Boston Strong Read online

  “Whoever this boy is,” Armstrong said to Keeler, “I want to be able to tell his father that ‘Your son was never left alone.’”

  Captain Armstrong stayed with the bodies of Martin Richard and Lingzi Lu until they were finally removed at 2 a.m.

  “We stood there not so much as cops, or veterans, but as fathers,” Armstrong later told the Boston Herald. “Every one of us there that day thought but for the Grace of God that could be my child coming in to watch the marathon on a beautiful day.”35

  Like other police officers from all over the Commonwealth, Sean Collier was doing what he could to support his fellow cops while they worked frantically to restore order and find out who was responsible for the deadly attack on Boston.

  The twenty-six-year-old officer was manning the phones at dispatch for the MIT Police Department. MIT’s territory had expanded on this night to include all of Cambridge, as the city cops were assisting the BPD in its investigation on Boylston Street. Collier had always wanted to be a cop; he always wanted to help people. His mother thought he’d make for a great police officer and an even better priest. Collier was the kid who stood up to the bullies in his neighborhood and school when others wouldn’t.

  “He talked about becoming a police officer his whole life, even when he was little and still hugging his Care Bears,” His mother, Kelley Rogers, remembers. “He always just jumped right in.”

  He had jumped right in on this day. Although he wasn’t on the front lines of the investigation or joining the hunt for suspects, Collier felt that he was still doing important work. Someone had to respond to the other emergency calls coming into the station on April 15.

  Collier had been dreading a day like this since 9/11. He was a sophomore in high school during that time, and his older sister, Nicole, was having difficulty coping with the tragedy.

  “Sean was my savior,” Nicole Collier Lynch says. “I slept in his room for a few months after it happened. I slept on a chair. My room was in the basement, and I was too scared to sleep alone. I don’t deal well with that stuff.”

  Sean Collier could deal with it. He’d already overcome a great deal at that point. Another sister, Krystal, had died from a lung infection when she was just three days old. Sean was born a year later in 1986, and he immediately filled the void in his mother’s aching heart. His parents were still married at the time, but their union wouldn’t last much longer. Sean was just four years old when his parents divorced. His father, Allen Collier, moved to New Hampshire and saw his children every other weekend, but there was always a sense of instability as Sean’s dad bounced from marriage to marriage. However, the elder Collier did infuse in Sean and his younger brother, Andy, a love for racing. Dad would take the boys to Queen City Speedway in Manchester, New Hampshire, to race foot-long slot cars, which are a little bigger than a traditional soap box derby car. The Collier brothers enjoyed it so much that they eventually got part-time jobs at the track. They used the money they saved to buy go-karts, which they raced around an eighth mile asphalt track in Ware, New Hampshire. Sean was always a big kid but had avoided contact sports like football in high school because he preferred zipping around the track. He had the racing bug, but his brother’s was even bigger. Andy Collier now works for NASCAR.

  Sean was a concert nut, too, the rock band Linkin Park being his favorite when he was younger. His musical taste changed after high school and college, when Sean’s appreciation drifted toward country acts like Jason Aldean. But he never wavered in his commitment to becoming a cop or his commitment to helping those in need. While in college at Salem State University, just north of Boston, Collier became an active donor to the Jimmy Fund, a charity organization more than half a century old that raises money for pediatric cancer patients at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. The Jimmy Fund had been made popular by Red Sox legend Ted Williams, and the team’s connection to it remains strong today. Each year WEEI radio, a local sports talk station, holds a radio-thon to raise money for the Jimmy Fund, and on that program Sean heard the first-hand stories from young cancer patients about their struggles and their triumphs. He was working part-time with his sister at Harvard Vanguard, where their mother worked as a nurse and health administrator. Collier earned little money, yet he made regular donations to the Jimmy Fund from his checking account and would continue to do so regularly.

