Sitting on the couch in the living room of her Colorado home, a woman we’ll call Karen leafs through a small notebook as she gathers her thoughts. Her legs are curled up around her — her feet bare, toenails painted blue. She pauses on one page. At the top, she’s written the letters PTSD in all caps. The letters have been traced over and over again in ballpoint pen, leaving thick, dark creases in the paper. At the bottom is a doodle of flowers growing upward.

For most of the time that she and her husband have lived in their 100-year-old Craftsman house in a small mountain town, she never locked the front door. She would sometimes even leave it wide open when she was home. “I was always more afraid of a bear coming into the house than a human,” she jokes.

But that has changed. A reporter from the New York Times once knocked on her door, and she was terrified. If he can find me, anyone can, she thought. We should get more locks.

You have never heard of Karen, which is unusual: She helped save the lives of two victims of a mass shooting. Anyone else would likely have had her story recounted in newspapers, on Facebook feeds or cable news. Yet Karen has never spoken to a reporter before now. And although the shooter is locked up, she remains on high alert.

That’s because she’s the lead registered nurse at the Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs and a survivor of the deadly shooting and siege that took place there last November. Because of escalating harassment and violence against abortion providers, just revealing her name or where she grew up or went to school could put her at risk.

“Everyone I worked with that day, everyone who was there, was also a hero. They did things to save themselves, to save others — these stories are so remarkable,” she says. Yet even now, Karen struggles with her competing desires. “I don’t want to put my family at risk,” she says and then pauses — “I do not want to be silenced.”

A little after 11:30 a.m. on November 27, 2015, Samantha Wagner, Jennifer Markovsky, and a friend pulled into a parking spot in front of the Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood. The building, in the northern part of town, is setback from the main road at the foot of a steep hillside. What happened next has been pieced together here, using police search warrants, scanner recordings, legal documents, and eyewitness interviews.

As they came to a stop, Wagner noticed a tall, bearded man leaning over the back of the pickup truck parked next to them. As they were stepping out of the car, he raised a rifle to his shoulder. “You shouldn’t have come here today,” he said. Then he began firing.

Markovsky fell to the pavement — her wounds were fatal. Robert Lewis Dear Jr. — who has confessed to the shooting — shot Wagner in the upper arm. She and her friend jumped back in the car and sped toward a neighboring building housing medical offices as Dear continued to fire, hitting Wagner’s friend as he drove.

“The anti-abortion groups get a name and they will hound you until the end of your days."

Ke’Arre Stewart, an Iraq war veteran who was at the clinic with a friend, stepped outside, perhaps to make a phone call. He saw Dear shooting and went back to shout a warning to everyone inside. Then he stepped out again — he could’ve been trying to stop the shooter or to help a victim. Dear opened fire, killing Stewart. He then fired on another man who was waiting in his car to pick up some friends.

Karen was preparing for the day’s patients when she heard the loud bangs. Then a shout: “There’s an active shooter!” Before she had time to think, she ran out the back door and sprinted through the falling snow to the medical building across the street. She ran into an office there and told the workers to call 911 — she’d left her phone, her coat, everything but the scrubs she was wearing, at Planned Parenthood. She made a quick call to her husband to let him know that she was safe.

At the clinic, Dear shot through the large glass window of an employee-entrance door and entered, firing at computer monitors and through the walls as he went. The 15 staff members and 9 patients had already scattered to hide in exam rooms and offices. The health-center manager, who we will call Amber, ran to a room with four coworkers, closed the door, turned out the lights, silenced her phone, and got down on the floor.

Mandy Davis, a patient, was in a room with a staff member when the shooting started. They barricaded the door with a filing cabinet. Ammar Laskarwala, who had accompanied Davis to her appointment, locked himself in a bathroom. A bullet from Dear’s gun passed through the wall and hit his lower chest.

Mourners lining the street outside the church before the funeral service of slain officer Garrett Swasey.

The doctor on duty, who asked not to be identified, immediately thought of the other physicians who had been murdered by anti-abortion activists. “They want to shoot the doctor,” he says. “I thought that was my last day.”

As officers arrived, they talked to one another on the police radio, trying to make sense of the scene. “We’re pinned down, we’re getting active gunfire” crackled over the radio. One officer called for help evacuating people from the medical building. About three minutes later, a shriek pierced the scanner. Dear had wounded one officer after another and killed Garrett Swasey, an officer with the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs police department.

Inside the clinic, Amber began texting with the staff and with the leadership of Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains in Denver. They got her in contact with an officer on the scene. Amber began conveying everything the police were learning to other staff members in the building. Planned Parenthood had also installed a security system that assisted local law enforcement as they worked to apprehend the shooter. “There is no question in my mind that a lot of lives were saved because of this,” says John Suthers, the mayor of Colorado Springs.

Meanwhile, Wagner and her friend had both found their way to the building where Karen had just hung up the phone. “The whole situation was overwhelming,” Karen says. “I centered myself and said, Pull yourself together. You need to help people, and you need to help them right now.” She and others provided basic medical assistance and calmed the wounded, moving them to a safer part of the building.

After about an hour, the SWAT team evacuated Wagner and her friend. Karen stayed down on the floor and talked quietly with the strangers around her in the medial office building. "You could hear gunshots," Karen says. "No one knew what was going on, where he was, if we were safe."

