Heather Martin is a 1999 graduate of Columbine High School in Colorado. She was a 17-year-old senior on April 20, 1999 during the mass shooting at Columbine High School, where two seniors brought guns and explosives to school and murdered 13 people before taking their own lives. Martin talked to us about her experiences during the shooting, her life immediately after, and her long road to recovery.
During the shooting, Martin was in her choir class when someone came sprinting up the stairs from the cafeteria, explaining how someone was firing a gun downstairs. Hearing this, Martin, along with her 59 classmates all barricaded themselves into their choir teacher’s office.
“I don’t know how quiet we were. At first I was really scared because I kept hearing the gunfire. I knew someone had a gun, but I had never heard one before. It sounds like when big fireworks go boom at the bottom and then crack at the top, it sounded like the boom at the bottom. It felt like the walls and ground were shaking,” she said.
With 60 students locked in such a small space, it started to get hot and stuffy, to the point where many started climbing up to the ceiling and removing ceiling tiles just to get some air. In the room, they tried using their choir teacher’s desk phone and called 911, but the lines were busy. They eventually got a hold of a student’s parent who was standing outside the school building with a bomb squad, telling them to stay there and remain quiet. After a while, the SWAT team came to the door, leading them out of the school.
“They took us through the building and then when we were out, they questioned all of us. They were still looking for the perpetrators. The initial report believed that there were six gunmen,” Martin said.
The initial report saying that there were six gunmen isn’t the only false thing about that day. There are many misconceptions and tons of misinformation about the events that took place on April 20 at Columbine. Many people believe that the whole reason that the two gunmen committed the terrible act was because they had experienced bullying, which may be true, but many don’t know that they were bullies themselves.
“I do know from my friend that one of the perpetrators asked her to homecoming and she said no. He bullied her, almost to the point that she was going to drop out. He was terrible,” she said.
Because of this belief that the perpetrators’ motive was to get revenge for the bullying that they experienced, many survivors have been treated terribly. They are constantly accused of being bullies, being told that the whole situation is their fault because they bullied the perpetrators.
“A friend of mine wore a Columbine sweatshirt in this mountain town about five days after the shooting. She was just there to get away. People spit on her, telling her it was her fault, that we deserved what happened to us, that we were the bullies,” Martin said.
The amount of extra trauma that the survivors suffered after the shooting is almost unbelievable. They still deal with harassment and bullying, even though Columbine took place 25 years ago. The two gunmen are idolized by some on social media platforms. On these platforms, many users change their profile pictures and names to match those of the perpetrators, taunting the survivors.
“We get texts from people, harassing us, saying stuff like the whole shooting was our fault or that they’re coming to finish the job,” she said.
Columbine was one of the deadliest school shootings in U.S. history. Nobody had really seen something like it. School shootings were not common or “normalized” like they are nowadays. Because this shooting was so large and violent, the media coverage was intense. There were constantly reporters and paparazzi everywhere. They would jump out of bushes and camp outside of the survivors’ homes, attempting to get any information that they could out of them. They were constantly bothering the students, filming their graduation and even going to the services held for the victims.
“I remember on April 22nd, on my 18th birthday, we had this gathering because we wanted to see each other. We were using the media to get the word out that we were going to meet. We just asked that there was no media. They came anyway. They lined the streets we were walking, just screaming questions and shoving cameras in our faces,” Martin said. “My friend Connie, daughter of Dave Sanders, calls it grieving in a fishbowl.”
Columbine was one of the first mass shootings to unfold live on television. There were helicopters circling the building for the majority of the shooting. They were recording and reporting on the event the entire time.
“I was so triggered by them. When there was a helicopter, I would start sweating. I would start breathing heavily and have panic attacks. I’ve talked with multiple others and it’s helicopters, sirens and fireworks. The trifecta of triggers,” she said.
Martin knew two people who lost their lives that day. She knew Mr. William David Sanders, the 47-year-old teacher, basketball and softball coach who was murdered. He is remembered as a hero for his actions that day, ushering students out of the cafeteria during the shooting. He saved many lives that day. She also knew one of the perpetrators.
“I knew who both of them were. One of the gunmen I grew up with, but we were never friends. We went to elementary school and then junior high and then obviously high school together,” Martin said.
