Over the years, I’ve had opportunities to tell my story. When I do, people often ask what happened afterward—what became of everyone once the farm was gone. Do I still keep in touch with anyone in West Virginia? Have I ever gone back? They’re fair questions. So many lives intersected there, and then, suddenly, the story moved on. It seemed right to offer some closure—to let the rest of those stories be told, too.
Oreo and Blackjack lived out full, content lives on John and Barb’s ranch. They became fixtures there and just as stubborn and affectionate as they had always been.
Smokey stayed with the farm when it was sold. She became part of the land again, roaming the hills the way she always had, cared for by the new owners. In a way, it felt right. She belonged to that place more than to any one person.
John and Barb no longer raise alpacas, but they still live on their ranch. These days, they’re enjoying life as grandparents, their days marked by a quieter joy than the one we once shared out in the pastures.
The remaining alpacas were sold to a farm in Virginia. Montana was the last to go. Before he was loaded onto the trailer, I wrapped my arms around his neck. He sniffed the top of my head—gentle, familiar, completely unbothered. Then he walked away, ready to go to his new home.
Maxwell was adopted by the family who cared for him after the shooting. He stayed where he was known and loved.
Charley, my mom’s dog, and Buffy stayed with me. I fulfilled my mom’s last request—to take care of Charley. He passed away in December 2012. Buffy followed in November 2014. Losing them hurt, but by then I had learned something important: loving well always comes with an ending.
South Ridge Church eventually moved from the senior center into a permanent building on Fairmont Avenue. Their first service there was held on May 26, 2013. Whenever I’m in Fairmont on a weekend, I make a point to stop in and visit with old friends.
I’ve stayed in touch with members of my parents’ small group over the years. Some have passed away. Others moved to different states. We still reconnect when I’m back in town, and sometimes through a message or comment online. When we visit, we stay with John and Cathy.
Patrick Wilson, who served as Marion County Prosecuting Attorney during the trial, was appointed Circuit Judge for the Sixteenth Judicial Circuit in Marion County on December 11, 2015. He was elected to the position in 2016 and re-elected in 2024.
My Pepaw’s mind stayed sharp, but his body eventually gave out. He passed away on March 11, 2008. Memaw followed a few years later, on November 11, 2012. Neither of them was ever quite the same after the shooting.
My brother Chris lives in Lincoln, Nebraska, where he runs his own sports training facility—Slatt Performance. He trains athletes from junior high all the way to the professional level. Mom and Dad would be so proud of what he’s built.
The Eagles still live at the end of the road.
And me?
After selling the farm, I finished the spring semester at Fairmont State. When I tried to schedule classes for the fall, I discovered the courses I needed weren’t being offered. I wanted to finish college that year, but it wasn’t possible. Three classes would take another year and a half.
With the farm no longer in my life—and with the PTSD I was struggling to understand—I didn’t think staying in the area was a good idea. For my mental health, I decided to leave West Virginia.
I moved to Pittsburgh and earned a degree in Multimedia Design, which is a fancy way of saying web design. After that, I returned to Lorain County, Ohio, where I’d grown up, and went to work for a design firm. Life became quieter. More structured.
While I lived in Pittsburgh, I thought of it as a kind of timeout. I had no connection to the city—no history, no memories. I could just live without dealing with anything. For a while, that was enough. The timeout ended when I moved back to Lorain County.
I didn’t expect being surrounded by familiar places to have much impact, but it did. Old memories stirred things I’d ignored for years. It began affecting my work and my relationships. Eventually, I confronted what I’d been carrying.
I found a Christian counselor who not only diagnosed the post-traumatic stress disorder I was living with, but helped me work through it—both psychologically and biblically. For the first time, the past loosened its grip.
I learned that PTSD is what happens when the nervous system doesn’t feel safe enough to stand down after trauma. The hyperarousal and emotional numbing I experienced weren’t signs of weakness. They were signs that my body had been doing its job too well, for too long. Trauma-informed counseling helped me understand that the threat was over and taught my nervous system how to move out of the fight-or-flight state it had been stuck in.
For a long time, I thought something in me was broken—that if my faith were stronger, my body would have learned how to rest. I believed God’s promises. I trusted Him. And yet my chest stayed tight, my sleep stayed shallow, and part of me remained on watch. Over time, I came to understand this wasn’t a spiritual failure, but a human one—a body doing exactly what it had been created to do.
My nervous system learned survival during a season when survival was necessary, and it didn’t know how to stand down once the danger passed. Faith carried my soul through the trauma, but my body was slower to catch up. Healing wasn’t about believing harder; it was about allowing God to gently teach my body what my heart already knew—that I was no longer in danger, and that it was finally safe to rest.
With that understanding, I was finally able to move forward—to return to what Duran Duran’s song calls “the ordinary world.”
I was living in south Lorain when a group from a church plant knocked on my door. They were praying with neighbors. One of them was an attractive young woman who would later become my wife. That’s why I like to say my wife showed up on my doorstep.
We have two children now. They keep us busy in all the ways that matter.
My life today looks nothing like my life on the farm. And yet, it’s shaped by it in ways I’ll always carry.
Every once in a while, I pass an alpaca farm and feel a familiar pull. Most days, the farm feels like a dream—vivid, detailed, and distant. But in the fall, when the wind moves just right through bare branches and fallen leaves, I close my eyes and I’m there again.
And I remember.