Inside the clinic, Dear settled in one area of the facility. Police began evacuating some staff and patients — at one point crashing an armored vehicle through the building. When Amber and her coworkers were evacuated, they emerged into the cold, dark evening to find a blanket of snow on the ground, flashing police lights, and a crowd of cordoned-off television crews.

After about five hours, officers decided to move just as Dear decided to surrender. The standoff had come to an end. Dear had killed three people and wounded nine, five of whom were police officers.

Dear was not from Colorado Springs and had not protested at the clinic. But after he surrendered, he said, "No more baby parts!" and in court, he reportedly called himself "a warrior for the babies." Dear has been found mentally incompetent and unfit to stand trial and is in a secure mental health facility. The district attorney declined to comment on the case, citing the judge’s gag order. Dear’s public defender did not return a call requesting comment.

A police fence surrounding the site last December.

With the exception of the most extreme among them, anti-abortion activists have disavowed Dear’s violence. Gloria Hoyt, who leads the pro-life ministry at St. Dominic Catholic church, which has demonstrated near the clinic in Colorado Springs, says her group believes in peace and prayer. “I was very saddened by the deaths,” she says.

But Vicki Cowart, CEO of Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains, has come to expect threats. She is one of the few of the group’s staff members who uses her name publicly, and she pays a price. “The Antis get a name and they will hound you until the end of your days,” she says. “They come to my house.” She owns a bulletproof vest.

There have been bombings, arson, and even murder of abortion providers in the past. Things only got worse last year when anti-abortion activist David Daleiden released heavily edited videos purporting to show Planned Parenthood staff arranging for the sale of fetal tissue for profit, which would be illegal. Multiple investigations have since exonerated Planned Parenthood. Still, hundreds of protesters assembled near the Colorado Springs building after the videos’ release.

According to the National Abortion Federation, which has been tracking violence against abortion clinics since the 1970s, 2015 was an unparalleled year, with rises in stalking, burglary, arson, vandalism, and more. Clinics reported 25,839 instances of hate e-mail and internet harassment — up from 91 in 2014. The FBI warned of possible attacks against clinics last September. “It was going to happen somewhere,” says

a nurse practitioner at the Colorado Springs clinic, who we will call Deborah. “There is so much animus, so much misunderstanding, so much energy in the anti-choice movement. It seems to build and build and feed on itself.”

Colorado Springs attorney Kirk McCormick argues that given the threats, Planned Parenthood could have been more prepared. He is suing the organization on behalf of several victims and their relatives. Whitney Phillips, a spokesperson for Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains, said the group couldn’t comment on any ongoing litigation.

"We are going to be there for this community because they need us."

For survivors, the need to remain anonymous can be painful. In January, Mayor Suthers gave awards to six people who helped others during the shooting. Planned Parenthood workers were excluded for safety reasons. Karen says she found out about the ceremony on the radio and later saw it reported on local TV. “I was just really hurt,”she says. “It’s not like I want an award, but it was shocking to see all these people I was with for eight hours get these awards.”

Cowart is frustrated that these women can’t speak freely about their experiences like some other survivors of mass shootings. “They were heroes,” she says. “They saved lives, and we will never tell those stories. We have been really careful about not putting any names out because we don’t want to put anyone in the crosshairs."

Because the clinic workers must hide their identities, Deborah and Karen say the other side, the people they call the Antis, have the louder megaphone. Karen thinks that may be one of the reasons the organization is easily stigmatized. “I want people to know I am a nice, normal person, and that can go hand in hand with being an abortion provider,” she says. “So many times, patients come in and say ‘Everyone was so nice.’ Obviously, they were expecting worse, for people to judge them or treat them like cattle.”

The nurses say they must bow their heads, suffer the insults, and quietly go about their work. It’s not only the threats — there’s also a sense that the work they do is not really theirs to discuss. “The work in reproductive health and abortion is so deeply meaningful, takes so much commitment and compassion and skill, yet you can’t talk about it,” Deborah says. “You can never tell the specifics about someone who comes to Planned Parenthood for care. It wouldn’t be appropriate, but part of me feels like it needs to be told."

A protest at the clinic in August 2015, prior to the attack.

Last May, Planned Parenthood held an event in the clinic’s parking lot to celebrate its complete reopening. Security guards dressed in black were off to the side of the podium. Protesters held signs near the road. Karen, her husband, and coworkers sat on chairs on the asphalt. Her young son fell asleep on her lap. “It was super intense for me, and I was shaking,” she says. She was so touched by her son, upset by the scene, inspired by the speakers — “like all of these emotions all at the same time” — that she actually began to laugh.

The Colorado Springs clinic is busy these days. Although a few workers have left, among many others there is a powerful rededication to their purpose. “We have come through this and are stronger,” says Amber, the manager. “We are going to be there for this community because they need us.”

Yet the visceral fear can flood back without warning. “I had a big old shooter nightmare last week,” Karen told me nearly seven months after the shoot- ing. And when a gunman opened fire in a nightclub in Orlando, Florida, killing 49 people, it all came rushing back. Karen took her son out to an arcade, hoping for a fun diversion. The crowds triggered a panic attack and she had to leave.

Still, it has never occurred to her to quit her job or to find a different line of work. “Looking into the eyes of our patients and just seeing that there is a whole universe behind their eyes, a whole other world, we need to be here, you know,” she says, tearing up again. “We need to be here.”

This article was originally published as "The Heroes You Can’t Hear About" in the November 2016 issue of Cosmopolitan. Click here to subscribe to the digital edition.

