Special report: Losing Ariana

If you or someone you know is struggling with depression or having suicidal thoughts, click hereto find out how to get help.       

There’s a poem slipped into a plastic frame on the bottom shelf of this northeast Fort Collins home, a few steps away from where family tragedy unfolded in early November. The 14 lines are slipped into the left side of the frame. A photograph to the right was taken a few years ago and shows a pair of mile-wide smiles.

A desperate mother crafted the words about four years ago to encourage her then-secondgrade daughter there would be better days ahead — that the hardships accompanying adolescence would fade and her daughter would one day find her way in the world.

“To Ari, my sweet lil’ girl; the one who has the key to my world!; the one who has my nose and my eyes; who loves to eat ketchup and lots of French fries,” Gigi Godinez wrote.

Mom begins to cry as she reads the poem aloud. The tears wash away the moment of pure happiness forever frozen in the photo.

“You are my lil’ bit of sunshine; your smile lights up my days; you steal my heart and keep it; with warm, endearing ways.”

Mom never imagined when she wrote those words that she’d be reading it years later after her daughter died by suicide.

“You’re my precious little daughter; with sweetness from above; you fill me with laughter; and with lots of kisses and love!”

Mom pauses to take a deep breath. This is the hardest part.

“Even when you’re sad and have your lil’ fits; you’ll ALWAYS be my one and only Lil’ Bit!!”

Ariana Cordova is not the stereotypical face of suicide.

That belongs to men in their 40s plagued by financial, social or psychological burdens. She was a sixth-grader. She was Hispanic.

Beyond the numbers: Suicide's lasting mark in Larimer County

But the 11-year-old’s death, among 81 suicides — four of them youths — in Larimer County last year, became the public touchpoint for the still-taboo social challenge of suicide and the ever-controversial matter of adolescent bullying. Despite the number of suicides more than doubling the number of fatalities from vehicle crashes in Larimer County last year, conversations about suicide remain stigmatized.

Here is Ari’s life, and death, story.

'She was perfect...'

The Sunday in November started pleasant enough.

Gigi drove her eldest daughter, Bella Cordova, to work at El Burrito Restaurant, the Old Town eatery Gigi’s parents opened in 1960. Ariana rode with Gigi, and wanted her to stop at McDonald’s for breakfast after dropping Bella off. The car, though, was making funny noises. Eggs at home would have to suffice.

Ariana ate breakfast in her bedroom that morning. After a few minutes, she asked her mom to bring her school backpack upstairs. Gigi obliged.

It would be one of the last times she saw her daughter alive.

“What I thought she was doing was her homework when she was writing letters to her friends” Gigi says.

Those notes would be found in her room in the hours to come and would mark Ariana’s last words. In a few she wrote she wasn’t strong enough. Many letters tried to build up her classmates with words of encouragement.

When it came time to pick Bella up from work, Ariana opted to stay home. The restaurant was just a couple of miles away, and she would be alone for just a few minutes, Gigi remembers. It wasn’t unusual for her to stay home. Ariana seemed fine.

Gigi went up to Ariana’s room when they returned from the restaurant — it was customary to say “Hello” whenever they got home. But instead of a response from Ariana, there was a deathly silence.

Then ...

“All I heard was my mom screaming,” Bella says, stone-faced while sitting on the couch in the family’s home about a month after that November day. She ran up the stairs and pushed her way into the room where Mom was crying and Ariana was on the floor.

The adrenaline kicked in. Bella had never done CPR before. But she'd seen it on "Grey's Anatomy," and that would have to be good enough. With each compression, Bella tried to pump life back into her little sister, the sister whom she held moments after her birth — a moment captured in a photograph that still hangs near the living room.

EMTs raced Ariana to Medical Center of the Rockies in Loveland, and a flight crew transferred her to Children’s Hospital Colorado in Aurora. Doctors drummed up chemical cocktails and fought with the help of machines to bring Ariana back to life.

But well-equipped medical professionals could not undo what Ariana had done. Slowly but surely, life beat out of her young body.

It became clear that Gigi’s Lil’ Bit would not return home, not this time.

