Author: heatherkopp

From the get-go, my son Noah was a skeptical kid who took little at face value. When I would tell him, “There’s nothing you could ever do to change how much I love you,” he would take it as a challenge. “What if I robbed a bank? What if I punched Nathan in the face? Would you still love me?” 

I assured him that I would.

Once he asked, “What if I ran away from home?” We’d recently read Where the Wild Things Are. 

I told him, “I would be so sad if you left. But I would still love you.”

I don’t remember if my son ever asked, “What if I killed someone?” At that age, Noah probably couldn’t conceive of murder. But if he had asked, I would have said yes, never dreaming that someday he would put me to the test. 

Someday came October 31, 2015. 

On that Halloween Day ten years ago, Noah went on a shooting spree in Colorado Springs, Colorado, killing the first three people he encountered before being killed by police in a shootout. His victims, none of whom he’d met before, were Andrew Myers, 35, Jennifer Vasquez, 42, and Christina Galella-Baccus, 34. Each was a parent of two. 

At the time, my son was 33 years old, and we lived in New York City, two time zones away. But in the critical days leading up to the shooting, my husband Dave and I were in almost daily contact with him, mainly through long texts because he kept hanging up on us. We knew by then that he was in a mental health crisis, undoubtedly triggered by his replacing prescription bipolar meds with large quantities of weed and a stimulant-like drug called modafinil, which he ordered from overseas. 

Naturally, we were extremely concerned, and over the course of the next two weeks, we begged him to get help and tried our best to intervene. We took certain steps; we failed to take others. But in light of the tragic outcome, we will always live with sorrow and regret that we didn’t do more, and sooner. 

Which leads directly to the mystery I want to address here: Why do even loving, well-intentioned parents so often miss the signs of a troubled young man’s slide toward violence? 

The reasons are myriad, of course. But I propose that no small part of the problem is hiding in a single word. 

Like many, whenever I heard about yet another soulless gunman murdering innocent people, I muttered to myself about monsters. You hear voices in the news and on social media doing the same. And who can blame us? What Noah did was, indeed, a monstrous thing. A heinous act that, in that moment, made Noah less than human.

But I’ve come to see that when we label perpetrators “monsters,” we unwittingly propagate a false picture of what a shooter looks like. And it’s the exceptionally rare mother (or other loved one) who is ever going to look at her troubled son and see an evil creature capable of senseless murder. 

I certainly couldn’t. 

Up until two weeks before the shooting, Noah was the antithesis of the guy you expect to go on a shooting rampage. Sure, he had struggled with alcohol before finally getting sober at 26. And at 27, he was diagnosed with bipolar disorder (which runs in our family the way cancer does in some others). But he had never been in trouble with the law, had never hurt anyone, or threatened to. He had a great work ethic, cared about his health and fitness, had plenty of friends, and—best of all—was extremely close with his family. 

It was enough to convince us and those around him, probably including his coworkers, that despite his marked, even disturbing changes in behavior and mood, he was not at risk of unleashing violence. 

In a painful bit of irony, it’s not a stretch to say that in the lead-up to the shooting, Noah’s general good-guy reputation was the most dangerous thing about him.

If only he’d looked more like a monster.

In their book, The Violence Project, Jillian Peterson and James Densley write about interviewing the childhood girlfriend of one of the worst mass murderers in history. They describe her as teary-eyed as she said, “When you label them monsters, you erase the ability for anyone to think someone in their life could do this.”

This is why I take risks to humanize Noah. As the mother of a shooter who failed to see danger coming, it’s a message I want to spread. Before any of these shooters ever picked up a gun, they looked like our fathers, our brothers, and our sons. 

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It’s suicide prevention month, and my heart tells me that it’s time to talk about Liz, a young woman I met through recovery back in 2012. I still remember the first time we met for coffee. I was taken by her apple green eyes. The wisdom beyond her years. Her quickness to be vulnerable with me. It didn’t take long for me to learn that in addition to alcoholism, she struggled with depression, anxiety, and Tourette’s (hers most often manifested by excessive throat clearing at inopportune times). 

A couple months later, I introduced Liz to my son Noah (a brief summary of his story is on my About page). When they began to date, the match made sense; Noah was also in recovery and had long struggled with depression and a complicated emotional life. The new couple often came by our house for dinner, and soon Liz came to feel like part of the family. 

We affectionately called her Lizzie-Pie. 

When after nine months Liz and Noah broke up, it was weirdly hard to tell. They continued right on walking their dogs together, visiting Costco on Saturdays, and coming by our house for dinner. A lot. Soon, Liz invited Noah to rent a room at her house. She used to say that she was so much more than Noah’s ex-girlfriend. They were each other’s “person.” 

On October 31, 2015, when Noah committed his unthinkable act and was killed by police, Liz was horrified and shattered. We all were. But in the months to come, she let it be known that she wanted the friendship with us to continue. And it wasn’t just about me; she adored Dave, who loved her like a daughter. 

Over the years, we remained close, and Liz and I talked and texted often. She came to stay a few days with us, first in New York City, and then in Portland. A couple times, the three of us met up at Liz’s family’s beach house in Manzanita, Oregon.  

