‘A strong, independent young woman’: Family and friends remember Boulder shooting victim Rikki Olds
BOULDER, Colo. — A few days before the King Soopers on Table Mesa Drive in Boulder became the scene of a tragic attack, Stacey Potter visited the grocery store with her youngest son.
It was just before his nap time, and “he was being super rambunctious,” she said. “He was pulling all the mustards off the shelves.”
A young store manager approached Potter’s son, not to ask him to calm down or to restock the shelves, but to offer him a free balloon.
“She tied it to his wrist,” Potter recalled. “She was so gentle and good with him, but she was just so full of energy, bouncing around, happy.”
That store manager was 25-year-old Rikki Olds.
Olds died Monday, March 22 when a gunman entered the store and opened fire, killing 10 people.
Related Stories
In the wake of Olds’ death, those who knew her best described her as independent, energetic, and vibrant. Carlee Lough, Olds’ friend and coworker, said she could always turn to her friend, known for dancing along to the store’s music, for a pick-me-up.
Lough finished her shift at King Soopers on March 22 and went home. Later in the day, Lough would discover that three of her coworkers — Olds, Denny Stong and Teri Leiker — were among the victims in the shooting.
“Rikki was kind of the light of our family,” Bob Olds, Rikki’s uncle, said during a March 24 press conference. “There’s a hole. There’s a hole in our family that won’t be filled. You can try to fill it with memories. It’s tough.”
Bob Olds never knew what color hair his niece would come home with, or if she was going to have a new tattoo. “But that was Rikki,” he said, “and Rikki lived life on Rikki’s terms. Not anybody else’s terms. And her life was cut short, unfortunately, by the events of the other day.”
A graduate of Centaurus High School in Lafayette, Colorado, Olds worked her way up to become a store manager at King Soopers. Her uncle described her as a “strong, independent young woman.”
“She had dreams. She had ambitions,” he said. “She was working her way up the ladder at King Soopers. And now she can’t. She can’t do those things.”
Outside the grocery store, hundreds of people visited a memorial to pay their respects to the victims in the days after the shooting. Some left flowers, others left signs and crosses. One survivor of the shooting returned to the scene to play his cello.
Potter brought her three children, including her youngest son, to the memorial on Wednesday.
“You see these people once a week, twice a week,” Potter said of the King Soopers workers. “And they become part of your extended family; they become part of your community.”
For Logan Hudson, Olds was something more: a mentor.
“I have really fond memories of Rikki,” Hudson said. “She always used to braid my hair.”
Hudson visited the memorial with her mother and sister.
“When we say goodbye, it’s not really goodbye,” Hudson said. “It’s more, ‘We will see them again.’ She is with us always.”