'Every Day Is a Battle'

WHEN TRAGEDIES BROUGHT THEM TOGETHER, EMILY HACKETT-FISKE AND VERMONT REPRESENTATIVE ALYSSA BLACK PUSHED FOR A NEW LIFESAVING GUN STORAGE LAW

- JOHNNY DODD and ALEXANDRA ROCKEY FLEMING

The nightmare that has consumed Emily Hackett-Fiske’s life started with a phone call. She and her husband, Jason, a police officer, were spending time in New Hampshire, two and a half hours from their home in Williston, Vt., when her cell phone rang late one afternoon in September 2020. A neighbor of a relative—with whom her son Ryan Fortin, 12, was staying for the weekend— informed her that “Ryan was hurt and paramedics were working on him, and that we needed to come back to Vermont,” she recalls. “I told myself that he must have broken his leg or hurt his head.”

Within minutes the couple were racing home at 90 mph while Hackett- Fiske frantically made calls to get more details, but no one would tell her what had happened. After speaking with police and noticing that they weren’t directing her to a hospital, she felt nauseated. “I knew what that meant,” she says. “They were telling me that my son was dead without telling me my son was dead.”

Later that evening the devastated mother of six learned that her oldest son had taken his life with an unsecured 9-mm pistol that he’d found in the home where he was staying. “He was the most levelheaded kid,” says Hackett-Fiske, who was later told that Ryan had watched an online video on suicide methods minutes before his death. “We’ll never know what led to this impulsive moment—the most impulsive moment Ryan ever had.”