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Picking Up The Pieces: Family Remembers Shooting Victim Micayla Medek

Grandma Marlene Kenobbe (L) comforts consoles Kailyn Vigil during Micayla Medek's funeral at the New Hope Baptist Church in Denver, Colorado.
Kevork Djansezian
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Grandma Marlene Kenobbe (L) comforts consoles Kailyn Vigil during Micayla Medek's funeral at the New Hope Baptist Church in Denver, Colorado.

The families of the Aurora, Colo. shooting victims continued to pick up the pieces today.

The Denver ABC affiliate reports that the family of Micayla Medek, 23, who was killed in the theater, held a funeral service today.

CBS Denver says that among the hundreds who filled the pews were Aurora Mayor Steve Hogan and Gov. John Hickenlooper. Her friends, the station reports, remembered her as an amateur photographer.

"She captured all the moments that made her life great and she has given us something we can always look back to," one of them told the station.

Cayla, as her friends called her, was young and joyful. She loved hot pink and Hello Kitty.

The Los Angeles Times ran a profile of Medek Sunday that's worth a read. She was saving for a trip to India and she was fiercely independent, trying to make her own way working as a Subway "sandwich artist" despite offers of help from her parents.

The Times also spoke to her father Greg Medek, a born-again Christian who found himself struggling with his faith after the incident.

The Times reported:

"On Friday, Medek saw himself teetering on the edge. A born-again Christian who has had his moments getting lost along the way, he found himself incredibly angry at the alleged shooter. He pushed people away, resisted hugs, shut down. He blamed himself, thought he had failed.

"Then he thought about his daughter, how she took a risk and let people love her and reaped the rewards, scores of friends who have been showing up at his house ever since her death. Medek started letting them hug him. He tried to let go.

"'I'm just a guy trying to make it, to trust in his Lord as best as he can,' Medek said. 'I lost a precious soul.'"

At the funeral, they handed out a picture of Medek, smiling. A quote she loved was printed below.

"We're all a little weird," it read. "And life's a little weird. And when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up in mutual weirdness and call it love."

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Eyder Peralta is NPR's East Africa correspondent based in Nairobi, Kenya.