Itap been almost a year since Boulder resident Karen Diamond died from the burns she sustained in the antisemitic terror attack on the Pearl Street Mall last June. For her husband, who survived the attack, life will never be the same.
“Itap extremely difficult to fully recover emotionally,” Lou Diamond said. “In fact, itap impossible.”
On June 1, 2025, Lou and Karen Diamond, were walking along the Pearl Street Mall to raise awareness of the hostages in Gaza when an explosion of Molotov cocktails in an antisemitic terror attack left them covered in third-degree burns.
Lou Diamond suffered from third-degree burns covering about 20% of his body, on both of his legs and on one of his arms. Karen Diamond’s burns were more extensive, covering about half of her body. Thirteen people, including Lou and Karen Diamond, were burned during the attack.
The two were admitted to the UCHealth Burn and Frostbite Center at the University of Colorado Hospital in Aurora. While Lou Diamond would recover from his injuries, his wife would not. Karen Diamond spent three weeks being treated at the hospital before dying from her injuries on June 25.
“There’s hardly anything more horrific that could happen to a person,” Lou Diamond said. “Itap a horrible tragedy.”
Lou and Karen Diamond were married for 58 years and lived in Boulder together since 1986. The two met at a party in Baltimore in 1966, when he was a graduate student at the University of Maryland, and she was working at an architectural and interior design firm. They married in 1967 and moved a year later so Lou Diamond could accept his first job at the University of Kentucky. Karen Diamond left her job at the Baltimore design firm and started what would become a successful interior design business of her own in Kentucky. They had two sons: Andrew Diamond, who was born in 1970, and Ethan Diamond, who was born in 1971. When her husband got a new job at the University of Colorado School of Pharmacy in 1986, she closed her business in Kentucky and started it up again in Boulder.
“She did it all for my dad so she could help support my dad as his career developed,” their son, Andrew Diamond, said. “She always found a way to keep working and doing meaningful work for people and bringing beauty into other people’s lives.”
She was also a member of the American Society of Interior Designers, and through her work, knew almost everyone in Boulder, Lou Diamond said. When she retired, she continued to help people, often providing free guidance for those figuring out how to downsize from their homes to retirement communities.
“She was beautiful, smart, fun-loving and generous, an interior design whiz and a master chef,” Lou Diamond said. “She was a ready volunteer for anything and everything, but devotion to family always came first, and most of all, she loved doting on her grandchildren. As I often have told my two sons, she was quite simply the best woman I’ve ever known.”
Andrew Diamond said his mom was the epitome of selflessness. She was always concerned about other people and was a loving, devoted mother and grandmother.
“Everything she did, she did with love for everyone,” Andrew Diamond said.
Karen Diamond was also an active person in excellent health, placing fourth in her age group at 82 years old during the Bolder Boulder just six days before she was attacked on the Pearl Street Mall. She also had a deep love of music and the arts.
“She was a person who really appreciated beauty, not just in design but in art and music, and loved going to concerts,” Andrew Diamond said.
The Colorado Music Festival will hold a concert in memory of Karen Diamond at 7:30 p.m. July 30 at Chautauqua Auditorium in Boulder. For more information, visit .
UCHealth Burn and Frostbite Center
Two weeks after Karen Diamond’s death, Lou Diamond was released from the hospital.
During his five weeks in the burn center, Lou Diamond underwent daily hydrotherapy wound care and had surgeries to remove the burned skin and do skin grafts, where the skin from his back was removed and applied to the burned areas of his body. He was “exceedingly uncomfortable,” he said, and he was continually given opioids and fentanyl to ease the pain.
Lou’s recovery has been “phenomenal,” said Dr. Arek Wiktor, the director of the UCHealth Burn and Frostbite Center. Because of his age, 84 at the time of the attack, Lou Diamond’s projected mortality risk was 25% to 30%, meaning at least one out of four or one out of three people in Lou’s condition wouldn’t have survived. He will turn 86 on July 13.
“Lou had a sparkle in his eye, and I could tell he was a fighter,” Wiktor said. “He was obviously in pain and recovering from his wounds, but he wanted to get better as soon as possible and was asking really good questions. He wanted to know what the steps were; he wanted to know what he could do to get better.”