In the hours before Mom made the decision to take Ariana off life support, friends and family gathered at the hospital. The youngsters sang one of pop star Pink’s hit ballads as they remembered their sister, cousin and friend.

"You’re so mean when you talk about yourself. You were wrong.Change the voices in your head.Make them like you instead."

“She was perfect,” Gigi says, sobbing. “But she didn’t see it that way.”

'These kids, they all need help' 

Ariana looked forward to footraces with the car as Gigi drove to get the mail. She was so active and would plead with her to allow her one more lap around the block on her scooter, skateboard or bike.

Black tire marks still show near the front door, the remnants of winters when riding outside wasn’t an option. Lapping around the expansive living room was rarely out of the question.

“She always wanted an adventure,” Gigi says.

She earned the nickname “Tsunami” as a youngster — within seconds she’d have perfectly organized toys strewn about the living room, much to the dismay of the grownups. That was when she wasn’t searching for lawn sprinklers that needed to be splashed in.

But inner battles brewed.

Ariana was a second-grader at Tavelli Elementary School when she started complaining of stomach pains and said she couldn’t go to class. Kids will be kids, Gigi remembers thinking. Ariana had to go to school.

It wasn’t until Gigi’s sister called her and told her Ariana was hiding under the blankets, trembling, that she knew something more serious was going on. Ariana couldn’t verbalize the pain, so she scribbled a note. She said she was being called stupid and dumb. One boy called her a bitch — she didn’t know how to spell it and left out the “t.”

At the bottom of the note, Ariana drew a picture of a building, the word “school” scrawled on the pointed roof.

Next to it, she drew a stick figure and wrote one word: “goodbye.”

Unsatisfied with how things were progressing, Gigi pulled Ariana out of Tavelli and enrolled her into Riffenburgh Elementary School. She met with counselors, made friends and her life seemed to stabilize. There were occasional meltdowns, but Gigi remembers thinking everything would be OK.

It was a delicate balance when Ariana started attending Lincoln Middle School in sixth grade. Things were great for a while. Gigi started suspecting something was going on when Ariana came home with a fat lip one day. Sometimes she’d be on the brink of tears at the dining room table, hiding something.

Mental health providers and bullying awareness groups are quick to dispel assertions that bullying is directly linked to suicide. Most youths who are bullied don’t have thoughts of suicide nor do they engage in suicidal behaviors, they say. Matters of depression are more likely the underlying issues. Bullying can simply exacerbate an already difficult situation.Gigi took note of the cries for help. She took Ariana to the hospital after at least one act of self-harm. Still, she never imagined what was on the horizon.

Ariana’s case spurred questions about Poudre School District’s handling of the bullying allegations.

“We cannot and will not comment to the press about specific circumstances of any student. However, bullying is always a concern in all of our schools and we take all reports of bullying seriously,” PSD Superintendent Sandra Smyser wrote in a statement for this story, noting there are different approaches for different schools. “... Discipline, as it relates to student interactions and allegations of bullying, is handled individually as each situations is often complicated and unique.”

“If a parent or guardian believes his/her child is being bullied or is bullying other children, they should contact the school or speak to an administrator to work towards a solution that is appropriate for their child.”

“You don’t know what’s going on in somebody’s life. What could not affect you or me could affect somebody else, and people just don’t get that. They don’t get it,” Gigi says. “These kids, they all need help. Everybody needs help.” Gigi and Bella know the bullying topic is contentious, rooted in hearsay and speculation. They know proving bullies pushed Ariana to a darker place might be impossible. Their focus is on finding help for kids and adults alike who are coping with the lasting effects of suicide.

'I'm not ready'

A couple of blocks away from the family’s home, a dirt path meanders away from the residential streets and cuts between a pair of houses. Earlier in the year, Ariana asked her mom to stop the car on the way to the bus stop.

Ariana led her mom along the 100 feet of trail and up a small hill dotted with trees with views of an adjacent Interstate 25 that hums with traffic. The views of Longs Peak are stunning.

“She said, ‘this is my special spot. This is where I like to come when I want to be alone,’ ” Gigi said.

After more than a decade living in the neighborhood Gigi says she had no idea it existed. That comes with the territory of being a single mom working as a phlebotomist at Poudre Valley Hospital and waiting tables at El Burrito.

