Denver Post
Outgoing, independent teen wanted only 'to show he was a normal child'
Sunday, July 13, 2003 - He explored the farthest reaches of light rail, rode the bus to Boulder or sometimes just wandered up Holly Street toward the railroad tracks to watch the trains pass.
Despite a seizure disorder and mental disabilities, Paul Childs declared his independence in ways that could confound and exasperate family and friends, who eventually fielded the inevitable phone call from a bewildered boy who'd lost his way. Last weekend, the 15-year-old kid who charmed strangers, neighbors and teachers with his quick smile and easy manner died in the doorway of his mother's northeast Denver house. Police answering a 911 call that he was threatening his mother shot him as he stood holding an 8-inch kitchen knife. The swift use of lethal force - the shots came just 99 seconds after officers arrived on the scene - has triggered outrage among the family and some community activists and launched an investigation into the shooting. Behind the maelstrom of anger and political agendas lies a boy who wanted nothing more than to be one of the guys, according to many who knew him. Sometimes that meant hopping a bus and stretching his personal boundaries. "That's why he took off," says his mother, Helen Childs. "The day he turned 13, he tried to show everyone he was a normal child." But when had Paul been anything but sweetly, frustratingly, touchingly, achingly beyond normal? As she gave birth to him, Helen felt one intense contraction that made her squeeze her husband's hand so hard she broke his thumb. For the next 15 years, she never found it easy to relax a mother's protective grip on the son whose grand mal seizures at 9 months prompted doctors to predict he would never walk and would lose his vision and hearing. Paul proved them all wrong - way wrong - as he roller-skated, swam and biked his way into the lives of everyone around him. He made friends easily, often introducing himself and immediately asking his new acquaintances for their phone number.
Neighbor Willie Harris recalls coming home from work and heading out for an evening jog when Paul suddenly appeared on his bike beside him with a question.
Paul Childs poses with date Mikelle Learned at East High’s prom last spring. Paul was a freshman but was invited by his senior girlfriend.
"Why you running?"
"To lose weight," Harris replied.
"You don't need to lose weight."
For Harris, Paul was a kind, unpretentious kid who restored his faith in humanity.
"Truly, this is a kid who made life worth living," he says. "I don't care who you were, he'd walk up and talk to you like he knew you for a hundred years. There was no pretense."
About a block away, at Ned's Market, manager Jafar Abu Ajamieh admits that he sometimes let Paul leave the store with more candy than the change in his pocket could buy.
"I let him slide," he says, "because he was really a good kid. Polite. I really liked him."
At the nearby Hiawatha Davis Recreation Center at East 33rd Avenue and Holly Street, Paul became a fixture. Most of the time, he came to swim.
"He'd play tag with the other kids in the water," recalls volunteer coach Brian Davis, noting that the center's staff bought him a membership card. "He was never disrespectful."
But in structured situations, Paul got antsy. As the family changed residences and Paul changed elementary schools in the metro area, he went on the drug Ritalin to help his focus.
It didn't work.
"He bounced off the walls," recalls Helen. "It was like giving my baby a pound bag of sugar."
But Paul made strides in special-education classes at Smiley Middle School and East High School. He would never be age-proficient in reading or writing, but with proper medication his behavior improved from what one teacher called "practically uncontrollable" - though never violent - in sixth grade to a more focused student who earned the respect and friendship of his classmates.
"It was amazing, the kind of growth and change we saw," says Gene Bamesberger, who taught special education at Smiley. "He started there as a kid who was dependent - hard to accept limits, hard to control. By the time he was in eighth grade, he had some level of independence, knew how to get around, and was doing some problem solving."
Still, he faced challenges. His vision degenerated to a frustrating degree, until he needed large-print books.
At East, he would need a magnifier to read and often wouldn't recognize friends standing right in front of him. Kids who didn't know him sometimes recoiled as Paul, wanting to be friendly, approached too close.
"You could tell he could see people but didn't know exactly who that person was," says Sarah Hagevik, Paul's special-education teacher at East. "I'm not exactly sure exactly how much detail he could see. He got around fine, didn't have any real mobility issues with his vision. He seemed to function better than the paperwork said he should be able to do."
Behaviorally, Paul could often "shut down" and become unresponsive, or drift into the halls seeking a familar face or, even better, his sister, Ashley - who, though born only 11 months earlier, often filled the caregiver's role while their mother worked.
"When he was having bad days, he sat down and didn't talk to anybody," recalls Mark Perlmutter, an aide in Paul's classroom at East. "Or he'd put his head down and sleep until it was time to go home."
