Eric Talley, 51, had already had a career working in the
tech industry when he shifted course at age 40 and joined the Boulder Police
Department.
اضافة اعلان
He was as busy on patrol as he was at home, helping to raise
seven children, the youngest of whom was 7 and the oldest 20. A friend recalled
Talley’s choice of transportation — a 15-passenger van.
He had done such a thorough job teaching his children first
aid that when one of his sons swallowed a quarter, another son sprang into
action, using his father-taught resuscitation skills. The Police Department
gave the older son an award for lifesaving just a couple of weeks ago.
Talley was on duty on Monday when a barrage of calls came
in: Gunfire had erupted at a King Soopers grocery store. He was the first on
the scene.
“The world lost a great soul,” said the officer’s father,
Homer Talley, a retired optics engineer who lives near Abilene, Texas. “His
family was the joy of his life.”
Like the people shopping at a Walmart store in El Paso,
Texas, in 2019, like those working in three Atlanta area spas last week, 10
victims in Boulder, Colorado, including Talley, were killed by the gunfire of a
heavily armed man.
They were young and old, single and married, King Soopers
customers and King Soopers employees. The youngest was 20; the oldest 65.
Some had spent years working at the grocery. Others had been
in the store only a few minutes. All left behind relatives and friends who were
struggling to comprehend what had happened and who were more eager to talk
about how their relative or friend had lived than how they had died.
“I don’t want her name to be another name next to an
age on a list,” said Alexis Knutson, 22, a friend of Teri Leiker, 51, a King
Soopers employee who she said had worked there for about 30 years and who died
in the attack.
Knutson met Leiker through a program called Best Buddies
that connects students at University of Colorado Boulder with members of the
community who have intellectual and developmental disabilities. Knutson
remembered going together to university sporting events, and how Leiker loved
to cheer on the teams.
Rikki Olds, another worker at King Soopers, also was killed.
She had been a front-end manager at the store, where she had worked for about
seven or eight years, her uncle, Robert Olds, said in an interview.
“We’re just devastated,” he said.
Rikki Olds was an energetic young woman who “brought life to
the family,” her uncle said.
Denny Stong, 20, worked at the store for several years. Only
a few years ago, he had been a student at Fairview High School in Boulder.
One day in a hall at Fairview, he complimented a classmate,
Molly Proch, on her superhero T-shirt, and the two became fast friends.
“I’ve been spending most of my morning crying, really
confused on how something like this could happen again,” said Proch, 20. “He
was an essential worker, working at a grocery store. It makes my blood boil.”
Proch said Stong enjoyed hunting and was a strong supporter
of the Second Amendment, but also supported strengthening certain gun
regulations. “He was so passionate about expressing how he thought the
government should handle weapons” to avoid mass shootings, she said.
Stong had recently posted on his Facebook page, encouraging
friends to donate to the National Foundation for Gun Rights for his birthday.
He dreamed of becoming a pilot, working extra shifts at King
Soopers to save money for plane fuel while he worked to get his pilot’s license,
said Laura Spicer, whose son was Stong’s best friend.
Lynn Murray, a 62-year-old mother of two, was working on
Monday, too, but not for King Soopers. Murray was there filling an Instacart
order.
She had retired from working behind the scenes in the New
York fashion world, her husband said. She was a former photo director for
several glossy New York City-based magazines, said her husband, John Mackenzie,
and the couple moved out of New York in 2002, first to Stuart, Florida, and
then to Colorado, to raise their two children.
“I just want her to be remembered as just this amazing,
amazing comet, spending 62 years flying across the sky,” Mackenzie said. “Our
tomorrows are forever filled with a sorrow that is unimaginable.”
Erika Mahoney, the daughter of another victim, Kevin
Mahoney, 61, recalled on social media how he had walked her down the aisle for
her marriage last summer. Erika Mahoney, the news director for KAZU Public
Radio in the Monterey, California, area, wrote on Twitter that she was
heartbroken.
“I know he wants me to be strong for his granddaughter,” she
posted, noting that she is now pregnant. “I love you forever Dad. You are
always with me.”
Mahoney had worked as the chief operating officer for
Stonebridge Cos., a hotel development and hospitality management company,
before he left in 2014, a spokesperson for Stonebridge said.
Neven Stanisic, 23, had been fixing coffee machines at the
Starbucks inside the supermarket, but had left and was in the parking lot when
he was gunned down, said the family’s priest, the Rev. Radovan Petrovic.
The son of Serbian refugees who had fled central Bosnia
during the violence of the 1990s, Stanisic was born in the United States. His
Facebook page is filled with anime drawings. His profile picture shows him in a
blue cap and gown, posing with friends from his Lakewood, Colorado, high
school.
He was the shining hope, Petrovic said, “of a family who,
like many refugees, had come with basically nothing but their lives, to start a
new life here.”
Neighbors knew Suzanne L. Fountain, 59, as a prolific
gardener who gave away a steady stream of tomatoes, lettuce and basil over the
tall wooden fence surrounding her yard in Boulder.
“She grew some amazing vegetables,” said Laura Rose Boyle
Gaydos, who until recently lived next door to her. “She would always share her
abundance with us.”
Fountain was particularly fond of a peach tree that she had
planted, and could often be found sitting outside in the early evening,
watching the sun set over the mountains. She had lived in her house for more
than 20 years, raising a son and going through a divorce.
She had been an actress in the early 1990s, appearing in
productions at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts, but she had given
that up. In 2018, Fountain embarked on a new career, starting a business to
advise people newly turned 65 about how to apply for Medicare.
Tralona Lynn “Lonna” Bartkowiak, another of the victims, was
the face of Umba, a shop in Boulder that sold yoga and festival clothing.
Bartkowiak, 49, managed Umba, which was launched by her sister, and she often
attended Burning Man and other festivals, where she would mingle with
prospective customers.
“Her people,” recalled her brother, Michael Bartkowiak. “She
would always say that. ‘I love my people.’”
Lonna Bartkowiak was the eldest of four close-knit siblings.
“She rented a house outside Boulder,” her brother said, “and lived there with
her little Chihuahua, Opal. She had just gotten engaged. She was, you know,
organic — stir fries, salads — she was always trying to be healthier.”
Bartkowiak was at the grocery store on Monday to pick up a
prescription when the shooting began.
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