Columbine Survivors 10 Years Later

It is hard enough to imagine surviving a school shooting, but can you imagine returning to the school as a teacher? Mandy Cooke, Alise Williamson Steiner, Katie Tennessen, Brett O'Neill, and Cris Welsh say they couldn't imagine teaching anywhere else. Columbine is their school after all, and they want to be there no matter what happens next.

Read their amazing story here... 10 Years Later, Hope Triumphs At Columbine

One of the most seriously injured of the Columbine survivors, and very nearly the 14th victim, is Miss Anne Marie Hochhalter. Left a paraplegic, it was difficult at first for her to move on with her life, and just when her life was starting to turn around, her mother committed suicide.

Just six months after the shootings, Anna-Marie's mother walked into a pawn shop and asked to see a gun, loaded it there at the counter, and shot herself. She had already suffered mental illness prior to the events at Columbine, and her state had only worsened. After this, Anna-Marie struggled with depression and suicidal thoughts.

It took Anna Marie awhile to get back into life, but she has blossomed into a beautiful, intelligent, and very capable young woman. She got a part-time job at a retail store, where she has worked for seven years while pursuing a bachelor's degree in business with an emphasis on management.

She is living on her own and has learned how to drive again. She has also developed a strong friendship with the Sue Townsend, who lost her step-daughter in the shootings.

Her father is a school safety advocate and now trains parents on how to respond to emergencies.

When we think of Columbine, it is hard not to remember Patrick Ireland, the boy we saw fall from the window into the arms of a SWAT team member. Shot twice in the head and once in the foot, it took him three hours to crawl across the library and make it out the open window to safety.

While the image of him falling from the window might be fresh in our minds, Patrick has no memory of it.

His injuries left him paralyzed on his right side. He had to relearn how to walk, talk, and eat again.

Patrick went on to graduate from Columbine as class valedictorian. He attended university and excelled there as well. He is now married, and successful in many areas of his life.

"We have a choice in how we live our lives," says Patrick. "You wake up every single day and have a choice as living as a victim or a victor. When you choose to be a victor, you have so much more positive impact on how people view you and the way you want to live your life."

Frank DeAngelis has been the principal of Columbine High School since 1979. He was there that day as shots rang out. His life was spared that day, and he does not take that for granted.

He led 20 students to safety that day and did not suffer any injuries, but the emotional scars ran deep. After Columbine his marriage crumbled, and he suffered anxiety attacks and survivor's guilt.

Through counseling and faith he made it through, and committed to sticking it out at Columbine until the kids who were freshmen that day graduated, but now he says he is planning on staying until those children who were in Kindergarten in 1999 have graduated.

He survived Columbine that day, and he has survived every day since. He no longer mourns the lives lost that day, including that of good friend and teacher Dave Sanders, instead he prefers to celebrate their lives. Seems he will remain at Columbine as long as he feels the students there need him.

He is also engaged to be married to his high school sweetheart.

"We will never get back to normal, we just had to redefine what normal is."

Craig Scott was only sixteen when he found himself trapped in the library while the shooters killed many of those around him. He escaped to safety only to find that his sister Rachel, 17, was one of the first people killed.

From that day on he dedicated his life to spreading a message of hope and love throughout America's schools. Through "Rachel's Challenge," a nonprofit started by his father, Craig promotes school safety through compassion.

He has spread his message to over a million people through public speaking, and plans to continue reaching out to others through film making.

Many movies have been produced about the events surrounding school shooters, but one writer/director has decided to focus on the survivors, and this one happens to come directly from the mind of an actual survivor.

Drawing heavily from his experiences that day and the days that followed, this writer and director tells the story from a new point of view. This story is fiction, so no rehashing of the Columbine tale is here, but what you will find is a well told story that all but leaves the shooters out of it. The shooter is mentioned only in passing, and the only video of the shooting is done in the form of reconstructed surveillance footage.

April Showers opened on April 24, almost ten years to the day after the shootings occurred.

The addition of armed security, metal detectors, and strip-searches already had an effect on American schools before, but after Columbine we were terrified. Some insisted on tighter security, turning schools into prisons to prevent them from becoming warzones. Many schools now practice lock-down drills along with the standard fire drills.

What good has come from Columbine?

Many survivors realized that there had been enough hate. A large portion of students went on to become teachers, social workers, and activists for the cause of peace.

A victim is just a passive part of outside circumstances, but a survivor reaches out in whatever way they can to make a difference. Ten years later, many of the students who faced a brush with death have forgiven their attackers, and gone on to live successful lives.

Anti-bullying programs have been implemented in many schools, and they have worked. When students are taught to focus on compassion for other students, they learn to become observant and pick up on cues before it is too late.

When nearly half of American students polled said they didn't think teachers care about them personally, it was a wake-up call, and some schools and teachers actually listened. In schools where teachers take an active role as mentors, students open up to them more readily, they tell them when a student threatens to bring a gun. As a result, many similar plots have been prevented from becoming reality.

More parents now understand the danger signs, and are more likely to take action when a problem grows beyond their control.

Black box warnings are now required on anti-depressants and more people are aware of the dangers they pose for teenagers with still-developing brains.

We are overall more aware of the suffering of others, and that is important.

Yes, we have learned some of the lessons Columbine presented us with, but we still have a long way to go. School shootings continue to happen, and until we find a way to stop them entirely we still have many more lessons to learn.

Yet many of those survivors have something in common as well, perhaps the most important lesson of all...

"So these three things remain: faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love."

~1 Corinthians 13:13

For most of the ten years since Columbine, the parents of the shooters have remained silent. Much of that silence was misunderstood; with the number of lawsuits and legal actions pending, they really couldn't say much, even if they wanted to. Still, many have seen their silence as some sort of admission of guilt.

Susan Klebold has finally broken that silence in an essay that she wrote for O, The Oprah Magazine. She tells a heart-wrenching story of a mother who has spent every day since the events at Columbine asking herself what she missed.

We must not forget that Susan Klebold is a survivor too. We can only imagine what her life has been like since that day, the hell she has had to endure. She too lost a child, but she has to live with the added deaths of fourteen others. She too struggles to understand what her son did that day. She knows a nightmare that none of us can even begin to understand.

According to Oprah:"Since the day her son participated in the most devastating high school shooting America has ever seen, I have wanted to sit down with Susan Klebold to ask her the questions we've all wanted to ask-starting with "How did you not see it coming?" and ending with "How did you survive?" Over the years, Susan has politely declined interview requests, but several months ago she finally agreed to break her silence and write about her experience for O. Even now, many questions about Columbine remain. But what Susan writes here adds a chilling new perspective. This is her story.


Read the full article on the website... "I Will Never Know Why"