JEFFERSON COUNTY, Colo. — As we mark 25 years since the tragedy at Columbine High School, Denver7 has shared stories of the beauty that came from that dark day.
One of those stories is of the elementary school math project that turned into a grassroots fundraising effort. Students in first to sixth grade at nearby Columbine Hills Elementary School collected an incredible 500,000 pennies that helped fund a new library at the high school.
Denver7 spoke with the teacher behind the original penny-collecting project, as well as two now-grown Columbine Hills students who were involved in the penny drive and Dawn Anna, the mother of Lauren Townsend who was involved in the library fundraising effort back in 1999.
Each of them told us that pennies are still a part of their lives, and serve as a reminder of that effort to help that spread across the community in the wake of a tragic event.
“I've picked up pennies off the ground [...] since 1999,” Steve Christiansen, a former fifth-grade teacher at Columbine Hills, told Denver7. “It always reminds me of the students that I had.”
One of those students was Vinny Sonderby, who said to this day he won’t leave a penny behind.
“I will almost get hit in traffic sometimes trying to pick up the penny in the crosswalk [or at] the grocery store,” he said. “Like, ‘There's one – gotta grab it!’”
“I will not go a place and leave a penny behind.”
Anna was a spokesperson for the H.O.P.E – Healing of People Everywhere – group, which was tasked with raising more than $3 million to build a new library at Columbine High School. Today, she speaks to groups nationwide and shares the story of those kids and their pennies as proof that no act of kindness is too small.
“My husband and I pick up pennies all the time,” she said. “And some people say, ‘Oh, don't pick it up unless it's heads up. It's not lucky unless it's heads up.’”
“Oh no, a penny is a penny is a penny and it's important,” she continued. “And we have jars of pennies at home – our pennies from heaven.”
To read more stories marking 25 years since Columbine, go here.
As we mark 25 years since the tragedy at Columbine, Denver7 is telling stories of the families impacted, preserving the memory of the lives lost, and sharing the lasting legacy of service and kindness fostered over the last quarter-century.
