Cheryl Stumbo, Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle shooting survivor, dies at 63

Cheryl Stumbo, a survivor of the 2006 shooting at the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle and gun violence prevention advocate, has died. She was 63.

Stumbo’s sister, Lauren Stumbo Burkum, confirmed to KUOW she passed on Feb. 14. The cause of death was chondroblastic osteosarcoma, an aggressive form of bone cancer. She was living in Corvallis, Ore. at the time of her death.

RELATED: Victim Of Seattle Shooting Speaks Out For Gun Control

An accidental activist

Stumbo was one of six women shot on the afternoon of July 28, 2006, after a gunman entered the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle's building. One woman, Pamela Waechter, was killed.

In an interview with KUOW in 2015, Stumbo recounted the “normal” Friday afternoon in the office, right before the shooting.

“Things were winding down, some people had left early,” Stumbo said. “The office was pretty quiet, and I was basically just sitting there, waiting for my niece to arrive. My 14 year-old niece, who lives in Oregon, was visiting me for a week.”

Suddenly, Stumbo heard a man’s voice coming from the reception area, just a few doors down from his office. He sounded loud and angry. Stumbo got up to see what was happening, and she encountered the shooter.

“My brain was trying to figure out what’s going on, and how do I solve this problem,” Stumbo told KUOW. “It was so out of the blue, and the last thing I would expect.”

Stumbo ran through all the possibilities of how to respond, and called out for someone to call 911 as loudly as she could.

The shooter began firing immediately, hitting Stumbo at point-blank range in the abdomen. The bullet tore through her small and large intestine as well as her uterus. Over the next six weeks, Stumbo would go through 10 surgeries at Harborview Medical Center in Seattle. Her niece, Kelsey Burkum, also survived the shooting.

After multiple trials, the gunman, Naveed Haq, was sentenced to life in prison in 2010.

After the trials and sentencing, Stumbo struggled.

“I just wanted my old life back, and I tried that for a few years, and it wasn’t working,” Stumbo said.

'This can’t be the new normal'

The shooting had changed her.

Stumbo said she “decided to raise her hand” and start speaking out about gun violence. In the years that followed, she watched other shootings around the country happen, dominate news coverage for a few days or weeks, then fade away.

“Everyone just forgetting about it until the next shooting happened,” Stumbo said. “And I just thought, ‘This can’t be normal. This can’t be the new normal. I feel like I have to do something just for my own sake.’”

Stumbo’s journey as a gun violence prevention advocate started with reaching out to members of the media after the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012, offering to share her perspective as a local gun violence victim. She joined groups like Moms Demand Action,and the Alliance for Gun Responsibility. She also shared her story as a survivor of gun violence through public speaking engagements.

Her mission reached a new momentum when Stumbo signed on to become the citizen sponsor of Initiative 594, which required almost all firearm sales or transfers to be subject to background checks, even in private sales. Almost 60% of voters approved the initiative in November 2014, less than two weeks after a deadly shooting at Marysville Pilchuck High School.

RELATED: Gun Background Checks Just the Beginning, I-594 Supporters Say

State Sen. Drew Hansen met Stumbo during the initiative’s campaign. Hansen said Stumbo was critical to Washington journey from being a place without required background checks for firearms to a state with “strong” gun safety laws.

“State senators make policy, but really, who drives policy are the people of Washington state,” Hansen said. “And Cheryl personally decided to dedicate her life to strengthening the gun safety laws in Washington state. So, God willing, we have fewer mass shootings like the one that she barely survived.”

Renée Hopkins, the CEO of the Alliance for Gun Responsibility, also met Stumbo during the same period. They later worked together after Stumbo became a founding board member of the Alliance. Hopkins described her friend as “a sage, wise human who really used her trauma that she experienced for good in the world.”

Like Stumbo, Hopkins was personally affected by gun violence. Sharing your story is a hard thing to do, Hopkins said, and her friend was willing to do it “over and over and over again.”

“I think [it] takes a really special person,” Hopkins said. “And Cheryl didn’t shy away from it. I have one memory of her even calling me out a little bit because I wasn’t as comfortable with sharing my story as publicly as she was.”

Over the years, Hopkins did get comfortable talking about losing her family members to gun violence, and she admitted part of that is due to Stumbo’s enouragement.

Stumbo went on to work with the non-proft Everytown for Gun Safety, where she taught other survivors how to share their stories for several years before retiring in April 2025. Just a year before, she had been diagnosed with cancer.

'I’m fighting for my peace'

For many, Cheryl Stumbo’s life is synonymous with the act of gun violence that catapulted her into the advocacy work she embraced. But Kelsey Burkum, Stumbo’s niece, would also like her aunt to be remembered for her appreciation of red shoes, a well-seasoned meal, and nail polish.

Growing up, Burkum and her brother would take trips up from Oregon to visit their aunt in Seattle each summer. They went through a kind of “city camp.” Stumbo exposed her niece to Seattle’s art world, which inspired the future jewelry maker, tailor, and performer.

Burkum was 14 years old when, while walking to her aunt’s office at the Jewish Federation building, she was held at gunpoint by the shooter and ordered to let him into the building. She was still a teenager when she testified in court during the gunman’s trial.

After the trial, as her aunt found and developed the kind of advocacy she devoted herself to, Burkum had a difficult time finding her own way to process what had happened.

“That was something that I think made it a little hard for my aunt and I to come together about advocacy, while we both inspired each other,” Burkum said.

It was hard to be involved in the same kind advocacy work her aunt did because of a “lack of care” for victims within the field, Burkum said. At the time, most resources for gun violence were geared toward veterans, she said. Rehashing the shooting at speaking engagements, in high school, and in scholarship essays was not helpful to Burkum.

“There’s a lot of systemic things that really wanted me to be a showcase for how someone could withstand trauma and be OK, and I didn’t want to do that in advocacy,” Burkum said.

As she got older, Burkum found her own ways to support survivors that healed her mind and body. Today, Burkum works as a fashion designer living openly with Dissociative Identity Disorder, and she designs clothing for people with sensory sensitivities.

“I’m fighting for my peace,” Burkum said. “I haven’t found peace, and I want it. I deserve it. That’s truly so much of the purpose driving [what] I have.”

A new life, again

After her sister’s cancer diagnosis, Lauren Stumbo Burkum said Cheryl put together a bucket list.

Some of those items on the list were ticked off. The sisters traveled to Scotland together, inspired by Cheryl’s love for the sweeping historical fantasy book series “Outlander.” She rode a horse, met the journalist Nicholas Kristof, and only drank wine from bottles that cost $20 or more.

Lauren said staff members at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center and UW Medical Center told her sister she had the best attitude of any patient.

“So many people had told me I was going to die,” Cheryl Stumbo said. “I’m not going to act like it.”