R.I.P Rachel Joy Scott

Blog dedicated to Rachel Joy Scott (August 5, 1981 – April 20, 1999) who was an American student and the first murder victim of the Columbine High School massacre, which claimed the lives of 12 students and a teacher, as well as both of the shooters. She has since been the subject of several books and is the inspiration for Rachel's Challenge, a nationwide school outreach program for the prevention of teen violence, based on her life and writings.

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(April 24th, 1999)

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Rachel Scott as Valerie in her last school play ‘The Smoke in the Room’ (April 1999)

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Rachel Scott’s car 

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Rachel Scott, Nick Baumgart and a friend messing around during drama club.

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Rachel Joy Scott (August 5th, 1981 ~ April 20th, 1999)

Rachel Scott was a vibrant and straight-forward individual. She wasn’t afraid to stand up for what she believed in, no matter what. She played the lead in a student-written school play, “The Smoke in the Room,” and was writing a play for her senior year. She also liked photography and was active in the Celebration Christian Fellowship church. She was “made for the camera,” according to her father, Darrell, and was an aspiring writer and actress. “There’s nothing I can add or take away from what she gave us,” her mom, Beth, said. “In those short 17 years, it was complete.”

She quit smoking about a week or two before the massacre (at the request of friend Nick Baumgart) who later took her to the prom. If she hadn’t quit, it’s quite possible she would’ve been at "Smoker’s Pit” during lunch instead of in the line of fire. As it was, she was eating lunch on the grass with friend, Richard Castaldo, when the shooters opened fire on the west entrance near where she was seated on the grass. According to witnesses, she was hit and fell to the ground where, moments later, one of the shooters came down the hill and shot her at point-blank range when she tried to get up. She died from gunshot wounds to the head, chest, arm and leg, and was one of the first victims in what would soon become one of the nation’s most deadly mass shootings.

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Rachel Scott’s poem about depression.

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The 13 Tears Drawing

About a month after Rachel Scott’s funeral, her father received a phone call from a stranger named Frank Amedia who told him about a dream he had. As Darrell recalled it, “He dreamed about her eyes and a flow of tears that were watering something that he couldn’t quite see in the dream. He was adamant about the eyes and tears and wanted to know if that meant anything to me…He told me that the dream had haunted him for days, and he knew there was a reason for it.”

Her father had no idea what the dream could mean. Several days later he picked up Rachel’s backpack from the sheriff’s office. Inside were two journals, one with a bullet hole through it. He turned to the last page of her most recent diary and was dumbfounded to see a drawing of her eyes with a stream of thirteen tears watering a rose. The tears appeared to turn into drops of blood as they touched the rose. The number of tears matched the number of victims at Columbine. Rachel showed the drawing to Sue Carruthers, her teacher, before walking outside to have lunch. It practically took his breath away to see in Rachel’s final diary exactly what the stranger had described to him a week earlier. 

Looking in previous diaries, her parents discovered that same rose drawn a year before Rachel’s death. The earlier drawing simply showed the rose with the blood like drops, not her eyes or the clear tears, and it showed the rose growing up out of a columbine plant, the state flower from which Columbine High School got its name.

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Rachel Scott and Dylan Klebold

From time to time I have been asked if Dylan Klebold and Rachel Scott had ever met or had a conversation. Although they were not friends they did hang out in similar atmospheres. They were both active in the drama club and school plays and had mutual acquaintances like Brooks Brown, Devon Adams, Nick Baumgart, etc. In Rachel’s Tears, Rachel’s mother Beth Nimmo talks about a Columbine talent show in 1998 where Rachel was performing and Dylan saves the day:

Rachel’s decision to perform a Christian mime to the Ray Boltz song “Watch the Lamb” in the annual school talent show clearly demonstrates her commitment to God. Many of the students saw the talent show as an opportunity to do something fun or silly, but Rachel saw it as a wonderful opportunity to perform mimes to Christian songs with a real message.

I think she was definitely going against the grain in doing this, and there were always a few mockers in the crowd. But she was not worried about criticism or ridicule. I know that she was walking a line that was not popular, and it cost her in being ridiculed by certain groups of kids. She knew she would take some heat for being that up front about her commitment, but she was willing to pay the cost.

In Rachel’s case, it wasn’t a sudden outburst of courage that allowed her to perform the explicitly Christian mime and risk the ridicule of her friends. Instead, it was a consistent approach to putting her happiness last on her list of priorities. […]

Rachel performed another mime in the 1998 talent show. As Rachel started her performance, the audiotape sound became very garbled, and the music stopped. The audience started looking around to see what was wrong. Meanwhile on stage, Rachel kept right on with her mime. It was probably at least two minutes before the tape was fixed and the music came back on. Since Rachel had been keeping the song going in her head, when the tape restarted, she was in perfect step. She was miming the Ray Boltz song “The Hammer.” It is about a Roman soldier who witnesses Jesus’ crucifixion and asks the question, “Who would nail this innocent man on a cross?” In the song, he comes to realize it was his own sin and the sins of the world that crucified Jesus. Ironically Dylan Klebold was in the sound booth that night, and he was the one who eventually fixed the audiotape. Once again, through Rachel, the gospel had gone forth even to her killer.

As Rachel left the stage, the audience applauded her for her bravery in not abandoning her performance. Darrell had been working late but was trying to get there in time to see Rachel’s part. He did not make it until she was walking off the stage. His timing was perfect. Rachel was crying and felt totally humiliated as she walked past the curtains, and who was standing there but her father? Dana and I rushed out of the auditorium to be with her backstage. We all comforted her, and only a few minutes later she stopped crying and resolved, “Well, next time I will make sure that my tape won’t fail me. I will be better prepared. I have learned a hard lesson but one I will never forget.” She lifted her head, and that was that.

