residents of the grieving city angry that he did.

O’Rourke lay his bouquet of roses at the memorial, just like so many others in this border community had. Then he turned to speak to others who were paying their respects. He prayed with a despondent man whose wife was killed in Saturday’s shooting and had spent the days weeping at the memorial ever since. He formed a prayer circle with the man, and several others in the crowd joined them.

As they prayed, a bicultural scene unfolded nearby in this proudly binational city. Matachin dancers performed a folk dance and a mariachi played a Spanish Christian hymn.

"Junto a tí, buscaré otro mar," they crooned. "With you at my side, I will search for new shores."

“You have us,” O’Rourke told the man. “This whole community is with you.”

O’Rourke then squeezed his way out of the crowd, shaking hands and turning down photo requests to be respectful of the memorial, as the crowd called:

“Beto! Beto! We love you, Beto! Thank you, Beto!”

“Keep fighting the good fight.”

O’Rourke, who suspended his presidential campaign to go to El Paso, canceled a trip to the Iowa State Fair this weekend, a traditional “soapbox” appearance for candidates, and has said he will stay off the trail for an indefinite period to focus on his hometown.

His visit to the memorial lasted less than 45 minutes. Unlike at other events that day, O’Rourke did not make a speech. But some in the crowd said his presence helped lift a dark cloud.

Tony Dickey, the chaplain who pointed O’Rourke to the man whose wife had died, said the man had told him he had no family left and was all alone. But when he saw the community praying with him, “the guy’s spirit was lifted up.”

“All of a sudden, there was a light in him,” Dickey said.

Rene Romo, who was at the memorial with his family, said having O’Rourke in the city in this time of need was comforting.

“We see him as family,” Romo said. “So when someone is hurt in your family, you’re supposed to be there to comfort them. He’s done that, and in that, he’s shown true leadership.”

Romo said the city is still hurting from a devastating loss of life and would continue to do so for weeks, even years. But O’Rourke’s presence, he said, was a bright spot during a difficult time and a reminder of an easier time in the not-so-distant past.

“To see him be embraced by the crowd, to see him still here,” Romo said, “it makes it feel a little less hurtful and a tiny bit more normal. That’s what we need in this community right now.”

CORRECTION, 11:40 a.m., Aug. 8, 2019: An earlier of this version said the attack took 23 lives, but the death toll is 22.