Meet Tyler, Lula and Sarah Schmidt. All three of them were murdered before the perpetrator committed suicide on July 22, 2022.
I did not know Tyler as well as I knew Sarah and Lula, but he always came across as a quiet, kind, funny person who was dearly loved by his kids and wife.
I met Sarah when the twins are like 3 or 4, when our kids were running around like crazy people at the library. She and I side talked like moms do when their kids are rampaging through a public space in between running after them and telling them to play nice. I decided I thought she would be a cool person to be friends with (and I was super jealous of her beautiful curly hair), so I gave her one of my writer's business cards and asked her to be my friend.
And I am glad I did because she was wickedly funny, dryly humored, made excellent faces (that Lula clearly inherited from her), and she had a joy and light about her that was both hard to ignore, unable to miss and highly addictive to be around. She was involved with the PTA at our school that our kids went (she was supposed to be the president this year), she worked at the library and also was a nature fiend.
So when I saw her working at the library a couple weeks before their deaths, I wasn't surprised to hear they were going to go camping. They loved camping. And they had been to the Maquoketa Caves before, so it was clear they liked the park there. When I left the library that day, I waved goodbye to her as a chased my two kids out of the building and into the very end of summer. School would be starting in a month and as the wife of a university professor, I knew that once late July hit, summer is just as over as it could get before school starts.
Then they were killed, and the person who killed them shot himself in the head and died at the park that day too. I will talk more about this person and what little I know about him and his family; but I will say this--as far as any knows, this person had no contact with the Schmidt family before 3/4 of them were murdered in their tent that day.
Yes, I said 3/4, because Sarah and Tyler's 9 year old son, Arlo, somehow survived the shooting. I will also talk more about what little I know about that as well.
It's been 38 days since they were murdered and the grief is still there. Because it's always going to be there.
These three amazing people are the reason I am taking the Writing Your Grief course. Arlo is the reason I am taking this course. The rest of her family, friends and everyone else who has been shattered by this violent and unfathomable event.
I have included their obituary and Arlo's go fund me for reference below.
https://www.dahlfuneralhome.com/obituary/tyler-sarah-and-lula-schmidt
https://www.gofundme.com/f/arlo-schmidt?utm_source=facebook&fbclid=IwAR0JXJIZJkI_8Uvt9ZJl3gHCfJ4x8NsWnsu9givO2Tf3PilrwmO5_1dgILw