–Rachel’s Tears by Beth Nimmo and Darrell Scott with Steve Rabey, p. 93-94

Here is another account of the same situation told by Devon Adams who was with Dylan in the sound booth from the book  Day of Reckoning: Columbine and the Search for America’s Soul by Wendy Murray Zoba, p. 183 :

When, during her junior year, Rachel had performed a pantomime called “Who Nailed Him There?” about the man who put the nails in Jesus’ hands and feet to secure him to the cross, the background music cut out midway through her performance.  She continued without the music.  When the music finally came back on, it picked up where she was in the routine.  Dylan Klebold was the sound technician that day and some have speculated that he might have purposefully sabotaged her performance.  But Devon Adams, who was a friend of Rachel and Dylan, was in the sound booth with him when it happened.  She said Dylan rescued Rachel’s performance.  "He was freakin’ out,“ she said.  "He’s going, ‘Stupid tape!’  Rachel kept going, and he tried his best to get it back up.  It was just a bad tape.  He got it to work better than it had been.  He adjusted the levels a little bit and it came out okay.”  Devon said Rachel was “a wreck” after that performance but that she thanked Dylan for fixing the tape.  "That was the only time I ever saw her cry,“ she said.

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The last photo of Rachel Scott and her brother Craig Scott together a month before the Columbine shooting which ultimately took her life.

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Eric and Dylan, It’s been fifteen years since you came into our school armed to the teeth killing 13 people and wounding 24. In approaching the school, the first person you killed was my sister, Rachel Scott, she was 17. Before you killed her you asked her if she believed in God, she answered “yes” and you opened fire. It was April 20th 1999, this year the anniversary falls on Easter Sunday where my family will celebrate our time together and honor our faith. If Rachel were here today she would be painting Easter eggs with our sisters and playing with our nieces and nephews. She, at some point, would look me in the eyes and tell me to smile more and not take things too seriously. She was an incredible teenager who has changed the lives of millions all by little things she did for others and the writings she left behind in her diaries. The truth about her is that she would have forgiven you for your hateful actions, so do I. While many people around the world watched on television of students running out of the school, police approaching, and sobbing pupils. Before the camera crew arrived, I was in the library where you were slaughtering our classmates as if it were a game or movie you had watched again and again. At gunpoint you bullied and made fun of us. Crouching under a table remaining silent, I saw you shoot two of my best friends. The last thing Isaiah heard were racial slurs. You both left the library for a few minutes giving us a chance to escape. I yelled out at the students to escape with me and helped pick up a girl who had been shot. After escaping, you returned to the library and put an end to the massacre by taking your own lives. That day my life changed forever. The next two years I carried a lot of hate and anger fantasizing on how I would have got revenge on you, had you been alive, and at times closed myself off in isolation. It was making me more like you. Then I decided to go on a mission to South Africa. It was one of Rachel’s dreams. There I met the man who enlightened me. 17 members of his family had been killed and despite the profound pain he spoke with me, he shared his story and did it with serenity. That day I understood that I had to break the chain of hate you started and the only way was to share with every one. I had to travel a long path to forgiveness to free myself from your shadows. Now not only do I feel free but I speak about a powerful story that rose out of the ashes - a message that my sister left behind. The biggest antidotes to anger and hatred are kindness and compassion. Your darkness gave light a chance to be seen. A month before the shooting, you were in your parents’ basement pointing to a camera with a gun saying, “We need to get a fucking chain reaction going here.” At the same time, one month before, my sister was in her English class writing a paper about her values and beliefs, “I have a theory that if one person will go out of their way to show compassion it will start a chain reaction of the same.” Both of you spoke of a “chain reaction” but while yours ended with suicide, Rachel’s lives on with us as we share her story with millions of kids each year. My sister’s unfairly short life continues to have a huge impact on others. I remember you. We met once when I was in 8th grade and you were in high school. Your presence instilled fear in me. We were at a mutual friend’s house and you were on the computer looking up plans to build a pipe bomb, little did I think that a couple years later I’d find myself under a table protecting myself against such a bomb. We even played basketball together, there you seemed like “normal people”. There are those who say you started the slaughter because you were bullied and ostracized in our school. If I could go back to that day on the basketball court, I would talk to you, I would ask you why you acted the way you did and I would try to make you understand that it’s not all like it seems. I would tell you that the solitude you felt was the same that many others feel and that it all passes. Eric and Dylan, what you did that day didn’t solve anything. You didn’t do justice with those guns, you stole the dreams and futures of 13 innocent people, like my sister Rachel. Today I forgive you because I know that hate only creates hate, and I cannot let you take away my smile, you’ve already taken my sister.

Craig Scott (via rachelscottblog)

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Rachel Scott’s poem about depression.

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you were given this life because you are strong enough to live it

Rachel Joy Scott (via whimsyandtwinklelights)

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Rachel Scott with short hair.

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I love seeing rare pictures of Rachel. Especially the ones from her play with Andrew Robinson! Do you think the movie on Rachel's life might show at the end rare videos of her we haven't seen before? Or even more pictures? I hope so. I hope the movie dedicates some small part of it to real footage of her & her family.

I think so. :)

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What. Mike is Rachel's stepbrother? Weren't her parents still married when he was born??

It was stated in Rachel's Tears.