A former KAZU journalist finds power in telling her story on her own terms.

Sara Rubin here, wishing that I was here to tell a story of triumph, about a local journalist who’s taking her career in a creative new direction. Well, that is today’s story, in many ways—Erika Mahoney, a former news director for KAZU radio and before that a TV reporter at KION, is the host of a new podcast that launched today, called Senseless. That is indeed worthy of celebration.

But as the title suggests, it gets at something far darker. Mahoney was at work at KAZU on Monday, March 22, 2021. It was a pledge drive day, and she was surprised to get a call from her mom in Boulder while she was live on the air. 

But that call, and the horrible real-time process of learning about a shattering reality, is unfurled in vivid, heartbreaking detail in Episode 1 of Senseless, which premiered today. 

As listeners will learn, Mahoney’s father, Kevin Mahoney, had gone shopping at King Soopers, a grocery store in his Boulder neighborhood. After unloading groceries into the trunk of his car, he went to return his shopping cart. A gunman was firing at strangers. 

Mahoney’s dad wasn’t answering his phone. Her brother, at the time a medical resident in Wyoming, started calling around to hospitals. The stomach-turning worry just got worse and worse, until the Mahoneys learned that the man they loved, who’d simply gone to run an errand, was dead. 

“I still talk about my dad in the present tense—he’s still the best dad,” Mahoney says. “He and I were extremely close. It’s still hard that I couldn’t say goodbye.”

She went through loss and joy in close proximity; she was six months pregnant with her first of two children at the time. 

Instead of working as a reporter covering someone else’s, she was living the story. Mahoney decided to turn a journalistic lens on herself.

“When I started doing intense grief therapy work, one of the first things my therapist had me do was tell her my story,” Mahoney says. “I was so worried I was going to tumble into this dark cave. The end result was the opposite; I felt so much lighter.”

This is where the story turns back to celebration. Despite her grief, Mahoney is still thriving. She left KAZU and in 2024, moved back to her hometown of Boulder. She purchased podcast equipment herself and just started interviewing people—her own mom, husband, brother and other people affected by the shooting. She attended the trial. She found production partners in former KAZU news directors Krista Almanzan and Jerimiah Oetting (also a former Weekly intern). She landed with a professional podcast production company, Lemonada, whose founder Stephanie Wittels Wachs lives in Pacific Grove.

The first episode is deeply specific. But these specifics speak to an all-too-universal truth in America. “You don’t have to be affected by a mass shooting for this show to resonate with you,” Mahoney says. “No one goes through life unscathed.”

Senseless is less about gun violence than it is about grief and working through it—it is a story of resilience.

“There is something really powerful and healing about telling your own story. It’s been pivotal in my healing process to do this project. Knowing that it could help other people is what motivated me to keep going.”

Erika, I’m so glad you’re still going and creating. Thank you for sharing your story with us.