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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Fairchild: One Year Later Their Lives Linked By Tragedy Survivors Of Fairchild Shootings Find Different Ways Of Coping

Jeanette White And Jim Camden S Staff writer

One shooting victim went to counseling; another went to Disneyland.

One woman’s wounds are barely healed; another began swimming months ago.

They all shared a horrifying afternoon on June 20, 1994, when they came together at the Fairchild Air Force Base hospital for different reasons - a prescription, a doctor’s appointment.

They shared the nightmare of Dean Mellberg, the round-faced airman who shot them as he walked by.

Since that day, their experiences have been as varied as the 22 survivors themselves.

Omer Karns, 70, went back to work in September, driving a van for disabled veterans, while Dennis Moe, 42, just started drafting his resume.

Deena Kelley, 38, spent months in counseling. Joy Roberts, 62, rejected it as a waste of money.

Melissa Moe, 16, cried when friends cringed at the sight of her scars, while Ruth Gerken, 72, decided her disfiguring wounds aren’t worth tears.

“I go into the pool at my son’s house,” Gerken said. “The children eventually got used to it.”

Most survivors talk of common experiences since the shooting. Many detest firecrackers and cars that backfire, and bad guys with guns invade almost everyone’s sleep.

Yet, the past year was unique for each shooting victim, as the following stories reveal.

Still celebrating

It was a spectacular day in the little house on East Heroy, so spectacular that the retired couple who live there went to Tomato Bros. for lunch to celebrate.

Harold Roberts pulled back the gauze on his wife’s stomach that morning in late April and saw - after 10 months - the huge gunshot wound finally was healed.

“I’d get so disgusted sometimes, I thought it’d never go away,” said Hazel “Joy” Roberts, 62. “But the morning it did, he had a big smile on his face.

“He said, ‘It’s all gone.”’

Joy Roberts spent a month in the hospital and another two weeks in rehabilitation. Her stomach wound was 8 inches deep. Including a surgical incision, the wound circled 2 feet around her side.

Emotionally, she wanted to move on quickly. Forget counseling, she told a doctor who suggested it.

“I didn’t see no use in it,” she said.

She picked out new vinyl flooring for her home from her bed at the rehabilitation center.

Shortly after she got home, her husband, 63, helped her into a wheelchair and pushed her through a Target store to select new lamps.

By December, she was walking and the couple went to Disneyland. Joy Roberts clutched her still-healing stomach on rides.

“You can’t dwell on it, and go ahead with your life,” she said. “It’s happened and it’s gotta be over. Go on.”

Her husband, who was shot in the face while fighting in Korea in 1952, shares her philosophy.

The Robertses keep busy tending petunias and irises in their fenced front yard. They search out yard sale bargains. “Seventy-five cents for that piece of material!” she said, tugging at her lavender blouse. Every afternoon, they watch “The Young and the Restless” from their matching La-Z-Boys.

Now and then, they talk about the time when Joy Roberts escaped what a doctor called a “mighty close” brush with death.

“We never quit celebrating,” said her husband, “from the time she got out of the hospital.”

When nightmares threaten dreams

Rande Lindner struggles to keep alive Camp Comia in Cheney, the dream he had shared with his late wife, Anita.

For nine years, they had saved and sweated to turn a collection of old buildings and cast-off equipment into a place where Civil Air Patrol cadets, Scouts and Camp Fire groups could come for a week or a weekend. Campers would cover utility bills; the Lindners would make sure they had beds, food and fun.

“It’s been a project of love - and insanity,” Rande Lindner said as he walked around the sagging buildings not far from the Cheney rodeo grounds.

Mellberg’s shooting spree put the dream in jeopardy.

In 1985, the Lindners signed a 10-year contract with the Dominican Sisters to buy the buildings and the surrounding 20 acres the religious order once had used as a home for troubled teens. They used Rande Lindner’s Army disability check to make mortgage payments. They had just completed forms to refinance the $60,000 balance last June when Anita was killed. She was hit by five bullets just before entering the hospital to refill a prescription.

Members of her church reroofed a dormitory last year, and the camp opened in July.

Her death put the loan on hold because the family suddenly had less income. Earlier this year, the Dominicans merged with another order, which wants no new financial contracts.

The camp’s directors have kicked around several ideas to raise money for Lindner’s final payment in July, but nothing has proved viable. It’s not like they can raise $60,000 with a bake sale, he said.

Some people tell him he should sue the Air Force to get the money to keep the camp afloat. A few days after his wife had been killed, lawyers began calling, offering to represent him and promising big settlements.

Lindner eventually may file a claim against the Air Force, but he doesn’t want to keep the couple’s dream on life support with a lawsuit.

“I’ll worry about (lawsuits) later.”

Most days, Lindner thinks he’ll “get through the pain and agony,” make Camp Comia work and continue to live in the nearby house with Richard, 15; Matt, 13; and Candace, 5. If they can’t find a way to keep the camp, they’ll move.

“I can’t live next to a dream that’s gone.”

‘Too tough to die’

The bullet that splintered his pelvis and tore through his colon forces Omer Karns to walk with a cane. But it didn’t keep him from his true joy in life, driving a van for the Disabled American Veterans.

The 70-year-old Rathdrum, Idaho, resident was dropping off a DAV member at the Fairchild hospital last June 20 when he saw other people in the waiting room begin to run. Suddenly, he felt a vibration in his lower back. Because he is deaf, Karns never heard the gunfire that filled the hospital.

As he fell, he wondered, “Why is somebody shooting us?”

He remembers only pieces of the next week, such as waking up with lights so bright “I thought I was in heaven.” It was an operating room.

Doctors initially doubted Karns would live, then doubted he’d walk.

“I surprised them,” he said. “I’m too tough to die.”

By September, he was back behind the wheel of the DAV van, ferrying North Idaho veterans to the Veterans Affairs and Fairchild hospitals. He took a month off in mid-December when his colostomy was reversed, but he was driving again by mid-January. Occasional pain and tightness in his abdomen require monitoring - and maybe more surgery.

Karns was “the forgotten victim” immediately after the shooting. Not an Air Force member, a veteran or a dependent, he didn’t qualify for the medical care and support systems those groups have. Veterans in Spokane and Coeur d’Alene started a trust fund for him.

Finally, Esther Westlake, his boss, called Fairchild officials to make sure the Air Force would cover his bills.

Since that time, she said, the Air Force “has been wonderful,” paying for his treatment at civilian hospitals.

Friends and relatives urged Karns to sue everyone - from the Air Force to the DAV. He refuses.

“Oh, I might sue for $2 so I can get some coffee,” he joked this month during a break from driving the van. “No. I won’t even do that. The Air Force has been too good to me.”

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