  After graduating from Salem State with a degree in criminal justice in 2009, Sean found work as a clerk with the Somerville, Massachusetts, police department. Collier was the department’s IT guy — a civilian. Still, he saw it as a foot in the door and a step in the right direction. Sean’s combination of eagerness and intelligence drew praise from his bosses at Somerville PD, who sponsored him for acceptance into the MBTA Transit Police Academy. Collier would still have to pay his own way, and his initiation into the academy would be a point of humor and embarrassment for years to come.

  At the academy, cadets were ordered to sew their names into their caps and to have all their grooming gear kept in a shaving case. Sean rushed out to CVS and purchased what he thought was the right accessory and reported for duty.

  “Collier!” the instructor barked. “You mean to tell me that you stole your sister’s makeup case?”

  “No sir, no,” he replied, blushing.

  He had mistaken a makeup kit for a shaving case. For this, he was ordered to skip around the gym like a girl a dozen or so times.

  Like most cadets, Collier was strapped for cash while going through the academy. Normally a giving person, Sean now needed to rely on the kindness of others, and he sought help from his large, blended family. By now, his mother, Kelley, had remarried. Her new husband, an attorney named Joe Rogers, had brought his two children, Rob and Jenn, to live with them in their large Wilmington home. That made for a household of six kids, and they all grew very close.

  “When he was in the academy, he used to call me and my husband Brendon and say, ‘Hey can I borrow twenty bucks to put gas in my car? Don’t tell Mom though, please don’t tell Mom that I keep asking you for money,’” sister Nicole says. “It was every week, and Brendon would say, ‘I will throw a couple hundred in.’” Nicole would kid Sean and remind him that the loans would be coming out of his nieces’ college funds.

  “He paid us back within days every time.”

  Upon his graduation from the Transit Police Academy, Sean was asked by his mother if there was any way for him to avoid getting his head shaved with the rest of the cadets. Her reason: Sean’s sister was getting married, and mom did not want his head shaved for the wedding pictures. The dutiful son asked his instructors for special dispensation, but was denied.

  Sean Collier graduated from the academy in 2010 with the highest academic score in his class. While there he also befriended another cadet, Richard “Dic” Donohue. The two spoke often about the challenges of the academy and felt truly excited about their opportunities to help people. Dic Donohue stayed with the transit police, while Collier was offered a job at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Taking the MIT police job was not an easy decision. Collier had been working details in the town of Lincoln, about twenty miles west of Boston, and had applied for a full-time position with its police department. When Lincoln’s police chief was slow to present an offer, Collier accepted a job with MIT’s patrol division, which is responsible for the safety of the school’s students and staff members over a 168-acre area in the city of Cambridge. Lincoln’s offer came immediately after, and Collier debated whether to take it since it was a municipality, as opposed to an institution. Sean decided that keeping his word meant more to him than anything else, so he called the police chief in Lincoln and gave him the news. The chief knew that he was losing a good officer and asked Collier if he liked that fact that he was now considered part of a “campus club.”

  “No,” Collier admitted. “But this is the job that I’ve accepted.”

  Sean took to the MIT job with relish, and his mom was happy, too.

  “I thoug
ht by working on a college campus, he’d be safe,” his mother says.

  During his first week on the job, Collier told his family that someone had pulled a knife on him during a traffic stop. MIT may house many of the world’s great minds, but it’s also located in the middle of an urban area where drugs and violence are commonplace. It was a sobering realization for Collier’s mom.

  “Oh, crap, this is not what I thought it was,” she thought at the time.

  Collier found an apartment on Curtis Street in Somerville, which he shared with five roommates. He was your typical bachelor, which meant that he ate most of his meals out of a take-out container and kept his room in a disheveled state. When his sheets had been on his bed for too long, laundry was out of the question. Sean simply ran over the sheets with a vacuum until they were clean again — at least in his mind. He grew particularly proud of his job and his campus. He enjoyed showing his family around MIT and where he usually parked his police car, which was in the middle of the courtyard.

