Born in China and adopted as a baby, Mulholland grew up attending Boulder schools and practicing the violin.
As a child, she’d spend her Saturdays attending violin lessons before heading out to lunch and then visiting the library — one of her favorite places as a young book lover. As she grew older, she played in school and local orchestras and danced the hula alongside her sister, Liana.
Upon starting at the University of Colorado Boulder, Mulholland pursued a degree in music before switching to computer science and Chinese.
While in college, Mulholland drove around the country and ran all 48 contiguous states with her three high school friends to raise awareness for famous locations across the country as well as for Alzheimer’s research, according to a CU Boulder release.
“It’s hard to put a person like her on paper,” Liana Mulholland wrote in a text to the Daily Camera.
Mulholland continued to excel in running into adulthood, where she began to perform extremely well in ultra distance running. In a recent race in Canada that involved a 10,000 feet incline, she placed eighth out of 110 women, and all the woman in front of her had sponsorships.
“I always wonder how you get to be one of the best and she was one of them,” her father Brent Mulholland said. “She was small but she was tenacious.”
“She just did it all and I think that’s one of the reasons her energy resonated with so many people,” Watts said. “She just had that magnetism.”
Watts said that as an employee himself, he referred Bailee Mulholland to work at Maxar — a top space technology company. Watts said Mulholland was considered a top pick in the hiring process but unfortunately passed away prior to being hired.
“You just don’t happen to be an amazing baker,” Watts said. “You don’t just happen to be a successful software engineer. These aren’t just skills you stumble into… She was a total killer.”
Watts reminisced on climbing the Naked Edge in Eldorado Canyon State Park with Mulholland on April 3, 2022.
Watts said Mulholland texted him the day before and asked him to climb the Naked Edge with her — a climb Watts had done over 15 times before and “a climb that many, many climbers aspire to do.”
He said they arrived very early in the morning and were the first climbers on the route, the air was crisp, and Watts had lent Mulholland his windbreaker to stop her from getting cold.
After the climb, Watts and Mulholland shared two cupcakes he had saved for them. Watts laughed thinking back to the moment and said it was likely the only time Mulholland had received a baked good from him, as she was usually the one baking.
Mulholland’s confident and driven energy was apparent from the frequent color changes she made to hair and her ability to complete complex climbing routes as a new climber.
Trail Sisters, a community of women growing participation and opportunities in trail running and hiking, said in a Facebook post that Mulholland was the recipient of the 2021 Trail Sisters Adventure Grant and a yoga instructor for the program’s retreats.
Watts said Mulholland was “hyperconnected socially,” and that can be seen from the impact her death has had on the community.
A GoFundMe was set up to support Bailee’s family and fund her Celebration of Life. The has already raised more than $17,000.
“To know Bailee is to have been warmed by the best smile and inspired by the most stoke,” the GoFundMe post said. “She was a fixture in the Boulder community for a reason, and she will be remembered with love.”
Memories of Mulholland can be shared on her .
“She was elite among a community of elite mountain athletes and that is truly incredible,” Watts said.
