"He came by my work to get some gas money. I knew he was going to the movie. I asked him if I could take him out to dinner. He couldn't because he had to go watch Lasamoa do her hula [dance]."
She took AJ to a Dairy Queen.
"We took the dog and sat out in front of Dairy Queen and ate our ice cream, which we hadn't done since he was probably 3 years old. That's a nice kind of memory to have."
Lasamoa and AJ's friends and teachers held a pep rally for him at the school.
"I am now a single mother of one child," his mother said. "I've lost half of what I was put on this earth to do. He was one of the two best things I ever did and now. My life is basically half of what it was."
Kathleen Larimer's son John was in the Navy, working cyber security.
"The Navy gave us an award for John posthumously," she said. "They went ahead and they created the John T. Larimer Mentoring Award for people now in the cyber fleet who are acting as mentors to others."
The University of Wisconsin at Whitewater, John's alma mater, has named a scholarship after him.
She saw him for the last time on her birthday.
"It was July 2nd. We met for breakfast at Rosie's Diner. He gave me a Buckley Air Force Base mug for my rack at home. I collect mugs. We said goodbye in the parking lot."
She too spent hours of agony wondering what had happened to her son.
"All we know is John was at the theater, and now he's missing," she said. "John was pretty good about leaving his cell on vibrate. It went on a bunch of times between us texting him saying, 'Where are you? Call us.'"
She got the news from her son Noel, John's brother, who was flying to visit his grandmother for her 100th birthday. He changed his ticket to Denver.
"I'm real glad he did," Kathleen said. "Some of the Navy people met him as he was coming off the plane. he called us about 8:15 our time to tell us that John was dead."
John's body was flown to O'Hare Airport, then taken to their home in Crystal Lake, Ill. The route was packed.
"The intersections were blocked," Kathleen said. "People were stopped. Every fire station was outside, hands over their hearts, people in uniform saluting. ...
"I miss being able to talk to him about the big things going on in the world. He was so grounded, he was so aware of so many things. I never go to Chick-fil-A. Long before all that public flack about the owner of Chick-fil-A being anti-gay, John told us about it. 'The owner is using his influence to promote bias and bigotry.' And I said, 'OK, John.' And I don't go to Chick-fil-A anymore."
Kathleen said her large family hasn't been the same since John died.
"We used to get photos, it was once a year. I don't think we'll ever do a family picture. Because every time you look at a family picture, it just jumps out at you, who's missing from that family picture."
Chantel Blunk was the high school sweetheart of her husband Jonathan. They married in 2007 and had two children.
Jonathan was kicked out of home when he was 15, and made his way in the world by being "very hard-working," his wife said.
"Even with the struggles he was going with at home, you never saw it. His walk ... just his walk was very strong. He would lean forward, like he was ready to challenge anything in front of him."
Jonathan was a Navy veteran.
"He could work a 24-hour shift in the Navy and just go, go, go and just come home and he wouldn't go to sleep. 'Let's go to the beach, let's go play volleyball, let's barbecue.'
"He was always just positive and outgoing. If you needed help, he was there."
Chantel took their kids to Nevada to be with her mother, who had been diagnosed with cancer. Her last conversation with her husband was over the phone, two days before the shooting.
"I needed my family back together and he felt the same way. We were talking on the phone and it was a really good talk. He was telling me how much he loved me."
Maximus, their infant son, was "starting to walk."
Jonathan texted her later that he was going to the movies. His boss called her the next day to tell her he hadn't shown up for work at his hardwood flooring job.
"I was on the phone all day calling him, leaving voicemails, texting." She called the list of hospitals published by Colorado media, and described her husband.
"They told me if somebody showed up at my door at 6 o'clock that he was somebody who passed away. I was on the porch waiting. Two vehicles pulled up in normal cars. Regular looking people came out."
Chantel thought they were from a construction company they had just hired to do some work on their house.
"I was about to say hi and they asked for me. I remember stepping back, like, wait, what?
"It was just like, wake up, wake up, wake up."
Now Chantel finds it difficult to leave the house. Her daughter Hailey worries that her mother won't come back, the way her father did.
"Hailey was supposed to start kindergarten that August. I couldn't go anywhere. She thought if I was going to leave, I was gong to die.
"I don't want my kids to be afraid of the world."
Sandy Phillips concluded the day by telling the jury about her daughter, Jessica Ghawi, a "whirlwind, full of energy," who had just landed a sports broadcasting internship with a TV station in San Antonio.
"She was like a little shooting star," her mother said. "When she made up her mind to do something she would get it done."
She learned of the shooting in a phone call from one of Jessie's friends. She screamed as the friend told her she had tried to find Jessie. "I tried," the friend told her. "I tried."
Sandy suffers from PTSD and does not celebrate Christmas anymore. She said she has no "plan for a future."
"I'm not the same person that I used to be," she said. She can't go to a movie, or sit anywhere in a theater seat.
"I can't stand the smell of popcorn," she said.
"My husband is everything. Between the two of us, we hold on."
Prosecutors were to call their final five witnesses Wednesday.
Judge Samour Jr. has tentatively scheduled closing arguments for Thursday.
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