It wasn’t until they knew they had saved her life that surgeons told Columbine survivor Anne Marie Hochhalter she came close to being the 14th victim. 

“She never wanted to be called a victim. She considered herself a survivor,“ said Sue Townsend, who considered Hochhalter a second daughter. After she lost her stepdaughter, Lauren, to the shooting, the Townsends and Hochhalter spent holidays and vacations together. 

Columbine touched people that way. 

Sunday, after nearly 26 years in a wheelchair, the dog and music-loving Hochhalter died of natural causes, according to Frank De Angelis, who was the principal at Columbine when the shootings happened and continued for years after that. 

“She was a pillar of strength for me and so many others. She was an inspiration and exemplified never giving up,“ De Angelis said in a statement. 

The 44-year-old was one of 23 people injured in the Columbine massacre, but her wounds were especially catastrophic. 

Twelve students and one teacher were killed, making it one of the worst school shootings at that time. 

At lunchtime on April 20, 1999, Hochhalter was shot in the back and chest by a semi-automatic Tech 9 as she ate with friends in the Columbine High School cafeteria. According to the FBI report, two students entered the school at 11:19 a.m. andstarted shooting and setting off explosives. They had researched and found that this was when the lunchroom was the most crowded.

By 11:35 a.m. thirteen were dead and by noon, the shooters had killed themselves in the upstairs library.

Hochhalter and her little brother, Nathan, who was a freshman at Columbine and was in a classroom when the bullets started flying, recently reignited their relationship, which “delighted her“ said Townsend. 

“We were working on rebuilding,“ Nathan Hochhalter said. “I was planning on working through that with her.” 

Hochhalter was a shy teenager and veered away from attention as the years post-Columbine ticked on. Her death came at a time when she felt emotionally strong enough to overcome her PTSD. Last year, she attended the 25th commemorative vigil. “I’ve truly been able to heal my soul since that awful day in 1999,“ she expressed in a Facebook post.

A year earlier, she wrote of her survivor’s guilt. “Why did I survive and so many others didn’t that horrific day?“ she wrote. “I think of that often, and I’ve tried to live the best life possible in honor of the 12 students and one teacher we lost 24 years ago.”

Anne Marie Hochhalter’s story

Hochhalter’s story is one of resilience born out of the sorrowful tragedy. 

The Tuesday after CHS celebrated prom 1999 was a perfect Spring day. Graduation was around the corner, seniors could taste freedom and students were wearing shorts. When the first loud booms rang out in the school cafeteria that day, Hochhalter thought kids were firing paintball guns.

Moments later when she felt a bullet pierce her back, she tried to run, but her legs wouldn’t move. 

A friend dragged her away, but she was hit again, this time in the lungs.

Once outside, she lay for 45 minutes bleeding and struggling to breathe. When a first responder found her, she was rushed to the hospital and underwent four hours of surgery which saved her life. 

Six months later, the unthinkable happened. 

Her mother, Carla, who had been growing increasingly mentally ill even before the Columbine massacre, walked into a pawn shop, asked to see a gun, and shot herself with it.

Healing

As more shootings increased in Colorado and across the country, Hochhalter was outspoken that killers’ names should not be written in news stories, a staunch believer in the No Notoriety movement. She also beat the drum for Supplemental Social Security Income payments for people with disabilities. 

In the past few years, her spirit was healing. On her Facebook profile, she made fun of her long last name.  “DOANT-try-tah PRUH-NOWNS-it,“ she wrote. 

On the social media platform, she expressed how she felt after she attended the 25th commemorative vigil. “It was like my heart has wanted to flood my mind with happiness instead of trauma.”

But her physical injuries were taking a toll. Doctors told her to prepare. “Basically, your body doesn’t survive something like that without it coming back to bite you in some way down the line,“ she wrote on April 20, 2023. “I haven’t taken these last 24 years of life on this earth for granted, because it’s 24 years I was seconds away from not having.”

No date for a memorial had been set as of the time of this writing.