Over My Shoulder: A Columbine Survivor's Story of Resilience, Hope, and a Life Reclaimed

by Kacey Ruegsegger Johnson, Karen Booker Schelhaas

On April 20, 1999, Kacey Ruegsegger Johnson was a newly transferred junior at Columbine High School. As she sat down to read a magazine in the school library, she had no idea she was about to find herself at the center of an American tragedy, an event that would forever change the course of her life and many others. Moments later, two student gunmen entered the building to continue the massacre they had already begun outside. A now famous photograph shows Kacey lying on the ground in the aftermath of the attack, in danger of bleeding to death and losing an arm. Columbine quickly captured the soul of a nation and left it deeply scarred. The devastating injuries Kacey sustained in the Columbine shooting followed a year of adolescent struggles - a year in which she suffered through the sudden deaths of four friends, a deep depression, and a plan for her suicide. In this story of courage and resilience, Kacey recounts how she overcame the physical, emotional and mental suffering of these events to build a life, a family, and a loving home. Through sharing her story, she has discovered a surprising path to helping and encouraging others.

Genres: True Crime, Nonfiction, Memoir, Biography Memoir, Christian

268 pages, Paperback

Published March 22, 2019

About the author

In spring 1999, Kacey Ruegsegger was a shy seventeen-year-old living with her family in Littleton, Colorado. Having survived the deaths of several close friends the previous year, followed by a devastating depression, Kacey hoped that transferring to a new school would be the fresh start she needed. And so she found herself at Columbine High School.

Nothing could have prepared Kacey and her family for the events of April 20, 1999, when two teenaged gunmen entered the school and initiated a bloodbath that would shock the world and forever scar a nation.

Trapped in the library when the shooting began, Kacey hid under a table with only a chair to protect her. Moments later, she was shot at close range, her shoulder bones reduced to dust and hand severely injured. Minutes later, she fled the school with fellow survivors, in shock and at risk of bleeding to death. Through the heroic efforts of an exceptional doctor and his team, Kacey survived and was given the gift of donated bone and tissue to rebuild her shoulder, arm, and hand. So began an arduous recovery for her body and soul.

Refusing to let this horrific event define her life, Kacey chose a path of hope and healing. She pursued a career in nursing, married the love of her life, and started a family. Through triumphs and setbacks, Kacey remained determined not to let the evil that scarred her prevail. Sending her children to school in the era of Sandy Hook was one of the hardest things she had ever done, but Kacey knew she could not raise her family in fear.

Now, twenty years after the devastation of Columbine, Kacey shares her inspiring story with audiences across the U.S., as a speaker and an author. She lives in North Carolina with her husband, Patrick, and their four young children.

Reviews

[Kimberly Patton · Rating 5 out of 5]

I flew through this book in just a few days because the story was so captivating. I loved hearing how God used a horrific event to grow her and teach her to love and serve others. It’s an incredible book!

[Cathy Igou · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a wonderful true story of dealing with adversity in a persons life. Makes you feel very
Blessed with your own life. I recommend reading
This book.

[Meredith · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 ⭐️

So much has been written about the shooters- we all know their names. How many know the names of the victims? To survive what she did, and manage to not only overcome but to thrive… should absolutely serve as inspiration to all. The chilling details of her 8 minutes in the library…

[Kireja · Rating 4 out of 5]

Over My Shoulder: A Columbine Survivor's Story of Resilience, Hope, and a Life Reclaimed is a rare, first-hand account from Kacey Ruegsegger Johnson, a former Columbine student who survived the library massacre. Although the book begins by recounting Kasey's experience in the library, she doesn't delve into the details of or the motives behind Columbine. Instead, Kacey describes the visible and invisible impacts that Columbine has on her and her long journey towards recovery. What Kasey's book makes clear is that while Columbine occurred over the course of 49 minutes, it continues to have a widespread impact on not only survivors and their families, but on society at large. Yet, Kasey is adamant that she is not a ''victim''; she refuses to let Columbine define her or overtake her life. She chooses to get up everyday and to push forward and it is this resolve and strength that makes Kasey's story absolutely inspirational.

[Callie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an excellent read that grabbed my attention immediately! Kacey shares her story—how she faced multiple tragic events as a teenager, but through it all could see (and literally feel) God’s hand of comfort, protection, and guidance. She doesn’t consider herself a victim but rather someone given a unique set of circumstances and therefore a great platform/responsibility to share with and help others. She has taken what was intended for evil in her life and turned it into something truly beautiful.

[Erica · Rating 5 out of 5]

What an amazing journey of courage and faith. I admire her honesty. She's been through so much, and her teen years remind me a little of Cassie's, only with an ending I wish Cassie's book could have had. We don't hear much, if anything, about the people injured in national tragedies. Many of the injuries are horrific and lifelong, but these survivors often have inspiring stories to tell and should be heard. It is a miracle so many of them are alive to share these stories. Yet we forget about them --- these warriors who fought evil and came out victorious.

