But every love story — every true love story — has an element that is worth more than gold — it has true love.
Cole and Niki Thompson lived a true love story.
When Niki Torres was a freshman at Aledo High School, Cole Thompson was a senior, so they weren’t really on each other’s radar.
“In that world, it’s a million years when you’re in high school, when you’re a freshman and somebody’s a senior,” Niki said.
Add a few years and it’s not that big a gap. Cole graduated and attended Tarleton State University. When Niki graduated, she headed to Texas A&M.
During her junior year at A&M she came home for Christmas break. It was 2006 and Niki met up with some friends for a concert at Chimy’s in Fort Worth. While she was there, Cole walked in.
“He walked in the door, and we were together from that point forward,” Niki said.
Cole had traits that drew Niki to him.
“He was a good person. He was kind and handsome and just genuinely good to his core. And so when I talked to him that night, he was very magnetic — people were always drawn to him because he talked to everyone. He was a good person. He was easy to like.”
She joked that what he saw in her was that she was one of his best friends’ kid sister.
Whatever sparked, Niki knew when he walked into Chimy’s that night that he was the one.
When their dating started, Cole was doing oilfield work, overseeing mechanical maintenance, and Niki would drive home from College Station every weekend to see him.
It didn’t take long for an engagement after Niki graduated from A&M.
She described their early married life as a happy time.
“It’s like one of those things where the sky’s the limit,” she said. “We were just trying to figure out the world together. We were both working, not making much money. And those were truly fun days. You know, we got to have a lot of fun when we were first married.”
Their shared life included going to the lake, snow skiing, hanging out with friends, and watching football.
“Cole was a huge hunter, so it entailed a lot of trips to his dear lease,” Niki said, though she was not a hunter herself.
“I think he always probably wanted me to, but I was just along to be outside and to be with him.”
Along with becoming parents (Tagg was the first, Troop was the second), Cole and Niki found ways to serve their community. Niki’s mother, Rhonda Torres, was the founder of the annual Thanksgiving Trot, and Niki jumped right in, serving on the board from the beginning. She also volunteered with the Aledo Children’s Advocats, the PTO, Aledo Education Foundation, and the Parker County Health Foundation.
Cole and Niki were both active members of Aledo United Methodist Church, where Cole served on the board. Cole’s business also sponsored numerous community events.
But the big thing for Cole, once he was a dad, was teaching his boys to play baseball.
“Cole loved baseball,” Niki said. “He loved playing baseball. He got so happy when our first one loved it. I mean, Tagg started up at Aledo Athletics when I think he was three, doing just their little honk ball. And Cole joined the board when Tagg was probably four or five, and he loved it up there.”
When asked what held them together, Niki did not hesitate to say “Cole.”
“I don’t say that lightly — he was truly the anchor of our family. He made sure we were taken care of. He made sure that we were provided for. He was the fixer of everything, be it me, be it the kids. He truly kept us grounded. He was always so steady, so steadfast in everything he did.
“Our faith was always a grounding point. Our marriage was never perfect, our lives were never perfect. It was a great life, but we never were of the mindset that, ‘oh, everything’s perfectly good.’ We were always truly humble in what we did, in our marriage, in our lives. And I think for us, our faith grounded us as a central point and as a moral compass and as a compass to build all the other things around. ‘Are we going to do this? Let’s look at faith first. Is this the right thing to do?’ We it made it not about us, I guess, but about what God wanted us to do.”
On June 4, Cole left the house at about 5 p.m. to take their six-year-old to baseball practice for the All-Stars team. Cole was the head coach.
Niki received a call at a few minutes after six.
Cole’s friend, Justin Hall, called her to say something was wrong, and she needed to hurry to the baseball field.
“Cole just looked at somebody and said, ‘I don’t feel good,’ and collapsed,” Niki said. “And you know, when you’re in that situation, you’re trying to wake somebody up, who would have thought Cole was having the biggest heart attack you can possibly have?”
One person began administering CPR while another called an ambulance.
“They had to bring him back on that field a couple times, and they really were thinking, it’s been a long time without blood.”
Niki had to make a decision, and her faith stepped in.
“He [God] gets to decide if this is the end for him,” Niki said.
At the emergency room, the doctor told her the same thing: “He hasn’t been perfusing blood. We don’t know what we can do.”
Niki replied, “ Do your job. Get him somewhere. I would bet on Cole any day of the week. I would bet on God any day of the week. Give him time. Give God time to figure out if this is what it is.”
A surgery successfully removed the clot that caused the heart attack, but the big question mark was Cole’s brain - he was comatose for a long period of time.
The people from Cole’s group at Aledo Athletics were at the hospital every day, Niki said.
“There was 30 or 35 people that first night, and they waited until Cole got put in a room, and one by one, they went into his room and prayed over him and talked to him and held his hand. And so from then on, he was on life support,” Niki said.
There were prayer chains all over the community, and people even put signs in their yards asking for prayers for Cole.
But a few days later, Niki got the news she did not want to hear after a CT scan.
The doctor said, “This is the worst-case scenario we talked about. If there was a textbook picture for worst-case scenario, this brain snapshot is what it is.”
From that point, Niki’s prayer changed from “save him” to “let your will be done.”
“He never came back to us, ever,” Niki said. “He never came back. He was gone for all intents and purposes. He was just in front of the light, waiting to be let in. And I do believe that. I talked to him and talked to God, and I said, ‘you have to let me know when it’s time. Please don’t make me do this. Don’t make me make this decision.’
“And Cole did, and God did, and our boys got to go tell him bye, and within hours of them going to tell him bye, he got worse.”
Niki was in a bad way, and a doctor helped change her thinking.
“She looked at me and she said, ‘I want to challenge your thinking here. I don’t think you look at this as letting him go. I think you look at this as you’re liberating him to go on to the next. He cannot liberate himself in this situation. You’re going to have to do that for him. And I did.”
Niki said friends stepped in when she was at the hospital with Cole, including putting on a birthday party for Troop. Dads took the boys to baseball, they stepped in to take care of her life at home.
“I didn’t touch one thing around my house for weeks,” Niki said. “It was everything. It was more than I believe one person deserves an entire lifetime — I cannot possibly imagine that I’m worthy of anything else in my lifetime, because it was so much and it was so good.
“It saved me and the boys. It saved us. It continues to save us.”
The community support continues, as Niki was chosen to the recipient of this year’s Marcia Walters Memorial Thanksgiving Trot.
The local event has grown enormously because it is more than a fund-raising event. The Thanksgiving Trot is the way our community comes together to wrap its arms around one of its own.
Learn more about “the trot” at aledothanksgivingtrot.com.
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