The Washington Post - USA (2022-02-13)

A6 EZ RE THE WASHINGTON POST.SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 13 , 2022

Louis Saxton

A University of Colorado at Boulder student and

survivor. He played the cello at the memorial fence for

10 days to honor the 10 victims.

“Being a survivor ... makes me thankful for the

days that I don’t want to get out of bed. Thankful

for the days I fight with my family, fight with my

professors, fight with my friends. Grateful for the

hard days, and it makes the good days even

better.”

Sammie Lawrence IV

A survivor. He was in the store during the shooting and

helped people escape.

“I’m not just a survivor. Survivors barely make it

out. ... I am an overcomer. I am constantly

overcoming the struggle that is the mountain of

healing.”

Anna Haynes

Witnessed the event from her apartment window

“It’s weird to see in real time outside your window

how a community shifts and changes after a mass

tragedy.”

Lael Har

Artist and South Boulder resident. She painted the

mural at the front of the new King Soopers.

“We act like we live in a bubble. People say ‘the

Boulder bubble,’ and that bubble has burst. The

fabric of just our day-to-day reality just was torn

by this tragedy.”

Chelsea Pennington Hahn

Curator of collections at the Museum of Boulder.

Pennington Hahn recovered items from the memorial

fence last year to preserve them for history.

“There are all sorts of tragedies and dark moments

in Boulder’s history, and we have healed from

those. But they’re still part of us.”

Leland Boutilier

A survivor and former King Soopers employee who was

working at the self-checkout area of the store during the

shooting

“It also gave me an appreciation for community

and how much like a grocery store can mean to

people. It’s the center of the community, and it just

means so much more than you than, than you

think.”

BY ERIN BLAKEMORE

PHOTOS BY RACHEL WOOLF

boulder, colo. — As Marie
Banich drove past her local gro-
cery last year, she started shak-
ing. “I could just tell that some-
thing was so wrong,” she said.
Emergency responders had
converged on the Ta ble Mesa
King Soopers, where a gunman
had opened fire. Te n people
would be killed.
Nearly a year later, Banich and
her wife were among the first
customers inside the remodeled
store.
After a ceremony Wednesday

that involved ribbons, red carpets

and moments of silence, employ-

ees and customers poured back

in, a milestone for a city still

mourning its first mass shooting

and a recent fire that destroyed

more than 1,100 homes and busi-

nesses.

B elow and accompanying the

photographs are the stories and

thoughts of those touched by the

mass shooting, some still won-

dering, what does it mean to heal?

Gage Price-Gaw

For P rice-Gaw, the reopening

offered a sense of relief.

Price-Gaw was working at K ing

Soopers when the shooting start-

ed. He can count on one hand the

things that saved him that day:

His proximity to the back doors,

where he had been processing a

load of produce. That the doors

were unlocked, a rarity spurred

by a late delivery. That he im-

mediately knew it was gunfire.

Customers and employees

scrambled out the back door. Te n

people — including an Instacart

shopper and a Boulder police

officer — didn’t make it.

Since then, Price-Gaw has

struggled with periodic flash-

backs from that day. One time, a

popping balloon brought a rush

of adrenaline. “It took me a good

15 minutes to calm down after

that,” he said. “The Fourth of July

was rough.”

But he’s excited to get back to a

new normal. “Let me go back,” he

told his managers. “Just let me go

back and do something.”

Joel Giltner

G iltner was glad to be back,

too. Like Price-Gaw, he has been

working at a different King Soop-

ers for the past several months.

But just a few hours into his

first day back at w ork, his nervous

system went into overdrive. “I

was freaking out. Paranoid,” he

said. “Even with the armed

guards up front — it was unset-

tling.” Though he has been look-

ing forward to working at the

renovated store, he says he has

built a mental map of where the

victims fell.

Though many workers and

managers will be familiar to long-

time customers, not everyone has

chosen to return.

Leland Boutilier

B outilier left Boulder altogeth-

er a few weeks after the March 22

shooting, which he experienced

while staffing the self-checkout

lanes at the front of the store.

Though he spent a few months

working at another King Soopers

store about 60 miles away, he has

since left the company.

“I had a little bit of survivor’s

guilt,” he said. And he still doesn’t

understand why, after a first

burst of collective grief, the world

“memory holed” the tragedy. “No-

body seemed to talk about it

anymore,” he said.

Adrian Drelles

D relles was on the front lines

during the attack last year. A

patrol sergeant with the Boulder

Police Department, he supervised

the response to the shooting that

Year after mass shooting, a city reopens the doors