"The helpless become the helpers": Coloradans affected by decades of mass shootings speak out
From aisles of a grocery store, the seats inside a crowded movie theater and to the halls of a high school, violence has struck Colorado residents.
Columbine, Aurora, and Boulder are within a one-hour drive of each other. Boulder is the site of America's latest massacre and Colorado's latest mass shooting.
Ten people were killed in the mass shooting at a Boulder supermarket on Monday, and a 21-year old suspect has been arrested and charged with 10 counts of first-degree murder. For the survivors of mass shootings, it's hard to understand the shock and grief they feel.
CBS News' David Begnaud sat with a Columbine High School shooting survivor and the family member of an Aurora movie theater shooting victim to help a Boulder survivor try to cope.
Ryan Borowski was inside the King Soopers grocery store when he suddenly heard gunshots. He described to Begnaud the moments of panic that followed.
"Between the second and third shot, I was running. A terrified woman's face was running towards me. And I had turned and ran with her, and I think she kept up with me. I think there was somebody right in front of me," he said. "I'm not having nightmares, it's just this bad daydream that, like, maybe there was somebody in my peripheral vision who I had blinders on towards."
"Meaning that you wish you could have grabbed them and taken them with you?" Begnaud asked.
"Alerted them that, 'This is the exit. This is the way.' Like, 'You have to move. You have to run'" Borowski said.
Like most Americans, Heather Dearman was overfilled with emotions when she found out about the King Soopers grocery shooting. Boulder, Colorado, is less than 50 miles away from the Aurora movie theater where her cousin, Ashley Moser, and her young daughter, Veronica Moser-Sullivan, were shot when they attended a midnight screening of the film "The Dark Knight Rises" on July 20, 2012. Six-year-old Veronica was one of 12 people killed that night.
"I am just, I feel for you so much. I know it must feel so raw for you and like it's unreal. But my mind immediately went back to thinking of my cousins in the theater and they just went to see a movie. And that someone would have to go through this again already. I'm so, so sorry," she told Borowski.
Sitting beside them is Zach Cartaya, who also knows the pain and shock that a mass shooting leaves behind. He was just 17 years old when two students walked into Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, and opened fire. He hid in a classroom as the gunmen murdered 12 students and one teacher.
"To your point, Heather, I can't believe we're here again. Here we are again. Is it surreal? I just remember it being so surreal that first, we thought it was a senior prank. We thought that someone was, you know, we thought it was a senior prank or…" Cartaya said.
"Or you hoped it, right?" Borowski asked.
"Well, at that point in time, it wasn't a reality for us, right? There was you never, ever would have thought that someone was coming into your school or, you know, name the list of places, with a weapon," Cartaya said.
"The first shot now I'm describing it as, like, 'I hope that's not a gunshot.' The second shot shattered that hope. And the third shot, I knew it was gunfire," Borowski said.
Dearman said that she attended a memorial for the Boulder, Colorado shooting and was shocked that people have to go about their regular daily lives and have to worry about getting shot.
Days after the shooting, Borowski said he wants action from the government and wants people to take "responsibility for themselves from the bottom." As he was saying this, Dearman starts to shake her head.
"I don't want to be pessimistic, but I lost all hope back in 2012 after we had just laid a six-year-old to rest in October. But then just two months later, Sandy Hook happened," she said. "And then after nothing happened after that, I stopped listening. I stopped paying attention. It has to go back to starting from just you as a person just being kind to one another and treating people like human beings."
Cartaya said that counting on kindness is not enough, but hope is all they have. Borowski said that he has hope, but he's also filled with fear of the feelings he is going to have to work through in the aftermath of the shooting.
"I have hope, but I'm also terrified. I have hope because, over the past few years, I have learned so many self-care techniques — studying meditation and yoga, and I'm a massage therapist. But I've also wanted to kill myself before," he shared. "So I'm either hopeful that my struggles with that feelings have prepared me for future feelings and that I can always remain curious about the future enough to get to the next wave, whatever it feels like."
As Dearman told Borowski of how she is proud of him and his strength, he wondered if he should leave the country.
"You're asking that seriously?" Begnaud said.
"Yeah, we've... thought about it before," he said. "There's a lot of parts about this country that are absolutely wonderful. But there's other parts that are hard to tolerate."
"My final thought to you, Ryan, is the helpless become the helpers," Cartaya added. "You'll find something beautiful in yourself too. Some as a result of something so terrible, you'll find something beautiful in yourself. Find that beauty in yourself and let that helplessness make you a helper."