Established in 1976, the is the largest and oldest burn center in the Rocky Mountain Region thatap , Wiktor said. It serves eight states for burn care: Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, South Dakota, North Dakota, Kansas, New Mexico and Nebraska, admitting more than 600 patients per year. All of the victims in the Pearl Street attack who had burn injuries eventually came through their burn clinic for treatment, Wiktor said, but only Karen and Lou Diamond were admitted at the burn center as inpatients.
“I give them a huge amount of credit for the fabulous medical care I received and the compassion and empathy they showed for both me and my wife,” Lou Diamond said.
The burn center is its own freestanding unit and does everything in-house. It has a therapy gym and clinic, along with a multidisciplinary team of physicians, surgeons, nurses, nurse practitioners, physician assistants, a dietitian, a pharmacist, a physical therapy and occupational therapy team and a psychologist.
“We’re a very integrated center that really focuses on getting people not just healed from their wounds, but back to their initial quality of life and function as much as possible,” Wiktor said.
Andrew Diamond, who is a physician himself, said a burn unit is one of the most emotionally trying places in a hospital.
“Itap where you see some of the most horrifying, saddest things that happen to humans,” Andrew Diamond said. “Itap an extremely difficult place to work and to be at all. The people who decide to devote their lives to that kind of medicine have decided to work in a place where the outcomes tend to be very, very disturbing, and the kinds of injuries you see are so harrowing. It really takes a special kind of person to work there, and every single person we interacted with was incredibly kind.”
Andrew Diamond is also grateful for the remarkable care his parents received from the first responders and Boulder Community Health before being transferred to the burn unit. The burn unit team did an incredible job of managing almost an infinite number of challenges, he said. Burn care affects every organ system in the body, not just the skin, making treatment and recovery complex.
“Itap so rare to find people who are just so skilled in so many ways and are so devoted to their jobs, working these incredibly long hours on weekends and taking such comprehensive care of their patients,” Andrew Diamond said. “Itap amazing.”
Burn care is slow and methodical, Wiktor said, with patients often staying in the burn unit for months. Because of that, the medical team tends to develop strong relationships with patients and families.
“The bonds you develop with your patients in this specialty, I think, are very special,” Wiktor said.
Bolder Boulder
After the attack, Lou Diamond had lost all muscle strength and couldn’t stand on his own. He could eventually hold onto a walker, but couldn’t walk. Over time, he learned how to walk with the walker and eventually a cane. Once he was released, he would gradually increase the distance he’d walk, and within several months, could walk a mile or two.
Lou Diamond has competed in the Bolder Boulder every year since 1987. When he was recovering in the hospital, Wiktor would constantly tell him that he wouldn’t break his nearly 40-year streak of completing the Bolder Boulder and that he’d be able to do it.
“I thought he was trying to humor me, obviously,” Lou Diamond said. “If you can’t stand up, itap hard to imagine running again. But Arek kept that refrain up every time he saw me.”
And Wiktor was right. On May 25, Lou Diamond, his sons and his grandsons completed the Bolder Boulder with a group of more than 30 people from the burn unit, who made matching T-shirts and came out to do the race with him.
“I’ve done the Bolder Boulder before, and I know how fun a race it is, but I also wanted to be there to support Lou,” Wiktor said. “He’s my patient. I took care of him for months, and for the months after he was discharged from the burn center. I think we developed a close bond, and I wanted to support him. It also felt great to know that we were able to come this far from his injury to where we are.”
Andrew Diamond said he and his family continue to grapple with what happened during the attack. They oscillate between the happiness of his dad’s survival with the support of the burn unit and the overwhelming tragedy and horror of the attack and death of their mother and wife. His dad is deeply sad, he said, and mourns the loss of his wife and life partner every day.
“For him, every day is a question of ‘What am I living for now?’” Andrew Diamond said. “He’s 85 years old and almost 86, and his life is so sad as a result of this. Itap awful. And yet that day he was able to do what he did, which was come around that corner and finish the race in Folsom Field — this thing he’s done annually for 38 years now — he did it because the burn team saved his life and saved his legs.”
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