IN SEARCH OF ANSWERS/ Family, friends wonder why teen didn't reach

0 Comments | Gazette, The (Colorado Springs), Aug 6, 2002 | by Cary Leider Vogrin

Cristy Swanke, 17, was shaking as she stood at the front of the church. She could hear people breaking down as she struggled to speak at the funeral service for her longtime sweetheart, Jeff King.

"Many of you are probably wondering why Jeff did this," she said.

In her hands was a 51/2-page letter Jeff, 18, wrote a few weeks earlier. She looked down and started reading.

"If you are reading this, it means I'm no longer alive."

Jeff's family, Cristy and some of his friends knew about the letter before Jeff killed himself July 26. His younger sister found it a few weeks earlier, tucked among court papers Jeff kept in a folder.

Jeff assured everyone there was no need to worry. He wasn't going to end his life, he said, even though he was having problems with the law.

Since January, police had stopped Jeff five times for speeding and for driving without a license or insurance.

The latest stop, in mid-June, was while he was driving his "crotch rocket" - a yellow, F3 Honda motorcycle. He had outstanding warrants for forgery and for misdemeanor assault, Colorado Springs police said.

Jeff was in and out of trouble since his early teens. It was never anything too major, but his parents, Debi and Terry, subscribed to a "tough love" philosophy and didn't bail Jeff out. Sometimes Debi even turned him in to police.

"I never was the mom who said, 'Oh, that's my son. He couldn't be responsible,'" Debi said.

It's a parenting style Debi, for one, now questions.

As parents in their shoes likely would, the Kings are doing a lot of second-guessing - mostly looking for answers.

They wonder if Jeff thought he couldn't turn to them for help - if he thought he'd have to face his problems alone. They wonder if the tough-guy image he portrayed to his friends finally got to him. They wonder if he was using drugs.

In his suicide letter, in impeccably neat printing, Jeff expressed remorse for his past. He urged his friends to find Jesus.

"What I'm trying to say is that I despise the person I have been my whole life and the person I let myself become," he wrote. "I really wasn't that type of person, and those who really knew me would understand. All my life I've lived in regret of the things I've done. It's pathetic. I deeply hurt my parents, the people on this earth who loved me most, who gave me life."

Jeff's sorrow for his actions - and repeated references to his love for the Lord - makes what happened in the weeks after he wrote the letter all the more puzzling.

His run-ins with the law grew more serious. His mom said he missed court dates. He was hiding from the law and from his family.

On the day he killed himself, police were about to arrest him on suspicion of two attempted armed robberies two days earlier.

Debi King said when Jeff killed himself he was on his way to see her to arrange to "make things right." Detectives stopped the vehicle he was in at Otero Park off Barnes Road, a few blocks from the Kings' home. Jeff had been under police surveillance since that morning.

As detectives were getting out of their unmarked cars to arrest him, Jeff pointed a .44-caliber pistol at his chest and pulled the trigger.

At his funeral Thursday, Jeff's mother stood before the sea of young faces. She pleaded with them to ask for help if they need it:

"Jeff wanted so much to be himself," she said. "You kids - don't be someone you're not. You don't have to impress anybody."

She told them to turn to their parents if they're troubled, and if that's not possible, seek her out.

"You find me - me and Jeff. We'll be there."

'The tiny terror'

Jeff King's earliest years were spent in Yuma, Ariz., where his father - now an analyst for the Drug Enforcement Administration - was stationed in the Army.

When Jeff was born in November 1983, he was a whopping 9 pounds, 14 ounces. When he died, he was a wiry 6-foot-2 and 190 pounds.

As a young child, Jeff spent his days catching lizards in the desert. His dad awoke from a nap one day to find one on his forehead.

In 1988 when Jeff was about 5, the family was transferred to Germany, where Jeff was nicknamed "the tiny terror."

Jeff would prove to be "all boy" and would give his family several scares during the years.

When Jeff was about 18 months old, doctors called him the "little piggy bank" when he swallowed a penny and had to spend 10 days in the hospital because of a resulting infection.

When he was about 4, Jeff tumbled off the top of a bunk bed during a pillow fight with one of his two brothers. He suffered a skull fracture.

About five years after the family moved to Colorado Springs, Jeff slipped on some ice and gravel and got hit by a car.

Cristy was in seventh grade when she met Jeff.

"I thought he was the ugliest thing I'd ever seen," she said. Three months later, she was seeing things differently. "He's sooooo cute," she remembers thinking.

From that point, the two began "dating." For the most part, their relationship stuck, even as they attended different high schools, Jeff at Doherty and Cristy at Palmer.

"We were an on-and-off relationship, but we were way more on than off," Cristy said.