Colorado Theater Shooting Survivor Marries Officer Who Responded That Day

As People reported, his ensuing rampage would injure 70 people and claim the lives of 12, one of whom was 18-year-old Alexander J. Boik.

As we can see here, Boik would attend the screening with his fiancée, who then went by Lasamoa Cross. In the years before she changed her last name to Lanier, the incident would completely devastate her.

As she would later say in an Instagram message dedicated to Boik's memory, "You know, I never finished college because I had the ambition to be a teacher with you."

But while he told 9News that he felt as though he had failed her, she gathered from the testimony of officers at the shooter's trial that the trauma weighed as heavily on them as it did on her.

So as a way to help both them and herself heal, Lanier wrote letters to several testifying officers.

To Cody, she wrote, "I have always thought of you as a headstrong determined and courageous person for having the amount of strive to serve and protect Gateway, Aurora and your family. Every single day."

As the officer put it when describing his reaction, "I don’t think I made it through three sentences in that thing and I’m tearing up."

And while the two had intended to meet for lunch at Chipotle for an hour to process what they both experienced, that hour turned into four and before long, they felt themselves forming a connection.

In Cody's words, "Beyond that it was just this connection. Every day since she turned into my best friend."

In that time, Lanier would take up photography as a means of capturing happy moments and grounding herself, which she then turned into her own business as a wedding photographer.

In Cody's words, "Beauty from ashes, man. I don’t know what I would do without her."

To commemorate how things started, the couple served Chipotle at their rehearsal dinner.

As Lanier put it on the couple's wedding page, "The story started out so dark and so tragic, but since that day at Chipotle every day since has been the writing of the upmost beautiful and most unconventional love story ever told."

h/t: 9News