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    After Columbine, An Unlikely Friendship Bound By The Trauma Of Mass Shootings

    Over the past 20 years, mass shootings have resulted in communities of survivors. Heather Martin, who was a senior at Columbine High School in 1999, runs a nonprofit that connects them.
    by Nathaniel Minor Apr 18, 2019 5 minutes
    Heather Martin (left) was a student at Columbine High School in 1999. She met Sherrie Lawson, who worked at the Washington, D.C., Navy Yard in 2013 during the shooting there, through Martin's support organization, the Rebels Project.

    On April 20, 1999, as two students carried out the deadly shooting at Columbine High School, senior Heather Martin was barricaded in a choir office with 60 other students. It would be several hours before emergency responders found the room and were able to help the group get out.

    "I only saw the aftermath," she said. "I didn't see anything as it was happening." But she was shocked to later find out that the perpetrators were two of her peers, including one she had grown up with.

    It took her 10 years to return to her alma mater for the first time. "I was really scared," she said. "I thought that I would be a wreck." But something unexpected happened. As she walked through the halls with her little sister, she found herself having fun. They took photos and met the children of their classmates.

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