DENVER (KDVR) — Sometimes, without ever knowing it, life sends you a message. Marcus Weaver received one loud and clear exactly 10 years ago. He’d gone to see a movie with his friend Rebecca Wingo.
“And all the sudden about 10 minutes in, you just see the smoke going across the bottom row,” Weaver told FOX31.
Turns out they were seated five rows up from a mass shooter.
“And you could see him, as he started firing, you could see his silhouette. And just the pow, pow, pow,” Weaver said.
When the shooter’s gun jammed, Marcus made a run for it. His arms were filled with shrapnel after having been shot twice. He was one of more than 58 people wounded and 12 hurt that night in Aurora. Wingo was one of 12 people killed.
The message he received that night? Don’t take a minute for granted.
“At that moment, I just felt like, you know what, I’m gonna make my life worth something,” Weaver said.
A decade later, ‘excited about life’
For the first time, he had a second chance. And Weaver ran with it. He became a social worker, wrote a book, served on a national board with other mass shooting victims and even started a company — The People’s Pickles — that provides job training to former inmates and others who need a helping hand.
“I’m just excited about life still. Even after all this time,” Weaver said.
But then seven years ago, life sent another message when his wife went into labor on the way to the hospital. He helped deliver their brand new baby daughter — in the car — and on Father’s Day.
“You know, my life seemed like it wasn’t on hold before, I was moving in the right direction, but it just seemed like it spring-boarded, and things just became so much more important,” Weaver said.
The past few years since the Aurora shooting haven’t been easy. The PTSD and trauma, the shooting trial that Weaver sat through, and all the normal struggles of life took a toll on his marriage. And while they’re still great friends, he and Maggie’s mom divorced a few years back.
Trading tragic memory for one of hope
But then, out of nowhere, life sent him another message. Literally.
“I sent him a message asking him out,” Ashley Wheeland told FOX31.
They’d been social media friends for years, but never met until — out of the blue last June — Wheeland sent Weaver a Facebook message asking him out for a drink.
“Then he asked me what it was about, and I said it’s actually a date,” Wheeland said.
Thirteen months, dozens of dates, and one proposal later, Marcus and Ashley were married last Friday at City Park in Denver. They were surrounded by family and friends, and Maggie served as their flower girl.
And from now forward, a week in July he normally associates with the worst day of his life, will now remind him of the best day.
“You know, just being here, and being present in this moment is a lot,” Weaver said.