113
SPORTS ILLUSTRATED
AUGUS T 26–SEP TEM
BER 2, 2019
KEANON LOWE woke up early on May 17 at his modest
house in northeast Portland. He drank coffee, ate a
bagel and an apple, and drove his dented Jeep Chero-
kee to Parkrose High, a big school in an economically
challenged part of town, where he let football players
into the weight room and started preparing for Day 2
of the conference track meet.
By 8 o’clock he’d settled into a cramped, sparsely
decorated office adjacent to the cafeteria. At 27 he was
coaching Parkrose’s football and track teams, two low-
paying gigs made palatable only by his full-time job as
a campus security guard. He shared this space with the
school’s other unarmed watchmen, one of whom he told
to go ahead and take his lunch first. Then, at 11:30, 20
minutes after the fourth-period bell, the call came:
“Can you go get Angel Granados-Diaz from the Fine
Arts Building and bring him to the counselor’s office?”
Lowe sighed. The guards always grumbled about the
walk to what they called the “Fab building,” a couple
hundred feet away from the main school, out near the
athletic fields. He went on his way, though, alternately
joking with students about prom and reminding them
to get to class. The sun beamed. He remembers seeing
groundskeepers lining a softball field, remembers open-
ing the Fab door, remembers noticing a student step
out of the boys’ restroom and quickly pop back inside.
At first Lowe went to the wrong room, Mr. Hume’s
Health class. He wanted Mr. Melzer’s Government room,