  “I like parking here because I like talking to people,” he beamed. The one part of the job he detested was casting off some of the local homeless people for vagrancy. Collier understood that it was his job to get them off campus, but he also didn’t want them to freeze to death during the unforgiving New England winters. During one particularly cold winter day, Collier was asked to remove a homeless man from sleeping on a campus grate, but he refused. The man was soaking wet, and Sean knew that he wouldn’t survive much longer outside. Instead, Collier sneaked the homeless man into the basement of the MIT library, got him some dry clothes, and allowed him to stay there until the snow squalls passed by. The two men became friends after that.

  In 2013, during the winter storm dubbed Nemo, Collier responded to a call from an MIT graduate student and his wife about their newborn daughter, Sophia. The baby had just arrived home from the hospital and she was not breathing. Collier was the first responder to the scene. He cleared space in the hallway and the baby’s room so that paramedics could perform their duties swiftly. The baby was treated for dehydration and recovered after a two-day hospital stay. When the parents returned home, they received an email from Collier that read, “My name is Sean Collier. I was the first responding officer to your apartment where your child (I believe her name was Sophia, although I’m not positive with all the chaos) was having difficulty breathing. I wanted to follow up and find out how Sophia is doing?”36

  The email came as a surprise to the couple. Sophia’s parents were amazed by the officer’s engagement with the community.

  Still, he felt he could do more. The shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School had a profound effect on Sean, who posted a note on Facebook saying that he wished he had been a first responder in the hope that he could have done something to stop gunman Adam Lanza.

  Military service was also an option Collier explored. He asked his sister Jennifer if she believed their mom would “freak out” if he joined the National Guard.

  “Yeah, I probably will too,” replied his protective older sister. “Why would you do that?”

  “I like my job, but I feel that I’m just not doing enough at MIT,” Collier responded. “It could be a good supplement for my work.”

  Sean visited with a National Guard recruiter just a couple of months before the Boston Marathon. Around this time, he received the news he had been waiting for. There was an opening at the Somerville Police Department, and the chief wanted him for the job. This opportunity was too good to refuse. Collier told MIT that he would be moving on, and all wished him well. He would start his new job in June.

  On Monday, April 15, Sean Collier worked his normal 3–11 shift, then continued on through the night as law enforcement everywhere remained on alert and on the hunt for those responsible for the bombings at the finish line.

  [14]

  A FAMILY’S ANGUISH

  Bill Richard was dying inside. His wife, Denise, was in surgery at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center having her injured eye stabilized; his daughter, Jane, was being operated on at Boston Children’s Hospital a short distance away on Longwood Avenue; and his son Martin was still out there on the cold street. Jane had suffered burns over much of her body. Her hair was singed to the scalp, and — like her father — she had endured a perforated eardrum.

  Bill knew his son was dead, but the official word came from Boston Police Sergeant Billy Doogan, a grizzled veteran in charge of the BPD’s Cold Case Squad. He had dealt with hundreds of victims in the past and was no stranger to the delicate balance one must use when dealing with those whose grief is immeasurable. He approached Bill Richard in the hospital hallway. Richard was still in shock, his clothes charred and stained with the sad detritus of the marathon attacks. And his hearing was almost non-existent — he had lost all hearing in one ear and had just thirty percent in the other.

  “Mr. Richard. I’m sorry,” Doogan started.

  “What?” Richard shouted.

  The cop raised his voice.

  “Mr. Richard, I’m very sorry,” the detective continued.

  “What?” Richard repeated.

  It was an agonizing exchange as the cop tried desperately to inform Bill Richard that his eight-year-old boy was dead. The father finally heard enough of the officer’s words and saw enough in his eyes to understand fully that his boy was gone.

  He screamed in agony. It was a pain Doogan had never personally felt, but knew all too well. The two men embraced as Richard nearly collapsed in grief.

  Bill’s friend Larry Marchese was monitoring Facebook to check on his friends who had been in the city that day. By early evening, Larry believed he had accounted for everyone he thought had attended the marathon — everyone except for Bill Richard.

