Cda Remembers Teacher As Hero
Teacher Leona “Lee” Caires died with a piece of chalk and an eraser in her hands when a rifle-wielding 14-year-old boy burst into her Moses Lake classroom and started shooting her students.
News of her death raced through Coeur d’Alene within hours of the deadly shooting spree.
“Lee gave up her life for those children in turning to this gunman and trying to tell him to disarm,” said Judith Brower, a family friend and math teacher at North Idaho College. “She didn’t duck for safety. She didn’t jump out a window. She tried to save those kids.
“She truly is a hero, and in Christian terminology, she’s a martyr.”
Caires and her husband, Steve, had close ties to Coeur d’Alene. They spent nearly every weekend in their Cougar Gulch home, just south of Coeur d’Alene, even though they both worked at Frontier Junior High School in Moses Lake.
Steve Caires, vice principal of Frontier Junior High, spent Saturday grieving and gathering strength with his four college-age children in Coeur d’Alene.
Meanwhile, friends and acquaintances struggled to comprehend the violent death.
“The shock of it doesn’t seem real yet to me,” said Lake City High School principal John Brumley, who used to coach high school football with Steve Caires.
Although details of what exactly occurred in Lee Caires’ classroom are sketchy, family friends say the image of Caires trying to protect her students fits.
Soft-spoken and kind, “when the chips are down, Lee is very strong, very protective,” said Patti Hinz, a close friend.
Dave Ballard, a former colleague and friend, said he felt dread when he heard Friday there was a shooting at his friends’ school.
“She’s the last person you’d suspect being shot,” he said Saturday. “But when you see the way she died, trying to save her kids, well, that’s Lee Caires.”
Friends and colleagues remembered Lee Caires as having special compassion for children. She helped start the Kootenai County Substance Abuse Council (which established the youth crisis hotline), served on the Kootenai County YMCA’s board of directors and was very involved in the St. Pius Catholic Church.
Lee Caires worked as a substitute teacher in the Coeur d’Alene schools, tutored children in math at both Lakes Middle School and at the high school. She also taught math at NIC’s learning center part-time.
She earned her master’s degree in teaching about three years ago from University of Idaho.
“Her role as a teacher with adults and now with junior high kids was a continuing outgrowth of seeing teaching as a ministry,” said Brower, who is also a nun with the St. Pius parish.
When Steve Caires got a job as vice principal in Moses Lake in 1992, she stayed in Coeur d’Alene until their youngest children, twins Damian and Vicki, graduated from Coeur d’Alene High School. She joined her husband at Frontier Junior High in 1994.
“She’s the kind of mother all of us would like to be,” said Pam Pratt, an elementary school principal whose children grew up with Caires’.
“Her family was more important to her than anyone in the world.”
Lee Caires was honored Saturday night with a moment of silence at the boys’ basketball game between Coeur d’Alene and Lake City high schools.Family and friends are estab lishing a Lee Caires Memorial Scholarship fund for math and teaching scholarships at the Silver Lake Mall branch of Bank of America.
, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Photo
MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: Mass in CdA A funeral Mass has been scheduled for 10 a.m. Thursday at St. Pius Catholic Church. A final rosary is scheduled for 7 p.m. Wednesday at Yates Funeral Home.