[Janell Madison · Rating 5 out of 5]

There are certain things that stand out in our lives. For me, the shooting at Columbine is one of those things. Everyone around my age remembers it as a life changing day. Fear gripped our nation, school safety was questioned, hugging our kids even tighter, and breathing a sigh of relief when they got home from school started to become our new normal.

This book is, “Over My Shoulder- A Columbine Survivor’s Story of Resilience, Hope, and a Life Reclaimed”. It is a book about an entire family who fought hard to save their daughter in several different ways after the attack at Columbine. Her journey was not over when her bandages came off. Her physical injuries will be with her forever. And the emotional toll? It is a battle she continues to fight…and is winning. This book is a testament to faith in God, and trusting Him, even when you are up against odds that seem the size of a mountain.

I feel like this is a book of hope for those that are hurting. It may be an emotional pain or a physical pain, but the hope that is given in this book may be the words what someone that you know needs to hear. This family went through something awful, but today they are happy and thriving and living beautiful lives. If you know someone in need of hope and encouragement, consider this book for them.~Janell at Green Gables Book Reviews

Kacey is new to Columbine and it’s her first time in the Library. Who knew everything would change on this day?

Kacey was a stoic and shy kid. She loved horses, because of her Mom and her Dad is her hero. Her relationship with God started at age 8. She was in horse competitions and 4-H. She loved her family, Mom and Dad, and her siblings. She loves being at the horse barn and competing.

How did everything change so much? She got older and she was turning her attention away from her family and God to a new group of friends. Teenage attitudes and behaviors soon followed. She was drawn to a cute boy. Sometimes, teenagers make very bad life altering choices. Those choices can have rippling effects that go on and on. Depression..suicide…lying…dangerous behaviors…Mom and Dad want to help, but they’re lost how to help. New rules get put in place. No freedom…the new friends push her away. Finally after weeks of worry she’s ready to talk to Mom and Dad.

She needed a new start, at a new school with her church friends, at Columbine High School. So, on April 20, 1999, newly transferred to Columbine, Kacey was in the Library when she heard a popping sound. The teacher is yelling. Kacey hides beneath a desk.

Kacey is shot.

The way Kacey has written this part of her life’s story is pure. She shares things that happened in detail, even when the words had to have been brutal to write. She shares moments she isn’t proud of but also shares her deepest joys. She has a bond with her parents that is filled with unwavering love. She is not allowing this tragedy to define her. She is living her life!

In “Over My Shoulder,” Kacey openly takes us through her journey from before the shooting to her life today. From her day in the library and being shot, through multiple surgeries, college, falling love and to her life with her own family now, and the joys, along with challenges, they have faced.

This book is beautifully written and it is a story of triumph that is needed in our world today

[Charles Johnson · Rating 5 out of 5]

BOOK REVIEW

OVER MY SHOULDER
By Kacey Ruegsegger Johnson
(With Karen Booker Schelhaas)
ISBN No. 978-1-7336516-0-8
Self-Published by OMS, LCC
253 pages, including a forward,
11 chapters, afterword, and other information
Genre: Nonfiction: Personal Experience

Here’s a book about the Columbine High School shootings in Littleton, Colorado – its 20th anniversary on April 20, 2019. Are you expecting a tell-all book? A push for gun control? Shooters named and blamed? A diatribe against the police? After all, that’s what we see published so many times about similar events. Well, alter your expectations. You won’t find such socio-political ax-grinding here. Instead, Kacey shares a horrific time in her life but yet chooses survivorship over victimhood, hope over fear.

I read the book in a day – there are no aspersions upon anyone, no lengthy, over-stated medical reports, no preaching . . . just a book written honestly and sincerely – and might I add, bravely and baldly honest about her choices and experiences before, during and after that day in April.

In OVER MY SHOULDER, we first meet Kacey in the library just before the shooters enter the building. She describes a strongly personal account of the initial confusion, the horror, an amazingly deep spiritual experience, and her departure from the building while her shoulder, decimated by a shotgun slug put in it by the shooters, bleeds incessantly. Medical treatment ensues as her family sits in the waiting room, hungry for word of her fate. We learn that in the previous year, found Kacey enduring the suicide of two friends, hurling Kacey into her own consideration of the same. No longer the open and warm successful student, but a sullen, sour youth open to the idea of her own destruction – only to rise again due to the love of her family and transfer to a new school – Columbine.

After the shooting, surgeries on her shoulder follow at the hands of Dr. Ross Wilkins, a pioneer of bone transplants. (That doctor and that patient have developed a close relationship that continues yet today.) Extensive physical therapy for her shoulder follows, as does psychological therapy for the post traumatic stress disorder that had so deeply affected her life.

