“I was just giving them (ribbons) away, thinking the community needed them for support. And we got even better support this way,” said Kara Burroughs with McCabe’s Irish Pub at the Southlands mall in Aurora, of her black ribbons with the date 7-20-12 on them. “We’ve raised $1,400. I feel better doing something (rather) than not doing something. I’m really hoping that we can get up to $5,000 today.”

They will raffle off Colorado Rockies and Denver Broncos tickets tonight as well, but you don’t have to be present to win, the manager told 7News.

We found girls selling lemonade in Saddle Rock Friday for the benefit of shooting victims, as well.

The Royall Hilltop in the Seven Hills shopping center near Hampden avenue and Tower road will donate 10 percent of sales Sunday and all tips to a fund established for Alex Sullivan, 27, who died in the shooting.

Aug. 10 YoCraze in the same Aurora shopping center will also hold a fundraiser to benefit victim’s families.

All while five people remain in critical condition, including Yousef Gharbi, 16.

“I feel like he can talk to us. Well, not talk to us. But his body language, I feel like he can talk to us. It’s awesome,” said sister Katlyn I. “The doctors are saying, ‘Maybe weeks. Maybe months’. It’s all on Yousef.”

Shot in the right side of his head, Gharbi has a piece of shrapnel close to his carotid artery in the neck.

“And that’s the sad part. I want my brother to come home, of course, right now. I want us to go up there and go get him and bring him home and let’s go watch some movies. Of course, at home,” his sister said.

She described the family’s interest in thanking the Aurora police officer who drove Gharbi in a police patrol car the hospital, rather than waiting for an ambulance to arrive.

But they do not talk about the shooting suspect, I said, noting that the one time they did discuss the alleged shooter, James Holmes, in Gharbi’s room, “his blood pressure shot up.”

They are hopeful the teenager can recover but are surprised at the intensity of the past eight days.

“It feels like months, to be honest. Months, which is the horrible part,” I said.