Hart Van Denburg/CPR News
Flowers and messages, some spiritual and some political, at the makeshift memorial outside King Soopers on Boulder’s Table Mesa Drive, a week after a gunman opened fire in the store March 22, 2021, killing 10 people.
The Colorado Healing Fund hit a sadly historic milestone this month when it activated twice in less than two months.
“We ve never been activated and reactivated this quick in succession,” said Jordan Finegan, executive director of the Fund.
First, it was the Boulder King Soopers shooting on March 22, where 10 people died, including a police officer. The fund started collecting donations right after to disperse to survivors and victim’s families for travel, rent and other needs based on their situations.
For many, the last year has been incredibly hard. The pandemic brought death, loss and isolation with it. It’s also been a year of severe financial hardship. Some Coloradans confronted racial bias and hate, more than once. And as the pandemic itself closed in on a full year, the state mourned its worst mass shooting in nearly a decade.
These events have left some people searching for new ways to grieve and to start to heal. In that spirit, Rev. Amanda Henderson collaborated with CPR News to pair a poem she wrote about hope with photos we ve taken and stories we’ve reported about people from different backgrounds and life experiences and how they’re healing from this overwhelming year.
Kevin J. Beaty/Denverite
Snow falls on the makeshift memorial around the perimeter of the Table Mesa King Soopers parking lot continues to grow, Tuesday, March 23, 2021.
Hey there, Hayley here. I’m a reporter for CPR. I report on how money impacts people’s lives and I also cover faith-related stories.
And sometimes I have to jump in and cover breaking news, like when a shooter opened fire at a grocery store in Boulder and killed 10 people almost a month ago. It’s Colorado’s worst mass shooting in a decade.
I’ve covered a shooting before, but this one felt different. Maybe because it happened at the tail end of a traumatic year. Maybe because I had built a little community of my own in the city of Boulder while attending school there.
David Zalubowski/AP
Boulder Police Department Chief Maris Herold, front, joins Boulder County District Attorney Michael Dougherty, center, in considering a question about the ongoing investigation into the mass shooting at a King Soopers grocery store during a news conference outside police headquarters Friday, March 26, 2021, in Boulder, Colo.
A Boulder judge denied a request made by the public defenders for the alleged gunman that prosecutors and law enforcement should be banned from making public statements outside of the courtroom about the King Soopers shooting case.
Defense attorneys representing the 21-year-old accused of shooting and killing 10 people at the Table Mesa Drive King Soopers in March wanted to severely restrict information released to the public about the investigation, citing the defendant’s right to a fair trial.
Hart Van Denburg/CPR News
University of Colorado music student Louis Saxton plays his cello at the makeshift memorial fence outside King Soopers supermarket on Table Mesa Drive, Monday, March 29, 2021. The memorial is for the 10 people killed at the store when a gunman opened fire on Monday, March 22, 2021.
Less than a day after the mass shooting in Boulder on March 22, the flowers began to arrive.
So did balloons, candles, signs, notes and stuffed toys. They arrived handheld by mourners looking to pay their respects to the ten lives lost at the grocery store. In the subsequent week, what began as a sparse collection of small bouquets blossomed into an emotional outpouring of grief with hundreds, if not thousands, of items marking a spot that may never be the same.