Sometimes those memories of Ariana racing around the neighborhood or being Tsunami in the living room leave Mom thinking she is on the path to healing, Gigi says, her eyes darting to the wall where Ariana’s poster-sized portrait hangs.

Other times she’s not so sure.

Her voice trails off as she describes Bella getting ready to go to a recent Denver Broncos game. Gigi was cooking breakfast — Ariana would often help. A family member called and said they had a jersey for Bella to wear to the game, but Gigi would have to come pick it up.

No big deal, Gigi thought. “For that split second I went, “Oh, Ari can finish this.’ She was the one that would have come down and finished cooking it. And then it hit me. ‘Oh. No she can’t.’”

Bella’s experience after her sister’s death has been a little different. The junior is aware that different stages of grief exist. She’s watched family and friends move through various iterations of the process.

“I just haven’t hit any of them. It’s not real to me. I haven’t even really broken down,” she says. “I just don’t want to deal with it is what’s the hardest thing for me. I need to make myself, but I know I’m not ready.”

Ariana drew up a chore chart for the family, though Gigi remembers Ariana’s frustrations when others didn’t follow it. Two months after her death, Ariana’s name remains on Sunday for dishwasher duties, Monday for vacuuming and Tuesday for trash day.

The childhood photos and drawings are still pinned to the refrigerator. And the paper New Year’s Eve glasses she always looked forward to putting on sit in the candy dish on the kitchen table. Mom still can’t bring herself to go up to Ariana’s bedroom.

Ariana would have celebrated her 12th birthday Jan 9. Celebrations now take on a different tone. This year there was a trip to Resthaven Cemetery where a yellow flag peeked from the newly fallen snow. The grave site is next to where her grandparents will be buried — Gigi’s final resting place will be in the same plot.

The sunny Saturday was a time for some to write “12” and “I miss you” in the snow.

It was a time for Bella to further figure out her personal grieving process.

And it was a time for Gigi to say “hello,” once more, to her one and only Lil’ Bit.

Reporter Jason Pohl covers public safety issues for the Coloradoan. Follow him on Twitter: @pohl_jason. Reach him by email: jasonpohl@coloradoan.com

A proud grandpa who built custom homes. A certified nursing assistant, mom of three and foster parent.

A U.S. Air Force Serviceman who achieved the rank of Eagle Scout.

A former football player at Colorado State University.

There are 77 more stories of fathers and sisters and avid hikers and cooking enthusiasts.

In 2015, 81 people died by suicide in Larimer County, more than double the number killed in car crashes. With the potential to climb, 2015 closes with what could be a record number of suicides and continues what appears to be a new normal.

To read more on why the Coloradoan pursued this story, head here.

Below you can learn a little bit more about the 81 people we lost to suicide in 2015.

Lauren Gustus is Executive Editor of the Coloradoan. Find her on Twitter @laurengustus.

Larimer County residents who died by suicide in 2015 largely reinforce national data that pinpoint a few key groups as more vulnerable than others.

In 2015, men in Larimer County died by suicide at more than three times the rate of women. The highest rates of suicide belonged to men ages 25 to 44, with a rate of about 56 deaths per 100,000 people, and men older than 85, with a rate of about 104 deaths per 100,000 people.

The numbers are more than double the national rate for each group.

Yet they belie a paradox in suicidal behavior: Although men die by suicide at a far greater rate than women in Larimer County and elsewhere, national data suggest more women attempt suicide. It’s unclear if that’s the case in Larimer County because not all suicide attempts are reported.

Silvia Canetto, a psychology professor at Colorado State University, has spent years delving into the so-called “gender paradox” of suicide and trying to determine why more men — especially older white men — die by suicide.

To explain the trends, her research points to what are called cultural scripts of suicide: The meanings and attitudes a society attaches to suicidal behavior, including whether people perceive suicide as “allowed” for certain groups and what conditions they generally expect to surround a death by suicide.

“If you look at the patterns through the lens of cultural scripts of suicide, and the scripts of femininity and masculinity, then (the gender paradox) makes sense instead of being strange and paradoxical,” Canetto said.

