Whether reporting and writing stories for The Denver Post or exploring the outdoors she loved, Colleen O’Connor seemed perpetually propelled by natural curiosity, infectious good cheer and an empathy that permeated her life and work, family and friends recalled Thursday.
O’Connor, 60, died Wednesday night after being struck by a vehicle at a Denver intersection. Her death stunned the newsroom where for more than a decade she had chronicled everything from cultural trends to Syrian refugees to her recent piece on the closing of a neighborhood restaurant.
Whatever the topic, O’Connor preferred to zero in on the human element — a choice just as evident in the way she interacted with colleagues.
“She brought to work that same empathy she brought to the stories she chose,” said Post Editor Lee Ann Colacioppo. “She would gravitate to those who were struggling, where equality was an issue. She was so interested in what people were going through and how they got there.”
Denver Post colleagues remember Colleen O’Connor
Although a very private person, O’Connor hinted, in a thumbnail biography she wrote for the Post, at a many-faceted personal history. She grew up in Southern California loving the beach and working at Disneyland “putting faces on Mickey Mouse pancakes.” She loved Nordic noir drama and snorkeling in Maui.
O’Connor graduated from the University of Redlands with a degree in English and communications and later worked as a freelance journalist in Germany, covering stories in post-Communist Europe from economic and political reunification to abuse in Romanian orphanages.
She moved to the Dallas Morning News in mid-1990s but eventually found her way back to California and spent seven years freelancing for magazines, including People, before joining The Post in July 2004.
Ray Rinaldi, the features editor who hired her, found that whether O’Connor was pursuing a broad trend piece or a specific news angle, she “always found the soul of the story.”
“There was a real duality to the way Colleen worked,” Rinaldi said. “She was a journalist first, always objective, and wrote about things that had great news value to the community. But she was also able to go deeper, to get people to open up and tell stories they wouldn’t tell other reporters.”
The catalog of her work hits diverse notes. She explored mental health issues in the black community, the resettlement of Syrian refugees, Coloradans who had a same-sex wedding in Nepal. She visited with noted author Gay Talese as he researched what became a controversial book about a hotel owner’s voyeurism.
Colacioppo noted that O’Connor was a model of adaptability in a rapidly changing industry. She adjusted not only to changing technologies, but to shifting demands as she moved from features to the city desk to food writing — an entirely new subject for her on which she proved a typically quick study.
Recently, she shifted back to the city desk and its fast-paced tempo.
“She approached it all with a sense of calm and enthusiasm, all at the same time,” Colacioppo said. “This isn’t somebody who complained about the changing nature of the business, but rather embraced it.”
Noelle Phillips, who arrived at The Post two years ago, immediately took note of O’Connor’s deft, empathetic approach to her craft and her eye for detail in fleshing out stories beyond mainstream news coverage — “real people stories.”
“‘Compassionate’ is the word I keep coming back to with her storytelling,” Phillips said. “I could tell she listened and really observed people she was interviewing. You could see that come through in what she wrote.”
She paid equally close attention to what others wrote. Quick to compliment a colleague’s story, she would always follow up with a specific detail that underscored her close reading.
Her attention to others went beyond the professional realm to simple, everyday observations — the color of an outfit, a piece of jewelry, a new hairstyle, recalled Vikki Migoya, a former Post editor who worked closely with O’Connor.
“She brought a simple grace, a kindness and a thoughtful outlook to a newsroom that can be a very anxious and demanding place,” Migoya said.
O’Connor remembered her co-workers’ pursuits and passions and responded generously — presenting garden clippers to a rose enthusiast, healthy cookbooks to a dieting colleague, 15-inch needles to an aspiring knitter.
“‘Let’s fire up the 15s!’ she’d say when she wanted to get together to work on projects,” recalled Leanna Efird, a page designer at The Post.
Elizabeth Hernandez, one of the Post’s more recent newsroom hires, got to know O’Connor when the veteran journalist approached her with a desire to serve as a mentor. In the wake of staff cutbacks that jolted the Post, she told Hernandez she understood how hard the business could be and wanted to lend support.
“The joke is that all reporters are cynical,” Hernandez said. “I’ve never met someone so genuinely kind.”
Last week, O’Connor had dinner with Phillips and Hernandez at a restaurant at Denver’s Union Station. At the end of the meal, O’Connor stealthily picked up the check as she excused herself to use the restroom — pleased that the meal would be her treat.
What they didn’t realize until later, though, was that O’Connor had mistakenly grabbed Hernandez’s credit card off the table as well, and used it to pay the bill. The next day, when Hernandez asked her if she might have accidentally taken her card, O’Connor was aghast — and quickly settled accounts amid the laughter.
O’Connor, who lost a brother last spring, was particularly close to her younger sister, Carol O’Casey of Bend, Ore., who visited just weeks ago. They hiked the area around Rocky Mountain National Park and took in the Perseid meteor shower lying on a blanket on a crisp mountain night.
“She loved being in the wilderness, disconnected from technology and immersed in the beauty of nature,” O’Casey said. “She was my sister and my best friend — a gentle, wise and caring soul. She was my confidante, my hero.”
O’Connor also is survived by her mother in California.
Political reporter Joey Bunch considered O’Connor one of his closest friends in the newsroom, having started at The Post at about the same time. Last week, they ran into each other by the soda machines and shared thoughts about the future of journalism and their role in it.
“She said something about people like us don’t just belong in journalism, we belong to journalism,” Bunch said. “That was the last conversation we had. Right now she’s working on a feature about why Heaven is heaven.
“I would envy her style.”
Arrangements are pending.
