Inside Keri Riddell’s West Plano home, T-shirts proclaiming “I’m With Shea” cover nearly every inch of the dining room table. “I’ve Got Shea’s Back,” they say. “Stand Up. Don’t Stand By.” Sorted and piled high, the shirts are ready to be shipped to members of “Shea’s Army,” a growing force of anti-bullying advocates who’ve been touched by 18-year-old Shea Shawhan’s case of extreme bullying.
For the many who’ve followed Shea’s story, the neon-colored shirts and the “I’m With Shea” slogan are instantly recognizable. After a whirlwind of media coverage, including appearances on Fox 4 News and The Glenn Beck Program, the Plano West Senior High School junior gained national and international attention. Tens of thousands loudly and proudly proclaim to stand with Shea, but one member of Shea’s Army is louder and prouder than them all: Shea’s mom Keri, who’s had Shea’s back from Day One.
When complications during birth deprived Shea’s brain of oxygen, causing damage to her frontal lobes, pediatricians offered a bleak prognosis. Keri, however, refused to be negative. Even as a new mom of just 19, Keri chose to hope for the best. While Shea progressed physically, she lagged behind developmentally and suffered from a seizure disorder. Today her mental capacity is that of a third- or fourth-grader, and she struggles with life-threatening seizures, low IQ and developmental delays. “The seizures are tough,” Keri says. “The disability is tough. Fighting the schools, not knowing what your rights are … I’m still behind the 8-ball, and I’m probably one of the biggest advocates of all mothers.”
The disability also makes Shea an easy target for cruel peers. Pretty, shy and soft-spoken, Shea has always been generally well-liked, Keri says. But as she’s gotten older and more attractive, the teasing has escalated. “It’s those few bad apples that would call her ‘shaky girl’ or ‘earthquake girl,’” Keri says of Shea’s middle-school high years.
However unkind, those taunts seem downright genial compared to what Shea endured this past year: a slew of vile text messages that catapulted her and her outspoken mother into the limelight while wreaking complete havoc on their lives. Bullying, in fact, isn’t a strong enough word to describe what went on. “Go kill yourself [expletive],” one message read. “Shea should just have one of her [expletive] seizures and die.”
For months the sadistic missives rolled in, threatening violence, rape and death. Sent via a web application, the numbers were untraceable, giving the perpetrator anonymity and injecting an added element of fear. Each time her screen lit up, Shea sank deeper into depression. Her seizures, triggered by the stress the messages caused, increased in frequency and severity. Fed up, Keri turned to school authorities and police for help, only to have her concerns dismissed.
The mom, who’d spent the past 17 years protecting Shea, was livid.
From Keri’s battle with thyroid cancer six months after Shea’s birth to the many nights spent weathering terrifying grand mal seizures, the mother-and-daughter pair rode out life’s ups and downs side by side. When Shea was just a baby, Keri and Shea’s father divorced, and while he remained dedicated to Shea, Keri felt the weight of life as a single parent for more than a decade. “She’s always just been my little buddy,” Keri says, remembering long hours in the office, Shea playing at her feet. “You can’t mess with her, because you’re messing with me.”
In 2009 the twosome became a threesome when Keri remarried, and a foursome two years later when London, now 3, was born. The family dynamic has changed, but one thing has remained the same: Keri’s role as Shea’s staunchest advocate. Between hours spent researching programs and services to dollars spent attending seminars, it’s a role she takes seriously. So when the bullying came to light, Keri refused to take it quietly. She made it her mission to show the world she stood with Shea. “I said, ‘I’ll be up here every day until this person is found.’ That’s what started the phrase,” she says. “I said, ‘I'm going to let the school know I’m with Shea. And if someone has a problem with her, they have a problem with me.’”
For weeks Keri left her job in sales at auction.com to drive across town and eat lunch with Shea. She sacrificed valuable hours in the office, using all of her paid time off, begging her boss for leniency. While school authorities remained conspicuously quiet, Keri grew louder and louder. To bring attention to the issue, she made the now-famous T-shirts and created an I’m With Shea Facebook page. When news outlets picked up the story, things erupted.
Today, the Facebook page has collected more than 85,000 likes, and the I’m With Shea initiative has evolved into a full-blown movement. Recently, Keri filed for nonprofit status. She hopes to create awareness and help other parents learn to become effective advocates. “You have a right to advocate for your children, especially if they have special needs,” she says. “I'm the person who speaks up if I see [bullying] happening, because they need a voice and mine’s loud and obnoxious. It demands attention.”
Keri’s persistence eventually paid off. In October, Plano police were able to locate the IP address the messages were originating from. In a stomach-churning turn of events, the individual turned out to be a close female “friend” of Shea’s. (This individual, a minor, is being charged with harassment, a class B misdemeanor, according to Plano Police Department spokesman David Tilley.) The deception was hard to swallow; Keri literally vomited upon hearing the news. “It was a constant anxiety that this person knew they were causing for our whole family,” she says, stopping and realizing – perhaps for the first time – that the nightmare is over. “That’s weird,” she says. “That’s the first time I thought about that. This little period that we haven’t had it … the time before was just sickening.”
The family is enjoying relative quiet these days, reflecting on what they’ve learned. Shea says she sees that she’s not alone, that there’s hope. “I know there’s a lot of pain in bullying,” she says. “The bully might seem strong, but when it comes down to the core, they’re not very strong at all. They’re hurt and they don’t know how to say it.”
As for Keri, she’s learned just how powerful one voice can be, and while the ordeal exposed the ugliness people are capable of, she learned that good does still exist. “As Shea got older, people became more cruel to her, and we became more enclosed,” she says. “Like a turtle, we kind of lived in our own little shell. People are cruel, but this showed me that there’s still a lot of good.”
For tips from Keri on combating bullying, visit thriving-blog.com.
Published February 2014
