Whenever Kristina Kinder fell Chris Lawrence was always there to pick her up. When life took Chris for a tumble Kristina would be there for him.
Both teens were veterans of the streets. They came from the school of hard knocks. But neither would give up on life or each other.
For weeks before they found a place to live in Innisfail, the teen couple made do in Kinder's Sunfire car, or wherever they could. But this summer Lawrence took a huge leap forward with his life when he found a job in East Coulee. He was pursing a dream to become a heavy duty mechanic.
Kinder, meanwhile, got a job as a cook in Red Deer's East Side Mario's restaurant. And they got their own place in town, even if Lawrence would be away during the week in East Coulee to work. Life, which for so long looked gloomy and desperate, had at last seen and felt the warmth of glorious sunlight and the promise it held for the spirit.
But that all changed on July 19 – four days after they finally left the streets for a new and real home to live in Innisfail - when Lawrence, at the age of 15, was tragically killed while working at an East Coulee gravel crushing operation.
“My parents came to my work and my dad took me outside. At first I thought something bad had happened to my sister,” said Kinder. “But no it was Chris. My heart sank and I was shattered to pieces. I dropped to the ground, crying and screaming. My mom was hugging me.”
Last week, Kinder, 17, and Lawrence's best friend Bronson Thiessen, 20, were still in a disbelieving daze over the passing of Lawrence, who was always known as a “free spirit” who would do anything for anybody despite an early life that seemed to bring only heartbreak and despair.
Lawrence was born in Red Deer, and as a young child grew up in Penhold until his family moved to Blackfalds. He would later attend school in both Red Deer and Innisfail but the free-spirited young teen finally threw in the towel after his Grade 10 school year, believing life's best opportunities lay outside the classroom.
“He was never going to finish school. He was brilliant but he felt he didn't have to do the work. He was bored,” said Thiessen, who described Lawrence as his “second little brother.”
Many months before Lawrence connected with Kinder at a friend's in Penhold. They started dating. They would more often than not live on the streets. Lawrence, who for so long had a sad habit of hanging around the wrong people and facing meanness at every turn, had found the sweet tender utopian connection of teen love. No matter what the couple's circumstances or what life threw at them, they were inseparable.
“We were free spirits and we did what we wanted and would never settle for less,' said Kinder. “We obviously got into a relationship too fast and everybody thought it was never going to last.
“He always tried to help me achieve my dreams, and I did the same for him,” she added. “He was the best thing that ever happened to me.”
And when their lives climbed out from the mean streets, and hope and optimism finally broke through the endless days of bleak uncertainty, the teens at last were able to look back at each day with ever widening smiles.
“He never belonged there,” said Thiessen of his best friend's life on the streets. “I saw what he could be.
“He was just starting to really believe in himself,” he added. “He had at last found his fighting spirit again.”
