As told by Lasamoa :)

Some tragic beginnings have very beautiful outcomes.

Cody was a first responder to the Aurora Theater Shooting of which I survived. It was a horrendous experience and even continuously through the trial we had each other.

After the shooting, people from everywhere continuously offered to meet up with me for coffee dates, dinner, lunch, and breakfast to check in on me and see how I was doing post shooting. The gestures were incredibly kind and I had no idea how healing they really were. However, no matter how many lunch dates I went on with people from all stages of my life I still felt alone. It truly felt that no matter the company, I struggled to find peace with this new life I had to pave.

I thought what might make it feel better was returning the same sense of community to someone else. During the preliminary hearing, it never truly occurred to me to open my eyes to the testimony of the police officers, who shared just as much trauma as I did on the early morning of July 20th. After attending the preliminary hearings, I wrote letters to a few police officers thanking them for their devotion to our safety.

I only knew of one police officer at all.

I sent a friend request, I sent a message, and I let Cody know that I was here to be a set of ears if he ever needed it. That I had a letter and a gift of appreciation to give him. He hadn't received any condolences any time prior to me reaching out to him.

I felt that as much as others would take me out on lunch dates that I could return the favor to someone else. I made the attempt and Cody flaked on me three different times!

I gave up and met him at the high school where he was still an SRO. There I dropped off his letter and gift and explained that I understood that meeting would probably be a massive leap for him emotionally; so I left it be. We eventually coordinated a lunch at Chipotle on Iliff and Chambers.

What was supposed to be an hour lunch turned into a four hour lunch, catching up, talking about my experience in the shooting, and his sweet childhood friend, Danae, who was killed in a car accident back in Montana- she was 18, just like Aj. He knew what a huge loss that early in life felt like and from there I felt he understood me differently than anyone else.

From that day on, we've been each other's go to person, pain in the ass, and each other's best friend.

The story started out so dark and so tragic, but since that day at Chipotle every day since has been the writing of the upmost beautiful and most unconventional love story ever told.

Thank you so much for your gift! We've lived together for so long that most of our registry will help us finally make our home everything we've wanted it to be! :) We cannot wait to see it and find its perfect place in our home.