Meanwhile, Liz’s life-long battle with depression seemed to intensify after Noah’s death. At one point, she sought inpatient help at a clinic in Arizona. Then last summer, she became so clinically depressed that she could hardly function. She told me she was running out of new medications to try. And while ECT therapy seemed to help, it caused severe jaw pain and scrambled her brain; after a treatment, she could hardly hold a conversation.  

When she began to sound hopeless, I became deeply concerned. More than once I cried to Dave, “I can’t lose Lizzy, too!”

I tried to keep in closer touch. When Liz was well enough to talk, she would warn me off of begging her to live or saying how much I needed her, which felt manipulative and guilt-inducing to her. So I tried to simply sit with her in her darkness, pain, and exhaustion. Sometimes, she wanted to hear stories about our dog, Mondo, as she was a huge dog lover. Always, she wanted to hear how I was. 

 When Liz’s aunt called me on August 29, 2023, to tell me that Lizzie had died of suicide, I was on our front porch sitting on our old chartreuse velvet couch. It was the same one I’d been sitting on when a friend delivered the news about Noah. Again, I let out a long, strange wail of protest. I kept picturing Liz during her last visit. She was standing on a chair in my kitchen, happily rearranging my cupboards (Liz had become a professional organizer), blonde ponytail bobbing. 

How could she be gone? 

She was only 35, with so much life ahead of her! 

At some point in my grief, I wondered what I might have done differently. What if I had shown up at her door in Texas and begged her to move to Portland? What if I had called her on that specific day?

By now, though, I knew better than to think I had that kind of power. In fact, it would be an insult to her memory to imagine that the fearsome foe she faced was actually such a small matter that some word or act from me could have saved her. 

Suicide is preventable, and many folks survive attempts and go on to lead rich lives. But it strikes me that some forms of mental illness are terminal in nature, and I think Liz’s was that kind. It wasn’t that she didn’t want her life. She absolutely loved life—right up to the moment her aching hands finally slipped from the monkey bars she’d been hanging from for so long. 

Last week marked the one-year-anniversary of her death. Dave I visited a beach near to where we used to go with Liz. As the ocean roared and my feet sunk in the sand, I kept thinking of all the obstacles Liz had faced in her brief life. I marveled at how brave she had been, including how she never went back to drinking, even at the end. 

I can only hope to have half of her courage.  

The album, as you’ll discover, was partly inspired by Noah, and the theme of that loss runs heavily through it. Taylor writes, “The songs on the record exist somewhere in the place between the death of my brother, and my need to carve out a bigger life. When my brother died in 2015 I realized I couldn’t waste any more time.  I saw with this intense clarity that I needed to focus on what’s real.  For me that’s music, and being in the woods, and human connection.”

Hi friends. I’m posting today because I just couldn’t not. My stepson Taylor is releasing his first ever album today. It’s titled “Found.” I am so proud of him, not just for his vocal and instrumental gifts but who he is as a person. Oh, you guys! He is just the best. kind. of. human.

Noah and Taylor were 10 and 11 respectively when Dave and I began to date. From the get-go, they recognized each other and became like two peas in a pod. Two brothers on the couch in equally stinky socks who spent hours playing video games and talking sports, in particular, the Trail Blazers.

As they got older, Noah and Taylor increasingly bonded around their shared love of music. In high school, Taylor played saxophone and Noah played bass. Eventually, they both played guitar and other instruments, too. They roomed together at college for a while. Now and then, they jammed together.

As they grew into young men, our sons separately dreamed of making music their vocation but couldn’t see a way to swing it while still paying the bills. In fact, a couple months before he died, Noah cut back his hours at work, hoping to jumpstart the music thing.

Then the worst happened, and you already know about that. Taylor was devastated, of course. But in the next few years, Taylor processed a lot of his sorrow through music—listening to it, and ultimately, writing it. Eventually, he decided he was done dodging his dream, done letting fear of failure get in the way of pursuing his love of music in a serious way. He quit his safe job and flourishing career at Columbia Sportswear to devote himself full-time to his music.

Taylor began playing at open-mics around Portland, developed an audience, booked gigs (on hold for now—thank you–not!–Covid-19), and recorded this album.

If you like American roots music, singer/songwriter-style, it will blow your mind. If that’s not your genre, it might still blow your mind. He’s that good. 

One song on the album is specifically about Noah. You’ll hear Taylor playing the saxophone, piano and guitar on this song. It’s incredibly haunting. With his permission, here are the lyrics.

You came to me
in a dream I had
And you said,
Brother, what have I done to us?

Man, I got lost
trying to find my mind.
And when I found it,
It had all turned to dust.

Well, I tried to so hard
To be a better man.
Please tell Mother
she did all she could do.

And if you could find it in your heart
To see the man I was
And not the demon
I left behind for you.

I’m so grateful that Taylor has found it in his heart to remember the man Noah really was, and is helping others do that, too. Thank you, Taylor.

Check out on “Found” on Spotify, Bandcamp, or wherever you listen to music online. It’s also available on vinyl! Click here for all your listening/buying options–and a link to his super cool music video.

(And listen, I promise I won’t wait so long to talk again. Big hugs and be well.)