Lori A. Harrison

During the fight, Lori educated herself about every step of the disease and various treatment options, including clinical trial medications. She impressed her physicians by her approach, her knowledge, and her determination, said her husband John Harrison, her mother Barbara, and her brother Jeff.

“You never give up. You just never give up,” Lori said in July. “You just got to keep on persevering.”

“Lori always called herself a warrior,” Harrison said. “With her cancer, she had taken the oath to fight.”

Lori spent her career working as a journalist, television and print media. Her life highlights involved interviewing former Denver Broncos Quarterback John Elway and Coach Mike Shanahan, climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro and recording the glacial melt there, and a professional passion, solving the mystery of the disappearance of former classmate Roger Ellison, who vanished three months before their high school graduation.

As a journalist, she had ethics, recalled Kathy Jordan, who worked with Lori at the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel.

“She wouldn’t sacrifice a source or someone she had interviewed,” Jordan said. “She would not reveal a source.” Lori also enjoyed writing a humor column.

“She believed in professionalism, telling the truth,” Harrison said, “not having editors tell her what the story should be, and allowing them to insert quotes that didn’t happen.

“She was very proud of the fact that she was a journalist,” Harrison said.

“She was a good reporter, she was a good writer, and she was a good friend,” Jordan said.

In 2005, Harrison had been discussing climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro with his son. After hanging up, “She said, ‘You’re not going without me, buster,’ ” Harrison recalled. So they went together and climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro in October of 2006.

“We found out later that her cancer had returned while we were climbing. We did not know it until later. She was quite proud of that … able to climb Kilimanjaro despite her cancer,” Harrison said. They later toured London and Paris.

“She loved life. She thought it was a grand adventure,” Harrison said. “She was optimistically hopeful for the future.”

Lori Cumpston was born April 9, 1963, in Denver to Barbara and Wesley Cumpston. She was born 18 months after her brother, Jeff. In part because of their closeness in age, Lori and Jeff retained a close relationship over the years. The family lived in Lakewood and Evergreen, until their parents moved to a 17-acre farm in Cedaredge. There, the family owned and operated gas stations, built furniture and raised their own vegetables and cared for farm animals, including chickens, goats, pigs, dogs and cats.

It may have been there that Lori developed her passion for animals, specifically, her love of cats. Jeff Cumpston recalled him and Lori finding 17 feral cats in Cedaredge shortly after they arrived.

“Lori and I set out to tame every single one of them. Sure enough, we got to petting all of them,” Jeff Cumpston said laughing.

After graduation from Cedaredge High School, Lori entered Western State College, where she earned a degree in journalism, a goal she had for years, her mother said. She launched her professional career in Phoenix, as a receptionist, then later as a master control operator for a television station. She eventually became a reporter there. Climbing the television media ladder, she left Phoenix to work as a reporter in Missoula, Mont., then a reporter and anchor in Bismarck, N.D. The 45-below-zero temperatures in North Dakota were “brutal,” she said. She departed after her television contract ended. She moved back to Phoenix and worked in corporate television there.

She moved to Grand Junction to be closer to family before her father died in July of 1997.

In Grand Junction, Lori worked at the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel as a features and entertainment reporter.

One of her favorite stories involved a Telluride woman who had a sanctuary for animals and the woman’s fight against cancer. At The Daily Sentinel, Lori won several state and national writing awards. During this era, she met John Harrison, who worked as the media liaison for a federal agency in Grand Junction. They married June 12, 2005 on the beach at Maui, Hawaii.

She left The Daily Sentinel in March of 2002 to foster a freelance writing business she started in her spare time while she worked at The Daily Sentinel.

During her fight with cancer, Lori reached out to help others with cancer, on Internet message boards and a friend in Paonia, who was also fighting melanoma.

“Lori helped walk (her friend) and his wife through the hard part,” said Cumpston. “Lori was as educated about melanoma as the doctors. A lot of times, she second-guessed them. They listened to her.”

During the seven-year battle, she signed up at the University of Colorado Hospital in Denver to take clinical trial medications, hoping that “each one is going to be the one,” to cure her cancer, she said in July.

“Lori researched everything,” Harrison said. “She learned as much as the doctors.”

“She was like a pit bull,” agreed Jeff Cumpston. “Her determination … The tenacity she had made her so successful in what she did.”

"Lori was truly one of the joys in my life; we were best friends. Lori was also close to her Grammie and Grandpa. They went to visit her in every state she worked in as a journalist," said Barbara Cumpston.

She is survived by her husband John Harrison; mother, Barbara Jean Cumpston of Cedaredge; brother Jeff Cumpston of Grand Junction; nephews, Myles and Dylan, of Paonia; her grandpa Calvin Betz of Louisville, Colorado, and two cats, Rosie and Eleanor.

Arrangements under the direction of Martin Mortuary, Grand Junction, CO.