And later, she becomes a nurse. There’s her husband and their children, who have become the center of her life. As years pass, we learn of other events that trigger Kacey’s PTSD, and of a rare disability that arises in one of her children. (I do wish there had been more information about PTSD in the book.)

Ultimately, though, this is what we learn. Kacey Ruegsegger Johnson, once an angst-ridden teenager, once a victim of the terrors of Columbine, finds herself as an advocate for rising up and out of such horrific tragedies, speaking to groups all across the nation in favor of all that has served her – family, God, hope, and a positive attitude of survivorship.

[Denise Shaver · Rating 5 out of 5]

Many years ago, I babysat Kacey and her siblings when her parents were out of town. I remember eating Del Monte canned corn, listening to Garth Brooks, driving to the stables twice a day to care for the horses and a very big spider that was on the stairs that one of Kacey’s friends vacuumed up because I was too scared of it.

I knew, even then, that Kacey’s family were good people, even though I didn’t know them well, because I had seen Kacey’s older brother stand up for someone they saw getting picked on at the elementary school I worked at.

So, when Columbine happened, I recognized Kacey’s name and picture in the local newspaper. Like everyone, I was shocked and horrified.

I know several people who were there on that day and I work in the same school district, so I have a curiosity to understand what went wrong and how it can be prevented.

Also, after my dad passed away ten years ago, his tissue donations helped save another man’s leg and gave him the ability to walk.

When I heard that Kacey had written a book, I knew that I wanted to read it. I picked it up last night and couldn’t put it down.

I admire Kacey’s ability to talk openly and honestly about her struggles before Columbine and her parent’s strength to “act like parents” and save Kacey from the angst she was going through. Her parents are heroes who saw what their child needed to thrive and did it.

Kacey’s strong faith was inspiring to read about and gave me hope. While Kacey could have spent the book whining “why me?” (and I’m sure she sometimes has in private moments -she’s human) she did not. Instead, she use this book to talk about how she took the lessons she learned from tragedy to become a woman of faith, a mother who wants the best for her children and a survivor who uses her story to inspire and help other.

Thank you, Kacey, for your beautifully told story. I hope you continue to live a wonderful life with your beautiful family and feel the same strong hand keeping watch over you.

[Alan Lampe · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kacey does a fantastic job telling her incredible story of recovery from one of the nation's deadliest school shootings. Her entire family opens up for this riveting tale. As with any tale, events before the inciting incident, April 20, 1999, play a role in the rest of the story. Kacey covers a lot of ground during her recovery, building her own family, and finding her way through this world with a broken shoulder and hand.

One of the themes that I ended up focusing on was her PTSD. She gives great examples and advice of how her PTSD does not only affect her but her entire family. They made adjustments to their lives to help her recover. Kacey also reflects on how she chose to turn this tragic day into something good for her and those she encounters. The shooters wanted one thing, and she has vowed not to give it to them.

For all the news coverage of April 20, 1999, Kacey focuses on what happens to her. And when you think about it, it is nothing short of a miracle. She had a chair beside her while hiding under the desk in the library. Another student did not. In the grand scheme of things, a wooden and a cloth-covered library chair is not going to make that much difference to a bullet. But it did to Kacey. The Survivors saw she needed help getting out of the library and provided it. An officer saw her injuries and unceremoniously shoved her into his patrol car to get her help. Students in the triage area saw how much blood she was losing and offered their own shirts to stop the bleeding. Paramedics recognized her great injuries and rushed her to a hospital. All these little steps by so many people helped Kacey get the treatment she needed. That's another thing to take away from her story. You may not be able to do everything a person needs, but do your part to help. You never know whose life you will save.

[Cesar Navarrete · Rating 5 out of 5]

Inspiration to Everyone

I really enjoyed this book. There was not one thing that I did not like.
Kacey is a true inspiration to everyone. No matter what has gone wrong in your life.
I lost my H.S. Boyfriend who was murdered by his step-father when I was 15. I never got over that. WhenI was 30, my kids father died. This took another toll on me. But then at 32 I found the love of my life and we are still going strong 12 years later.
But since then I’ve had 3 surgeries and been diagnosed with a blood and Autoimmune disease, and feel like my life is over.
But I have to say, the whole time I was reading this book, I kept saying, why am I complaining, people have it way worse then I do.

I recommend anyone that is feeling low to please read this book. Kacey is a truly amazing, wonderful, person with a lovely soul.

Thank you Kacey so much for sharing your story to help so many people out there like me who believes there is no hope left. God helps us in mysterious ways, and I know by me accidentally coming across this book was his way of helping me.

I wish you and your family, and everyone else all the happiness we all deserve.

