Shattered Memories, Shattered Heart: The King Soopers Boulder Shooting
By Fiona McDonnell
On March 22 the unthinkable happened. A monster walked through the parking lot and into King Soopers in Boulder Colorado and opened fire. He killed 10 people including a police officer before he was detained and taken into custody. This is the community where I spent the first 18 years of my life; a place incredibly close to my heart.
King Soopers was my childhood grocery store. To this day, I can still close my eyes and see every inch of that place. I remember grabbing one of the free cookies that the bakery reserved for kids. I would try and make it last as long as I could while my mom shopped. I can see the “Penny Horse” horse by the register which the employees always made sure had a penny available so the kids could ride while their parents checked out.
When we were old enough, my friends and I would walk from our middle school to the in-store Starbucks. I remember always feeling so grown up. That was the first real act of independence for us. Our parents knew how safe the area was and felt that a group of four twelve-year-olds could only get into so much trouble in a grocery store. We spent most days after school at the grocery store, often sitting at that Starbucks table giggling over some kind of sickeningly sweet drink. We felt so adult, chatting about life over our cups of “coffee”.
When we made it to high school, we still went to that Starbucks almost every day but now with the newfound freedom of the bus. At this point, we had graduated from Frappuccinos to pumpkin spiced lattes and drinks so sweet you couldn’t even tell they were caffeinated. It was the first place I bought makeup, and the place I went to buy my friends flowers when we graduated.
I always felt safe there. Some of the people working at that grocery store had been there for over 20 years. Every time I would walk into that store I would run into someone I knew. South Boulder is an extremely small tight-knit community. The majority of people living there either went to school in the area had children in school or had children who already graduated from high school. There is an emptiness now with all the happy memories of that grocery store that will never go away.
A town should never have to endure the pain of losing loved ones simply because they went to a King Soopers. Boulder is such a strong community filled with so much love, and seeing the way they have rallied around the loved ones and survivors of this tragedy proves that cowardly monster who actively chose to cause so much pain will not break us.
We remember Denny Stong, 20; Neven Stanisic, 23; Rikki Olds, 25; Tralona Bartkowiak, 49; Suzanne Fountain, 59; Teri Leiker, 51; Kevin Mahoney, 61; Lynn Murray, 62; Jody Waters, 65, and Officer Eric Talley, 51.