Officer who carried dying girl comforts grieving father.

• Author: Gurman, Sadie
• Position: News

Byline: Sadie Gurman

EVERGREEN, Colo. -- Every year on his daughter's birthday, Ian Sullivan visits the grave of the child he lost when a gunman slipped into a Colorado movie theater and fatally shot the 6-year-old as she sat with her mother in the fourth row.

And every year, he finds a birthday card on the headstone from the man who was with Veronica when Sullivan couldn't be: the police officer who carried the dying girl out of the theater in his arms.

Since the 2012 attack, survivors and their loved ones have each sought comfort in their own ways. One wounded couple got married. A father whose son was killed became a gun-control advocate. Others turned to faith.

The 28-year-old Sullivan withdrew, cutting ties to many of those who had been closest to him and retreating to a home in the mountains. But he found a lifeline in the police officer he only knows by his first name, Mike.

The officer still checks in on Sullivan with texts on the days that are the hardest -- holidays and the birthday, Sullivan said.

''It's not so much all he was able to tell me, but more so the understanding that I was not alone,'' he said.

The officer is Mike Hawkins, who declined to comment to The Associated Press, citing a judge's gag order barring attorneys, authorities or witnesses from talking to the news media about the case.

The young girl he scooped up that night was born when Sullivan was 19. At the time, he and the girl's mother, Ashley Moser, weren't necessarily ready for parenthood, he said.

But he was proud when he saw his newborn daughter. ''It dramatically changed my life to have her,'' he said.

The couple divorced when Veronica was 3, but he still saw her regularly. He reveled in their time outdoors. A high point came in May 2012, when she caught her first fish, a trout, and gutted it herself.

On a recent afternoon at his home, Sullivan flipped through photos of her: Veronica on a sandy beach. In a race car. On the first day of kindergarten. She flashes a toothless grin beneath her sandy blonde hair and Hello Kitty earrings.

He pushed a button on a photo frame she gave him a month before her death, and her voice filled the room.

''I love you, Daddy,'' she cooed, stumbling over a Father's Day greeting.

To keep Veronica's memory alive, he tries to do the things he used to do with her -- hiking, skiing, working on cars. She used to hand him wrenches while he was under the chassis, he said.

He tries to stay busy to keep his mind from wandering into...