After her graduation, Martin attended college, but after a while, she dropped out and went into the restaurant business, becoming a restaurant manager.
“As a physically uninjured, it was really hard to acknowledge the fact that I had been impacted and traumatized because people’s loved ones were killed. I didn’t lose a loved one. I didn’t die. I wasn’t shot. Frankly, I didn’t see anything happen while it was going down. I saw the aftermath, which was awful. They didn’t cover the bodies on our way out.”
College had been extremely difficult for her. She started using recreational drugs and even developed an eating disorder. She just believed what was happening to her was just college. That was what college was for, experimenting. She was constantly downplaying her trauma, insisting that she was fine.
“I think eventually, I was just taking classes that my friends took so I wouldn’t be alone,” she said. “I didn’t want to be alone because I was scared of it happening again and not having someone with me.”
Martin was doing an interview 10 years after the shooting for a documentary, when the interviewer asked if she could take out her high school yearbook.
“I found out that my English teacher had signed it. It read ‘I hope you major in English and become a teacher because your students will love you,’” she said.
What her English teacher wrote led her to enrolling back into school and eventually becoming an English teacher. She now teaches English at a high school in Colorado.
On July 20, 2012 a mass shooting occurred inside a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado. Twelve people were killed and 70 were injured. Martin worked with another Columbine 1999 graduate, Zach Cartaya, to create a support network called the Rebels Project, which gets its name from Columbine’s school mascot, the Columbine Rebels.
The Rebels Project is a volunteer-run organization. Its goal is to make sure that survivors of these traumatic events know that they aren’t alone. There is an online support group that is part of the project where survivors of mass violence can reach out and talk to each other. They discuss ways to cope with what they experienced, how to go about doing interviews, and therapies that may help.
“I think in the aftermath of a mass violence event, a lot of therapists really want to help, but truthfully, there are not that many that are really qualified to help. Mass violence and trauma are different,” Martin said.
Many people have wanted to meet and talk with Martin because of her unique experience, having survived an infamous event, enduring the life-long trauma and guilt that follows, and helping found an amazing organization that has helped so many people.
She has worked with the FBI and law enforcement, creating training videos and talking about how to properly respond to a mass violence event. She was invited to the White House to meet with Vice President Kamala Harris to discuss recovery and how to best support people recovering from severe trauma. She also testified at the Committee of Oversight and Accountability about the long term impacts of trauma on students in the classroom.
“Meeting with Vice President Harris and all those people was very cool and an amazing experience, but being able to connect with another survivor was much cooler,” Martin said.
She has had the pleasure of talking with several survivors, their families, or families of victims. Connie Sanders, daughter of Mr. Sanders who was killed at Columbine, was the first family member she talked to, 14 years after the shooting. She has also met with those who have dealt with other mass violence events. She met with Joseph and Mona Samaha, the parents of Reema Samaha. Reema was an 18-year-old freshman during the Virginia Tech shooting in 2007.
“We were all on a panel together. Mona turned to me and said, ‘You’re a hero,’ and I just burst into tears – in the middle of the panel, on a stage with 100 other people. I just sobbed because I received validation from someone that I thought suffered more than me,” she said.
Martin also became friends with Jeremy Richman, the father of Avielle Richman, a 6-year-old girl who was among the 26 people that were killed in the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in 2012. He was the first parent Martin ever connected with after her experience. He came out to Colorado to visit Martin and they became close. Richman took his life in 2019, but he helped her change the way she coped with her own trauma.
“He always asked me to talk with these other families whose children had survived Sandy Hook,” she said. “He asked me to remind them that trauma is not a competition, it is not about who suffered more. We all go through it and we all go through it in different ways. It’s not a competition.”
Martin knows that the trauma from her experience will never go away, it is not like a broken leg where after a while it’s all fixed; her trauma will be with her for the rest of her life. Martin has had opportunities to meet with many survivors and families, and they have really helped her understand the process.
“I say it gets better. I wouldn’t say it gets easier. Sometimes it is more difficult, but I have learned coping strategies that are healthy for me. These 25 years have given me time to figure everything out. It will eventually get better.”