The day began with a hike through the hills of Spearfish, S.D.

Nicole Arellano-Forgét, now a Colorado resident, was spending the day with her father, Claude Forgét, wandering through Spearfish Canyon and just talking about life.

Around them were the things her dad loved most: the outdoors, trees, birds and the quiet sound of nature.

“It was honestly the happiest I ever saw him,” Arellano-Forgét said.

Little did she know, it would also be the last time she ever saw him.

Three years passed, with the business of life and the miles between them making it harder for the 29-year-old to see her father.

Then, on the late Sunday night of Aug. 17, 2014, he went for a walk at his favorite neighborhood park in Bismarck, N.D.

“He brought a gun with him,” she said. “And he decided that was the night he was going to use it.”

The next morning, she woke to a voicemail from her mother, got in her car and began the 12-hour drive from Greeley to her parents’ home in North Dakota — a home in which her father would never return. 

After 30 years of marriage, her parents had divorced years earlier but had recently found their way back to one another, adding another layer of complexity to the family’s grief, Arellano-Forgét said.

“The grief process is such a roller coaster that I can’t even tell you when healing began,” she said. “In the aftermath of my dad’s passing, it pretty much split the family apart because everyone had their own opinions of what happened, how it happened and why it shouldn’t have happened.” 

With a memorial gathering set for Sept. 27, 2014, Arellano-Forgét and her three siblings faced the unexpected loss of their 59-year-old father.

“Unfortunately, it had been a while since I last saw him and my mom had him cremated before we could say goodbye,” she said. “I felt like I needed a place to go. I couldn’t see him or his grave, so I just felt like he disappeared from the earth. I said, ‘Well, I want a place where I can go to talk and feel close to him,’ so I created a GoFundMe.” 

Arellano-Forgét and her siblings raised $2,500 through the fundraiser, enough to create a memorial bench in the same park where her father died. 

The bench’s plaque reads: “For our father, Claude Forgét, who found pleasure in the pathless woods and inspired us to do the same.”

For a while, the bench gave the family a place to sit with their grief, until it was eventually vandalized and moved to a different area. It was one small answer to a much larger question Arellano-Forgét had begun asking herself: “What happens to the people left behind when someone dies by suicide?”

“When people die by suicide, there’s usually no place to go,” she said. “Most of them get cremated, and you’re just left with those feelings of grief. Wouldn’t it be nice to build memorials or something special for people if they wanted to go somewhere to talk or feel close to their loved ones?”

Back home in Greeley, Arellano-Forgét began turning those thoughts into action.

In 2024, she founded the Suicide Loss Memorial Foundation, an organization focused on creating memorials, offering support through youth programs and opening a community garden. 

With the help of treasurer Celeste Cardenas, who’s also Arellano-Forgét’s longtime friend, the foundation was officially named a 501(c)(3) Colorado nonprofit in 2025. 

“I knew her dad, and I was with her when she lost her dad,” Cardenas said. “I think for a few years, she was kind of isolated and just didn’t talk about it, but when she finally started expressing how she felt, it motivated her to do something. She started realizing there are other people like her going through the same situation.”

According to the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, Colorado has one of the highest suicide rates in the nation, with 883 working-age adult suicide deaths in 2024. 

With men representing 77% of the state’s suicide fatalities, Arellano-Forgét, now a 41-year-old mother of triplet boys, said she is worried for the state’s youth. 

“I don’t ever want my boys to think that’s an option,” she said. “I want them to feel like they can survive and know how to handle their emotions. These kids need to have a safe place and know that they’re mentally resilient.”

Today, the foundation is working to make sure suicide-loss survivors have more than just memories to hold on to. 

To help fund their work, Arellano-Forgét is trying to put a new kind of memorial on Colorado roads: the Rocky Mountain Strong license plate.

The state requires 3,000 signatures from Colorado-registered vehicle owners within a two-year period to make it an official license plate option. Since the beginning of June, the nonprofit has surpassed that threshold, collecting more than 3,600 signatures.

Once the state validates the signatures, the organization will work with Colorado legislators to move the plate through the remaining approval process. Colorado Correctional Industries will then finalize the mock-up’s design and hopefully produce the plate for purchase within the next year, Arellano-Forgét said.

The plate will feature suicide-awareness colors through dark teal mountains beneath a colorful sunrise, with shades of purple, orange, yellow and pink. At the center, a phoenix will rise above the mountains as a symbol of surviving, Arellano-Forgét said.

“You’re rising for another day,” she said. “The colors show that you’re making it through the night and into the morning. If I looked over and saw that on the back of someone’s car, I’d probably just break out in tears. I’ll be so happy if someone feels like this plate resonates with them, so much so that they’d want to spend their extra hard-earned money to get the plate and support our programs.”