The suicide script for white adults establishes death by suicide as a masculine act of strength and finality, but a non-fatal suicide attempt as a feminine act of weakness and cowardice, Canetto explains in her article “Suicide: Why are older white men so vulnerable?”

“Once they engage in a suicidal act, European-descent men might not be willing to allow themselves to survive it because of the dominant stigma against men who do not ‘complete’ a suicide,” Canetto writes.

The script theory might explain why men are more likely than women to use the more fatal method of a firearm for suicide, which 58 percent of Larimer County men who died by suicide in 2015 did. About 42 percent of women who died by suicide used a firearm, followed closely by asphyxiation.

Canetto theorizes that older white men have the highest suicide rate of all because the suicide script accepts death by suicide as a viable way for men to respond to the “indignities of aging.” It’s not that men suffer more severe indignities of aging — such as widowhood, retirement and health problems — than women do, but that they might have more struggles coming to terms with those indignities.

Canetto calls this “inflexibility in coping,” which is a narrow sense of self and persistent troubles adapting to life transitions. Both traits attributed to a majority of older adults (most of them white men) who died by suicide in various American psychological autopsy studies.

Promoting understanding of the cultural scripts of suicide is key to lowering the American suicide rate, Canetto said.

“If we continue to associate masculinity with control, then older, European descent men will continue to see suicide as a way to affirm masculinity, and we will continue to see high rates of death by suicide among men of European descent.”

Colorado’s suicide rate – 19.78 deaths per 100,000 people in 2014 – is seventh-highest in the nation. It ranks behind Montana, Alaska, New Mexico, Wyoming, Utah and Idaho. All those states except Alaska, plus No. 10 Oregon and No. 11 Arizona, make up what University of Nevada Las Vegas sociologist Matt Wray dubbed “the suicide belt,” a grim ribbon of Western states that have some of the highest suicide rates in the nation.

Wray hypothesized in a 2011 Freakonomics Radio podcast that the higher suicide rates are due to the presence of more middle-aged and aging white men who are single and unemployed with access to guns.

Colorado does have a higher proportion of white residents and men than the rest of the country. But it doesn’t lead the country in gun ownership, population older than 65 or unemployment rate.

Beyond the population metrics, why do people die by suicide? You can look to common risk factors for an explanation, although it isn’t a clear-cut one.

The main triggers for suicide are depression, isolation and hopelessness. People who die by suicide often think the obstacles they face are insurmountable, that life is pointless, that the pain they feel will never cease.

According to a 2001 Colorado Trust report on deaths by suicide throughout the state and an interview with Brooke Lee, director of access and adult services at SummitStone Health Partners, some of the most common risk factors for suicide include:

Depression: This is by far the most prevalent risk factor. An estimated two-thirds of people who die by suicide have depression.

Alcoholism and/or drug abuse: One-fourth of people who die by suicide were found to have been alcoholics.

Owning or having access to a gun: Firearms account for about 60 percent of deaths by suicide.

Isolation, living alone, loss of support: While living alone doesn’t necessarily equate to loneliness, 22 percent of people who die by suicide lived alone at their time of death. About 30 percent lost a significant relationship in the year leading up to their death.

Work problems or unemployment: One-third of people who die by suicide are unemployed at the time of their death.

Physical illness: Between 30 percent and 40 percent of people who die by suicide have a significant physical illness at their time of death.

History of death by suicide in the family or a history of suicide attempts: Many people who attempt suicide will do so again. About 11 percent of people who die by suicide have experienced at least one other death by suicide within their immediate family.

Existence of multiple risk factors: Having more than one risk factor boosts the overall risk fivefold.

For children and teens, suicide is often motivated by the same reasoning as adults have, Lee said. It’s a similar feeling of hopelessness and seemingly insurmountable challenges, although the events that inspire those emotions are more likely to be related to relationships.

Warning signs in youth are being bullied or bullying others, experiencing a loss in the family, conflicts with friends, breakups and confusion about sexual orientation.

Reporter Jacy Marmaduke covers environment and breaking news for the Coloradoan. Follow her on Twitter at @jacymarmaduke.

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