My brother and his colleagues had a very difficult week at work.

It wasn’t for the typical reasons: office politics, difficult bosses, backstabbing coworkers, budget constraints (which certainly are all valid issues that cause many employees to be exhausted and relieved come Friday afternoon). In fact, his week included supportive supervisors, incredible collaboration, deep unity, and profound bonding — the kind of support, collaboration, unity, and bonding most of us will be fortunate enough never to know.

The previous week, they’d conducted a full-scale search and rescue operation for a hiker who disappeared in the vicinity of Mount Harvard. After four days of extensive searching, often in rugged and nearly inaccessible terrain, with no results, the search was scaled back. The hiker hasn’t been found.

On Sunday, my brother, his family, and many friends and colleagues participated in Emily’s Run. This event honors Emily Keyes, killed at 16 by a gunman in Platte Canyon High School (Bailey, CO) in 2006. In the wake of her death, her family started the “I Love U Guys” Foundation to help increase safety in schools; they have also provided scholarships to Platte Canyon students. Every year, Emily’s Parade–which includes the 5K and a motorcycle ride–commemorates Emily and honors first responders.

It’s a cliche to say law enforcement is a tightly knit community, but it’s also true. My brother knows cops who were at Platte Canyon that day, cops who still exchange tearful hugs with Emily Keyes’ parents when they meet. He and other first responders go to Emily’s Run not just out of respect for the Keyes family–although that’s certainly part of it–but to show support for and solidarity with their colleagues who were there. For all the violence and brutality and generally banal evil they encounter, these men and women still are profoundly impacted and even altered by certain situations. Columbine High School was one, Platte Canyon another. Yet another happened this week.

Late Monday morning, a rockslide killed five people and seriously injured a teenage girl. The area was too unstable for crews to retrieve bodies until Tuesday, but by Monday afternoon the coroner had confirmed the deaths; from a helicopter he could see enough to rule out the possibility that anyone remained alive. By Monday evening, the victims’ identities were known: Dwayne and Dawna Johnson, their teenage daughter Kiowa, and their nephews, Beigen Walker and Paris Walkup. Only the Johnsons’ 13-year-old daughter, Gracie, survived. (You can learn more and, if you wish, make a donation here.)

On Tuesday when my brother and his colleagues arrived on the scene, they knew they were conducting a mission not to find people who might still be alive, but to recover bodies whose identities had already been confirmed. They went in knowing that it would be a hazardous operation, that they would be moving boulders and digging through debris while having to remain alert to any sign of more instability. They knew they would find a family dead, the youngest member only ten, and I’m sure some of them knew the Johnsons because, as the news coverage has emphasized, Buena Vista is a small town and the family was active in the community.

That’s what my brother — and other members of the Chaffee County Sheriff’s office, Chaffee County Emergency Medical Services, Chaffee County Fire Protection District, Salida Fire Department, Buena Vista Fire Department, U.S. Forest Service, Flight for Life helicopters, and Buena Vista K-9 unit — did at work this week. That’s what they dealt with, and it’s why they needed to support each other and work seamlessly together. It’s what they will always have in common, a profound bond shaped by an experience they will never be able to forget. And for those fortunate enough to be in strong marriages, it’s an anguish their spouses share.

First responders have chosen careers in which they regularly encounter the worst of humanity. They expose themselves to devastating tragedies, sights that give them nightmares or keep them from falling asleep, emotional burdens that can alienate partners and children and friends, and situations in which they’re physically at risk, whether from a bullet or a fire or a mountainside of loose, mega-ton rocks.

In a week or two, maybe less, the media will chase after another story like ADD bunnies on speed. Buena Vista and its first responders, however, will live with this loss forever. Please keep them in your thoughts and/or prayers.