  “Aw, shit,” Larry mumbled to himself as he dialed Bill’s cell phone. The call went directly to voice mail. He texted a couple times but again got no response.

  Finally the phone rang. It was Bill Richard, and his voice was cracking.

  “We lost Martin,” he told Marchese.

  Larry was confused and tried to put his friend at ease. “He’ll show up. Don’t worry, we’ll find him.”

  Bill asked his friend to speak up, and Larry repeated his hopeful words.

  “No,” Bill told him. “He’s dead.”

  Marchese was standing by the window in his office and fell back in his chair, his eyes welling up with tears. He could see the boy’s gap-toothed smile in his mind’s eye. He could hear Martin’s thick Boston accent, one that neither Henry nor Jane had. Larry sat still in his chair.

  Such a funny and sweet little boy. How can he be dead?

  Larry and his wife, Nina, got a babysitter for their kids and raced into Boston, where many of the roads were shut down. He called a state trooper buddy who told him to drive to the state police barracks in South Boston and leave his car. The trooper then drove Larry and Nina to Beth Israel Hospital. The couple rode an elevator to the fifth floor, where they met Bill Richard in the hallway. Larry embraced his friend, and both began crying. He placed his hand on Bill’s head and felt the man’s burned hair coming off like flakes in his hand.

  “Bill’s pants were ripped,” Larry remembers. “He was a zombie.”

  “Martin is out in the street,” Bill cried. “My baby boy is out in the street!”

  The two men hugged even tighter.

  A specialist had been flown in to stabilize and repair Denise’s right eye. A six-millimeter ball bearing from Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s pressure cooker bomb had penetrated her eyeball and stuck to one of her optic muscles. In order to save her eye, the surgeon would eventually have to remove the sclera — the tissue that makes the eye white — the pupil, and the retina, and then rebuild it layer by layer.

  “It was like peeling an onion and then putting it back together again,” Marchese said.

  The FBI interviewed Denise Richard at 11 p.m. on the day of the bombings, after she had undergone five hours of surgery. Nina Marchese was there at her bedside.

&
nbsp; “I pray to God that you’ve forgotten everything,” Nina thought as she looked at her friend, whose head was covered in thick layers of bandages.

  Instead, Denise’s recall of the bombing was remarkable. She was able to describe the scene with pinpoint accuracy.

  She also knew that her beloved son Martin was dead.

  Over at Massachusetts General Hospital, there was confusion. Patty and Billy Campbell arrived at the hospital at around 2 a.m. with the hope of being reunited with their daughter, Krystle. Fifty-two-year old Karen Rand, Krystle’s friend and former colleague, had been brought to Mass General by ambulance hours earlier. The two friends had been standing close to each other when the first bomb exploded behind them. Rand suffered major damage to her left leg. While she was undergoing surgery, a handbag that had accompanied her to the hospital was searched in an attempt to determine her identity. A staff member found a driver’s license in the bag with the name Krystle Campbell. The staffer matched the bag to the patient, whom they now believed was Campbell. When her parents entered the hospital, doctors came over and explained that the artery in Krystle’s left leg had been severed. They could not save the leg, but they managed to repair the artery and save her life.

  The news was devastating, but at least their daughter was still alive.

  The Campbells were then escorted to an intensive care room to check on their daughter. Billy Campbell looked at the woman lying in bed who was missing her left leg, and his heart nearly stopped.

  “That’s not my daughter, that’s Karen!” he shouted. “Where is my daughter?”

  The nurses were as shocked as the parents were.

  An hour later, a Boston Police detective arrived at Mass General and showed Billy Campbell a photograph of his daughter taken at the medical tent. The father looked at the picture and collapsed.

  When Michelle L’Heureux awoke from surgery, she had no idea how long she had been unconscious. The first thing she did when she opened her eyes was look down to see if she had her left foot.