One person who chose not to view the images that Cho Seung-hui mailed to NBC was a Virginia Tech student who survived the massacre at Columbine exactly eight years ago today.

"I haven't watched them," 23-year-old Regina Rohde said yesterday as she stood in the doorway of her off-campus home, cuddling her small, brown dog.

Her tone suggested she had seen enough of such things back in 1999. She had been a 15-year-old sitting in the lunchroom at Columbine High School when Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris began their bloody rampage. She later spoke to a reporter of the absolute terror as you run for your life and of the way your initial shock is followed by anger and grief and how the survivors form an incredible bond that is the way toward healing.

She has remained close to her Columbine friends and is engaged to a former classmate named Kenneth Elsner who went on to serve with the Marines in Iraq. They live together in a townhouse development as she pursues a graduate degree in wildlife sciences at Virginia Tech. She was preparing to leave for school on Monday when she learned of the massacre at Norris Hall.

This time she had not actually heard the gunshots and she did not have to flee for her life, but others had, and the impact of having been so close to a second school massacre was still apparent in her face yesterday.

She declined to say anything more to the press about the shootings, past or present. She would only say that she had not watched the images Cho wanted us all to see. She was focusing on the bonding that follows the shock and grief and anger.

"I just want to be part of the community and help the healing," she said.

Regina stood there with the little brown dog wiggling in her arms, a soft-eyed young woman who could be a treasure to her fellow students at Virginia Tech. The number of victims is more than double that at Columbine and their average age is a few years older, but the aftermath here is so very much the same.

In the digital manifesto he sent to NBC, Cho claims comradeship with Klebold and Harris, but he clearly wanted his massacre to stand on its own, or he would have waited four days until the anniversary of Columbine.

Cho also wanted the whole world to see his self-portraits. He otherwise simply would have left them with his final note rather than send them to NBC. He chose Express Mail so the package would arrive the next day with a diabolical press agent's timing for maximum media impact.

As it was, he put down the wrong zip code and the package was delayed a day. The impact was still all that Cho apparently desired, and perhaps part of the reason Rohde did not watch was an instinct born of the earlier shooting that this was just the kind of attention such a killer wanted.

At least the arresting images of the Columbine killers were captured by the school's surveillance cameras. You could view them without feeling an accomplice. It was hard to escape that feeling when you viewed the images Cho composed himself prior to the carnage.

If there was any value in allowing yourself to become part of his plan, it was not in the photos, but in the rantings, where he also claimed comradeship with Jesus Christ. You were reminded how different he was from the Columbine killers. This was not some high school kid who evidenced few danger signs until he acted out a murderous fantasy.

In the court file for Temporary Detention Order No. 121GM3400502020 is a document that Cho signed during an overnight confinement at a psychiatric facility before he was freed, deemed a danger only to himself. The constricted signature is unmistakably the same handwriting as on the NBC package postmarked 29 minutes before Cho showed the world just how much a danger he was to others.

You have to wonder if all the attention generated after his package arrived at NBC will encourage some other psycho. But, you also have to hope his rantings are so manifestly insane we will finally do something about guns.

Meanwhile, Regina Rohde seeks healing again, having also been at a massacre exactly eight years ago that we all prayed would be the last.

mdaly@nydailynews.com