Trip keeps father from knowing fate of daughters

Both daughters, students at Columbine, escaped unharmed

By Michael Dougan
San Francisco Examiner

Don Jugert was on the tail end of a three-week business trip in Oregon when the store manager said: "You're from Denver? Did you hear what happened?"

Jugert rushed to a radio and listened with horror as the announcers detailed the carnage at suburban Columbine High School — the school his daughters attended.

Twenty-five dead, they said. Did that grim figure include Angela, a 16-year-old junior, or Valerie, 15, a freshman?

Jugert, a 44-year-old division manager for Napa Auto Parts, jumped on a plane to San Francisco to catch a connecting flight to Denver. On his way to San Francisco, Jugert had no way of knowing what had happened to his daughters. "I tried calling my wife, but all the lines were busy," he said.

During the flight, Jugert entertained what he later called "weird thoughts."

He recalled a Saturday two weeks ago when he drove Valerie to the school to see if her name was on the freshly posted list of new cheerleaders. She had tried out before but failed to make the cut.

Valerie didn't want to go. She couldn't stand the pain of learning that she had been rejected one more time. Jugert knew differently. He secretly had visited the school at 6 a.m. and found her name on the list.

He sat in the car and shot video of his daughter as she walked hesitantly to the posting and then shrieked with delight at what she saw. He remembered how, as they drove home that day, she said, "Dad, this is the best weekend of my life."

As the flight continued, Jugert's thoughts turned to hunting and death.

He thought about the first elk he had killed with a bow and arrow. For 10 years, he had hunted the big animals every August without even spotting one. On his 11th outing, he found one and wounded it, then tracked it for four hours to finish it off. He had felt terrible about the suffering he had caused.

Then he thought about Charlton Heston, his former movie idol, now head of the National Rifle Association and a spokesman for the principle of unfettered firearms access. Jugert was an NRA member at one time. He turned in his card several years ago because he didn't like the organization's politics.

Jugert landed at San Francisco International Airport and rushed to a phone kiosk. He called his father in Denver. He called his wife, Char, in Littleton. Finally, he got the words he wanted.

Both daughters were alive and uninjured. He wanted to hug them.

He boarded United Flight 1286, departing at 9:15 p.m. for Denver.

"I'm just glad Valerie didn't have her cheerleader uniform on," he said after takeoff. "I know they would have targeted the cheerleaders."

Valerie knew the group of kids the shooters belonged to — the "Trench Coat Mafia." She "just hated those people," Jugert said.

He said Valerie had been in the school's commons when the shots rang out from nearby.

"They all thought it was a senior prank," Jugert said. "Then a teacher told her to get down.". That teacher promptly was shot twice in the back, he said.

Meanwhile, Angela ran from the school library. It was there that the shooters continued their rampage minutes later.

At home, Char Jugert received a call from a friend in Atlanta who had learned about the shooting on the news. That was Char's first word of it. She tried to drive to the school, but could not get close.

It would be four hours before she learned that her daughters were unharmed.

"My daughters . . . were looking for each other," Don Jugert said. Jugert's plane landed at 12:30 a.m. Char Jugert was outside, waiting for her husband. They began the 50-minute ride to Littleton, where he planned to watch a video of his 15-year-old leaping for joy on the greatest weekend of her life.