BOULDER, Colo. 2025 marks a new chapter for Erika Mahoney. It's the first New Year's Eve she's truly celebrated since her father's death and without a trial looming. Erika's father, Kevin, was one of 10 people killed in the Boulder King Soopers mass shooting on March 22, 2021. This year, Erika is embarking on a new, very personal project a podcast that will weave the stories of people surrounding the shooting together into a conversation about moving forward after tragedy. The gunman pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity, but ultimately, a jury rejected that argument and found him guilty on all 55 counts. He received 10 consecutive life sentences, one each for Neven Stanisic, Kevin Mahoney, Tralona Bartkowiak, Rikki Olds, Denny Stong, Lynn Murray, Teri Leiker, Jody Waters, Suzanne Fountain, and Boulder Police Officer Eric Talley.It was a sense of closure. It gave me answers. I feel like the community was so supportive," Erika said about the trial. To have it behind us is a relief.A journalist at heart, Erika first learned she loved radio when only in third grade. She went on to study broadcast journalism at Syracuse University before working in TV news and then jumping into radio. The very first time I went live on NPR, which was something I dreamed of doing since I was a little girl, was to cover a mass shooting," said Erika. When my dad was killed in a mass shooting [two years later], it was this really wild moment of realizing I'm no longer covering this, I'm living it.As Erika lived through the realities of a mass shooting, she met countless other people with stories of their own. "I realized, as I was reconnecting with people who were also affected by the King Soopers mass shooting that there are all of these incredible stories, and I wanted to share them," Mahoney said. It was mainly moving back and feeling like I could turn my pain into purpose and use my skills as a journalist to talk about this issue... So many places in America are affected by mass shootings, and so my podcast is really looking at what happened in Boulder, looking at it from all different angles, and sharing how it affects so many different people in so many different ways.At a table in her bedroom, Erika has been writing, editing, and interviewing several people as part of her new limited series narrative podcast called "Senseless."Senseless. Its the word we often use after mass shootings in America when people, like my dad, are killed just going about their lives. When bystanders have split seconds to make life and death decisions," Erika says in a promotion for her podcast. I will never make sense of what happened the day a gunman opened fire at a grocery store in my hometown of Boulder, Colorado, but Im trying to make meaning out of it.The podcast will launch this spring, and donations to cover unforeseen costs can be given to the podcast via this fundraiser.