[Becca Kaltenbach · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book has been on my shelf for forever and it just felt right to read it around the time of the 25th anniversary. I have read the book the mother of one of the shooters wrote. The book the friend of the shooters wrote. Now a book about one of the victims. All 3 books had similar themes of just sadness. It never occurred to me that one of the victims would be physically disabled from the shooting. I always thought of how hard it would be for them mentally and emotionally. I like how she wrote on her life before the shooting, obviously the events of the shooting and then her life after the shooting. How much it has affected her life well into adulthood and motherhood is very eye opening. The emotional roller coaster she had when taking her kids to and from school really got to me. And I never knew how many celebrities visited the victims in the hospital. I liked how she answered a lot of the common questions people probably ask her about gun laws and the shooters parents.

[Mary Aalgaard · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kacey, a Columbine shooting survivor, remembered every excruciating detail of those harrowing minutes in the library where the shooters aimed a gun at her and blew her shoulder to bits. As her shoulder bled out, she felt another sensation, that of a comforting hand telling her to remain calm and play dead. She fled the building with school mates and other victims, then started the slow road to recovery.

Kacey shares her personal experience, the grim details, and the courageous fight to not only survive, but thrive. Now, 20 years later, she is a mother of four children, married to a man who shows her mutual love and respect, and is an advocate for AlloSource, a bone and tissue donation resource that she benefited from after the shooting.

Kacey’s story, Over My Shoulder, isn’t an easy one to read. It puts a real person and her family into the headlines and evening news.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Having read Dave Cullen's well researched account and Sue Klebold's heartfelt "reckoning", I was very interested to hear from a victim of Columbine. My husband works for Allosource, the company that supplied the donor tissue for Kacey's shoulder. I have heard Kacey speak at Allosource events and Limb Preservation Foundation events and she is always inspiring. One of the wonderful things about reading her story is that it reminds me that one event, while it may impact us greatly and shape the rest of our lives differently, does not sum up who we are. Kacey is so much more than a victim of Columbine and she has had many experiences that have made her who she is today. I really appreciated her words and am grateful that she decided after all of this time to share her story.

[Bea · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is not so much about the actual shooting, although there are a few pages describing what she went through, but it is about how the author dealt with her physical and emotional traumas. It begins right before the shooting and ends about 20 years later as she finds a way to help others. There are a lot of things she goes through in her life and with her kids' life, and there is a lot about God, faith, etc.

[Kristin Murphy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved Kacey’s honest story and encouragements from someone who lived through many tragedies and came out not just a survivor but one who is used by God to help & support others. Being a part of the Littleton community in 1999, her story hit very close to my heart as we were all affected by the events of April 20, 1999. God’s strength and grace prevailed over evil!

[Sue Summerill]

Totally outstanding and inspiring!

This book is so well written. I could not put this book down! This is the first book I have read on the w columbinr shooting. God bless the author and her family for sharing this book God bless the author for sharing her story. The book has made me think about the trauma that she went through and does to this day. God bless!

[Susan Ajaz · Rating 5 out of 5]

A story that defies impossible odds and inspires survival.

I always look for stories that reach beyond the impossible. This story does that and more. There remains a sadness that now there are many more of the same kind of stories to be read. May stories such as these help them to not be needed anymore.

[Donna · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had the pleasure of hearing Kacey speak at the Women in Christ luncheon. After hearing her heroic story I knew I had to read her book. This page turner is a story of horrific horror meant with grace and forgiveness. The way she describes evil and goodness gave me chills. Kacey is a great example of goodness rising above evil. God Bless her and her beautiful family.

[Kate Sparks · Rating 5 out of 5]

Totally compelling.
Horrifying in its recounting of the Columbine events.
Very real and vulnerable.
Great for understanding a survivor's perspective.

[Tamielin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Please read this book. Thank you Kacey for being so transparent!

[Carrie Shields · Rating 4 out of 5]

A survivor's story of the Columbine massacre. It was humbling to hear of Kacey's experience and healing.

[Julie Cherry · Rating 5 out of 5]

Inspirational. This would be a good read for all ages, especially, middle/high school age kids.

[Alisha · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thankful for Kacey's story as we continue to face the scary, real world we live in. Let's choose hope over fear.

[Sharon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book

[Roy Miller · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow! What a truly great book! 👍

[Kathryn · Rating 4 out of 5]

A touching and honest account.

[Jill Wurth · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing story of resilience and faith.

[Nicole Bishop · Rating 5 out of 5]

So good.

[Gail · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is the story of a 17 year old Columbine shooting survivor. Columbine happened 20 years ago and Kacey is telling her story. This is an emotional and compelling read especially in light of the effects this had on her as a survivor of this horrible trauma. I hope her true story will help spark some change so that we can stop school shootings that are so rampant in the USA today.