A Survivor's Story: 10 Years After Columbine

When Hochhalter returned to school, no one knew how to approach her. Students stared at her. Teachers gave her A's even though she expended little effort. She remembers little of her senior year at Columbine or the following summer other than major milestones like prom and graduation. Hochhalter's counselor once described this as "losing time."

Unlike others who had been wounded during the massacre, Hochhalter found herself incapable of moving forward. She took classes at a local community college the year after graduation, but she couldn't muster any excitement about transferring to another college or a career. Though she didn't think it possible, things got even worse during the summer of 2001 when her father moved the family to a mountain home about an hour away from their old home in Littleton. Neither she nor her brother, Nathan, wanted to move. Nathan continued attending Columbine High School in spite of his hour-plus commute each morning and afternoon. Hochhalter, scared to relearn how to drive, had no means of escaping from the mountain's isolation.

"The time I spent living in the mountains was one of my darkest hours. I say this to give others hope that it's possible to rebound from such a dark place, but I contemplated suicide in the mountains," Hochhalter says. "I was no longer able to attend school, and I was not working. I sat around watching TV all day, and it was awful, but I realize now that I had to go down before I could go back up."

A year later, with renewed faith in God and her own capabilities, Hochhalter turned her life around. During the summer of 2002, she bought a townhouse of her own, using some of the money she and other victims received in an insurance settlement from the shooters' parents. The area to which she moved was near a Christian church that Hochhalter had begun attending with the help of a friend who shuttled her from her family's mountain home to church and back each Sunday. Hochhalter learned how to drive again, re-enrolled in college, and got a part-time job at Bath and Body Works. "Even though at one point my new townhouse did not have a working shower, I chose to live there anyway and drive back up to the mountains each day just to shower because I knew I was ready to be out on my own."

Hochhalter's friendship with Sue Townsend is another piece of what helped her feel ready to regain her independence and start a new life. The two women met when Sue volunteered to drive Hochhalter to physical therapy once a week. Sue was mourning the death of her stepdaughter, Lauren, one of the students killed at Columbine, and saw helping Hochhalter as a way to give back in Lauren's honor. Though neither woman could replace the family members they have lost, they have been able support each other as survivors of the shooting and its repercussions.

"When I first met Anne Marie, she was shy and introverted, and now she is a capable, confident, beautiful young woman who has overcome more in her young life than some face in an entire lifetime," Townsend says. "Anne Marie once asked me, 'Do you think Lauren and my Mom had something to do with this?'—the word 'this' meaning the relationship she and I share."

Hochhalter now manages the Bath and Body works where she started as a part time associate seven years ago. She wants to switch professions but is not yet sure what she wants to do with her bachelor's degree in business with an emphasis in management.

Though she has come far since the shootings 10 years ago, she is also never far from reminders of how the tragedy has affected others.

"Every so often, I'm still reminded of Columbine's lingering effects," Hochhalter says. "Once I was checking out at a grocery store and the cashier asked me, bluntly, why I was in a wheelchair, so I responded, bluntly, that I was one of the students injured at Columbine High School. Then a person emerged from behind me in line to tell me that he was sorry he had not been able to get to us sooner—he was part of the SWAT teams that were not allowed to enter the school until hours after the shooting began—and I was able to tell him 'It's OK, no one blames you, I don't blame you.' It was one of the greatest moments of my life."