Anne Marie Hochhalter was so much more than a Columbine survivor

More than a quarter century after a bullet ripped through her teenage body, Anne Marie Hochhalter died last week. Paralyzed and subject to chronic pain after the 1999 Columbine school shooting, through the rest of her life she set an example of selflessness and forgiveness.

I’m a Colorado native and JeffCo Public Schools graduate, and Columbine represents a touchstone moment in my life. It went from being a rival high school to a national shibboleth for American school shootings. Each subsequent mass shooting echoing back to this first, shocking incident.

For many, including me, it has evoked strong feelings of fear, anger and helplessness over the years. Fear that someone I know and love could be ripped away in a moment. Anger that no body count has ever been high enough or terrible enough to spur real, effective limitations on firearms in our country. Helplessness that the only unknowns about the next tragedy are time, location and degree measured in lives ruined.

But Hochhalter gave us something more to feel.

She showed us how to be resilient and determined. She demonstrated how to heal, both physically and emotionally. She became emblematic of love and forgiveness.

Hochhalter was one of 26 people rushed to hospitals across the metro area on April 20, 1999. She had been sitting with friends outside when the shooting began. Confused in the panic, they ran toward the cafeteria. Two bullets hit Hochhalter and tore through her spinal column, liver and vena cava, a large vein that brings blood back to the heart. She would have died but for the heroic efforts of paramedic John Aylward, who rushed to her rescue despite ongoing gunfire. She arrived at Swedish Hospital “a minute or two from death” and required two and a half times the amount of blood in her body in transfusions.

It would be nearly two months before Hochhalter could be transferred from Swedish to Craig Hospital for rehabilitation. She was the last Columbine survivor to be transferred out of the hospital.

Just over six months later, as Hochhalter continued to recuperate from injuries and readjust to an upended world, her mother died by suicide. It would have been understandable for a teenage girl to withdraw from the world and entirely after such twin tragedies. The traumatic damage to her emotional state, much less her body, had to be an almost unbearable burden.

I cannot contemplate the strength it took Hochhalter to continue moving forward after her world changed in 1999. But, in time, that is exactly what she did.

Hochhalter became more than a Columbine survivor or name on the Wall of Healing Memorial. She graduated high school and went to college. She got a job and bought her own home. She found the fortitude to assuage pain in others. She became an advocate and surrogate daughter. She worked to piece back together the world that shattered for her, to make it better than she found it.

That would be inspirational by itself.

Eventually she also found the strength to forgive. She spoke about the “poison pill” of bitterness that she felt would only cause her pain and led to her to publicly forgive one of the shooter’s mothers. For most people, finding the strength to forgive even a slight affront can be difficult; by forgiving someone whose son directly changed the entire course of your life and caused years of pain is something entirely different.

That type of forgiveness speaks to the inner peace Hochhalter eventually found after years of working through daunting obstacles. She understood that forgiveness is as much about personal acceptance and hopefulness about the world ahead. It frees us from our past, no matter how dark or tragic.

Certainly it is necessary for someone who would spend her spare time advocating for other people with disabilities or animals in need of a champion. To argue for change is to recognize that the world of tomorrow can be better than the world of yesterday. It requires an inner sense of optimism that can only come from past experience of struggle and success. 

My first reaction on hearing about Hochhalter’s death was that maybe she should be included in the Ring of Remembrance for those who died at the hands of two killers. While it took longer, complications from her wounds seem likely to have contributed to her premature death. But for their bullets, she may have lived 30, 40 or 50 years more.

However, I quickly realized that including her with those that died that day would have been an affront to the life she managed to live after. It would have reduced her to the worst moments of her life and diminished the contributions she made to her community and our state. That would be a disservice. 

In that light I hope all that remember and mourn for her remember and mourn for the woman she came to be. Not just a survivor, but a thriving contributor. An advocate and neighbor. A caring soul and sister. A life lesson teacher who had much to bestow on the people she affected.

Anne Marie Hochhalter was an inspiration those of us left behind should continue trying to live up to.

---

---

The Colorado Sun is a nonpartisan news organization, and the opinions of columnists and editorial writers do not reflect the opinions of the newsroom. Read our ethics policy for more on The Sun’s opinion policy. Learn how to submit a column. Reach the opinion editor at opinion@coloradosun.com.

Follow Colorado Sun Opinion on Facebook.

Type of Story: Opinion

Advocates for ideas and draws conclusions based on the author/producer’s interpretation of facts and data.