One senior classmate, Billy Ungashick, says he had a knack for bringing Paul out of his trancelike state.
"When he shuts down, I can get him to wake up and listen again," says Billy, who has mild cognitive disability. "You go, 'One, two ...' He knows if we get to three, it's a lunch detention. So he listens."
Paul sometimes amused his classmates, and challenged his teachers, by smuggling either of the family's two Chihuahuas - Chiquita and Bud - to school in his backpack.
When his mother asked him why he did it, Paul had a ready reply: "Bud told me he wanted to learn."
Paul's schoolmates already miss him, and some still struggle to fully grasp the reality of his death.
"There's no way we can get Paul Childs back," says Will Johnson, a student at East who has Down syndrome and lost one of his best friends. "If I could say one thing to him now, I'd say, 'Put the knife down."'
Helen, who beamed with pride when Paul's eighth-grade class gave him a standing ovation at their middle-school graduation ceremony, never stopped worrying about her son.
"One time, he said, 'Mom, you need to stop babying me,"' Helen says. "I was very protective."
Paul's parents never divorced, but after attempts to revive a failing marriage, Helen settled in Denver and Paul Nash Childs Jr. stayed in Chicago, where his son visited him most summers.
In recent months, Helen did loosen her hold a little.
She bought him an RTD bus pass so he could exercise his wanderlust without resorting to his favorite ruse - he'd scam a free ride by bringing along Bud or Chiquita, and then telling the amused or indulgent driver it was his Seeing Eye dog.
Just two months ago, Paul passed another milestone.
In May, he excitedly accepted an invitation to the East High School prom from Mikelle Learned, a 20-year-old student with cerebral palsy who speaks through a computer device.
The two had been boyfriend-girlfriend through most of Paul's freshman year, forging an often poignant relationship. Mikelle, who moves about in a wheelchair, almost constantly had Paul at her side from the time he met her bus at school.
"He always helped her at lunch, helped her get in the building from the bus, pushed her in her wheelchair, gathered all her stuff," says special-ed teacher Hagevik. "It was really pretty neat to see how much he was kind of looking after her."
When they broke up during their on-again, off-again romance, Paul told his mother he was going for a walk. He wound up downtown, several miles away.
Paul told Ashley everything about Mikelle, especially how beautiful he found her. Once, when the couple had a spat, he asked Ashley - who has more legible handwriting - to take dictation, which she can still recite verbatim.
"Dear Baby, I love you so much. I'm so sorry for whatever I've done to you."
"He was crazy about her," Ashley says. "I think they made a good couple. They understood each other. Paul adores people with disabilities, especially people in wheelchairs. And she's just a very, very sweet girl."
Katherine Carol, Mikelle's mother, says her daughter returned the affection, and that the only occasional issue between the two was that sometimes Paul helped her too much.
"It was a first boyfriend for her of any serious nature," she says. "I think they really enjoyed talking with each other. Paul was really good with Mikelle, very patient with her. Lot of people don't want to take the time. For her, it was a bona fide relationship."
On the day of the dance, Paul's mother bathed him from head to toe. Then Ashley applied gel to his natural curls to produce a wavy effect and helped him dress up in his suit.
They took pictures, went to the prom at the Adam's Mark Hotel, stayed out all night.
"I think Paul was the only freshman at the prom," Ashley says.
On Independence Day, the family attended a party with friends. Firecrackers popped. Paul seemed to be having a wonderful time, although Ashley had been noticing over the past week that he seemed to be closing up to her.
"Paul used to talk to me about everything," she says. "But for that last week, he stopped."
The night of July 4, Paul left his bedroom and wandered to Ashley's, where his sister slept on a mattress laid on the carpet. He curled up on the floor and rested his head on the mattress, next to hers.
Ashley awoke first the next morning and just gazed at her brother and thought how innocent and cute he looked as he slept.
But minutes later, and just hours before Paul Childs would die in a tragic police confrontation, things changed.
"He woke up, and he was so depressed, so hurt," she recalls. "He was so aggravated that day. He didn't say nothing to nobody. I don't know what got into him. You could look in his eyes and know he was hurt. It wasn't anger, just hurt.
"It was so unlike Paul."
Helen Childs prepared for her son's funeral with a rite the two used to share - a haircut. After the barber painstakingly shaped a new, shorter style, Helen asked him to do something special: Cut Paul's initials into the hair covering her neck.
He did better. He shaped the boy's name in cursive.
"Paul," says his mother, "touched everybody in his own special way."