Amid tragedy, our hearts ache as stories unfold

This is an open letter to the families of those who lost loved ones in the senseless killings at a small-town nursing home east of Columbus on May 12:

Our hearts ache for you, and you have our sympathy for your loss.

We want you to know that we will never get used to meeting someone for the first time on the worst day of their life. Many of us in the newsroom have faced those moments hundreds of times, each time as difficult as the last. It never gets any easier to knock on a door knowing that people on the other side are suffering mightily with a shocking loss.

We knock or call because it is our job, and while we gird for the worst possible reaction, we hope for the best outcome: the opportunity to tell the story of the person you lost.

It’s not about “selling newspapers,” as some cynics suggest. Fact is, we don’t sell more papers when we report about a tragedy such as the killings in Kirkersville.

We do it as a community service, in a sense. When tragedy strikes, the central Ohio community feels the loss. And we all seek to mourn and pay tribute in our own way — flowers, prayers, a hug and a warm casserole, a remembrance of the lives lost. Our contribution to that tribute is to tell the stories of those who were taken from the community unexpectedly in a crash, disaster or by senseless violence.

Cindy Krantz was a name many of us in central Ohio didn’t know until May 12. She was 48 and a nurse aide at the Pine Kirk Care Center, where she and 46-year-old nurse Marlina Medrano of Newark were shot and killed by Medrano’s boyfriend. He also shot and killed Kikersville Police Chief Steven Eric DiSario, of nearby Pataskala.

Most of us didn’t know any of them until May 12.

Amid the shared pain and grief of such a day, it is human nature to wonder: Who were they? What mark did they make on the world? Who is suffering most now because of their deaths, and how can I help them?

With sympathy and compassion, we approach the grieving families, their friends and neighbors in an effort to piece together the story of their lives. Unfortunately, we often are approaching them soon after the loss. For some, it’s too soon to talk, and we respect that. (We also know that some who didn’t tell the stories of their loved ones when the community was focused on them later regretted not having taken the opportunity.)

For others, it is cathartic to talk about their loved one and to know that complete strangers cared enough to ask.

Because of the graciousness of Cindy Krantz’s family, who invited us into their Pataskala home and told us about her, we were able to tell the story of a woman whose life was both ordinary and extraordinary. She was mother to five children and grandmother to a toddler. She loved helping others and provided child care for years, many times at no charge.

Her family shared photos, many of them similar to some we see in our own family albums. We can relate to those images, and through those photos and her family’s words, a name on a police incident report became a human being — a person who sounds a lot like my sister or maybe your mother or neighbor.

Her family also told us that she died while protecting one of the residents of the nursing home. With that, she became extraordinary, and we all understood to a much greater extent the hole left in hearts and our community because of her death.

DiSario, too, was trying to protect the workers and residents of the nursing home. He was 38, a husband and father of six children with one on the way. We are grateful that some of his friends and co-workers spoke with us about him and his desire to protect and serve the public.

We know less about Medrano, but we hope that, in time, we can tell her story, too.

Because she, like the others who died that day, were part of a community that cares enough to want to know more about those whose loss we now mourn with you.