Eric Talley, 51, already had a career working in the technology industry when he changed course at age 40 and joined the Boulder Police Department.
He was as busy on patrol as he was at home, helping to raise seven children, the youngest was 7 and the oldest 20. A friend remembered Officer Talley’s choice of transportation – a 15-passenger van.
He had done such a thorough job of teaching his children first aid that when one of his children swallowed a room, another son went into action, using his father’s taught resuscitation skills. The police department gave the eldest son a prize for saving lives just a few weeks ago.
Officer Talley was on duty on Monday when a flurry of calls came in: a gunfire exploded in a King Soopers supermarket. He was the first to arrive.
“The world has lost a great soul,” said the policeman’s father, Homer Talley, a retired optical engineer who lives near Abilene, Texas. “His family was the joy of his life.”
Like people who shopped at a Walmart store in El Paso in 2019, like those who worked at three Atlanta area spas last week, 10 victims in Boulder, Colorado, including police officer Talley, were killed by gunshots from a heavily armed man.
They were young and old, single and married, King Soopers customers and King Soopers employees. The youngest was 20 years old; the oldest 65.
Some spent years working at the grocery store. Others were at the store just a few minutes ago. They all left relatives and friends who were struggling to understand what had happened and who were more anxious to talk about how their relative or friend had lived than how they died.
“I don’t want her name to be another name close to an age on the 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.
Ms. Knutson met Ms. Leiker through a program called Best Buddies, which connects students at the University of Colorado Boulder with members of the community with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Ms. Knutson remembers going to university sports events together and how Ms. Leiker loved to cheer for the teams.
“She had the biggest, brightest smile,” said Knutson. “She always had these dimples, especially when she got excited about something – her smile was just huge.”
She worked as a packer. If a customer tried to help her purse, she was known to happily take their hand away and say, “I’ll take care of it.”
Despite the difference in age, Knutson said, they often related and talked. “I always had a rule: she couldn’t call before 9 am because I like my sleep,” she said. “She always called me at 6 am”
Rikki Olds, another worker at King Soopers, was also killed. She had been a front-end manager at the store, where she worked for about seven or eight years, her uncle, Robert Olds, said in an interview.
“We are devastated,” he said.
Mrs. Olds was an energetic young woman who “brought the family to life,” said her uncle.
She was the eldest of three siblings and was left with her grandparents when she was a teenager, Olds said, adding that the grandparents raised her in Lafayette, Colorado.
Lately, Mrs. Olds was living alone, but she regularly stopped by her grandmother’s house to spend time with her and other relatives.
“My mom was her mom,” said Olds. “My mother raised her.”
Denny Stong, 20, worked at the store for several years. Just a few years ago, he had studied at Fairview High School in Boulder.
One day, in a hallway in Fairview, he greeted a classmate, Molly Proch, for his superhero T-shirt, and the two quickly became friends.
“I spent most of the morning crying, very confused about how something like this could happen again,” said Proch, 20. “He was an essential worker, working in a grocery store. It makes my blood boil. “
Ms. Proch said that Stong liked to hunt and was a strong supporter of the Second Amendment, but also supported the strengthening of certain weapons regulations. “He was so excited to express how he thought the government should deal with weapons” to avoid mass shootings, she said.
Mr. Stong recently posted on his Facebook page, encouraging friends to donate to the National Foundation for the Rights of Arms on his birthday.
He dreamed of becoming a pilot, working extra shifts at King Soopers to save money on jet fuel while working to get his pilot’s license, said Laura Spicer, whose son was Stong’s best friend.
Shooting in Colorado
Lynn Murray, 62 and a mother of two, was also working on Monday, but not for King Soopers. Mrs. Murray was fulfilling a request from Instacart.
She had retired from working behind the scenes in the New York fashion world, said her husband. She was former director of photography for several New York City magazines, said her husband, John Mackenzie, and the couple moved from New York in 2002, first to Stuart, Florida, and then to Colorado, to create the two children.
“I just want it to be remembered only as an incredible comet, spending 62 years flying through the sky,” said Mackenzie. “Our tomorrows will be forever filled with unimaginable sadness.”
For her children, Olivia, 24, and Pierce, 22, Ms. Murray was a fashion expert of a different kind, with a knack for designing her Halloween costumes.
“The most unworthy person I can think of is my mother,” said Olivia Mackenzie, “and I wish it could have been me.”
Erika Mahoney, daughter of another victim, Kevin Mahoney, 61, recalled on social media how he accompanied her to the altar for her wedding last summer. Ms. Mahoney, news director at KAZU Public Radio in Monterey, California, 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. ”
Mr. Mahoney had served as chief operating officer for Stonebridge Companies, a hotel development and hospitality management company, before leaving in 2014, said a Stonebridge spokesman.
Neven Stanisic, 23, was repairing coffee machines at Starbucks inside the supermarket, but had gone out and was in the parking lot when he was shot, said the family priest, Reverend Radovan Petrovic.
The son of Serbian refugees who 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 photo shows him in a blue cap and dress, posing with friends from his college in Lakewood, Colorado.
He was the brightest hope, said Father Petrovic, “of a family that, like many refugees, came basically with nothing but their lives, to start a new life here.”
After school, Stanisic went straight to work repairing coffee machines in Denver with his father, said Father Petrovic.
“They fled the war to save their lives and to be hit by such a terrible tragedy – the loss is beyond comprehension.”
The neighbors knew Suzanne L. Fountain, 59, as a prolific gardener who spread a steady stream of tomatoes, lettuce and basil over the tall wooden fence that surrounded her backyard in Boulder.
“She grew incredible vegetables,” said Laura Rose Boyle Gaydos, who until recently lived next to her. “She would always share her abundance with us.”
Mrs. Fountain especially liked a peach tree that she had planted and could often be found sitting outside in the early evening, watching the sunset over the mountains. She lived in her home for more than 20 years, raising a child and getting divorced.
She had been an actress in the early 1990s, appearing in productions at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts, but had given up. In 2018, Ms. Fountain embarked on a new career, starting a business to advise newly completed 65-year-olds on how to apply for Medicare.
Tralona Lynn “Lonna” Bartkowiak, another of the victims, was the face of Umba, a store in Boulder that sold clothes for yoga and festivals. Bartkowiak, 49, ran Umba, which was launched by his sister, and often attended Burning Man and other festivals, where he mingled with potential customers.
“Your people,” recalled his brother, Michael Bartkowiak. “She always said that. ‘I love my people.’ “
Mrs. Bartkowiak was the eldest of four united brothers. “She rented a house outside Boulder,” said her brother, “and lived there with her little Chihuahua, Opal. She had just gotten engaged. She was, you know, organic – chips, salads – she was always trying to be healthier. “
Mrs. Bartkowiak was at the supermarket on Monday to pick up a prescription when the shooting started.
Officer Talley, who on Monday was an 11-year veteran of the Boulder Police Department, was born in Houston and raised in Albuquerque, his father said.
Shortly after joining the Boulder department, he appeared in the local newspaper, The Boulder Daily Camera. He was mentioned, along with two other policemen, for a complicated operation – getting into a drainage ditch to rescue a mother duck and 11 ducklings.
“We’re just trying to put the pieces together,” said Mr. Talley, the elder. “It has always been in my mind – and in his mind – that it could happen. This worried him because he didn’t want to put his family in something like that. “
Neil MacFarquhar and Elizabeth days contributed reports. Jack Begg, Susan C. Beachy and Kitty Bennett contributed research.