1.Andrew Collier — Direct

ANDREW COLLIER: Andrew Collier, C-O-L-L-I-E-R.

ANDREW COLLIER: Good morning.

ANDREW COLLIER: I am 27.

ANDREW COLLIER: I am.

ANDREW COLLIER: I work at Hendrick Motorsports.

ANDREW COLLIER: It is a NASCAR race team in -- just outside Charlotte, North Carolina.

ANDREW COLLIER: I'm a machinist.

ANDREW COLLIER: I've worked there for seven years.

ANDREW COLLIER: I am.

ANDREW COLLIER: Tory.

ANDREW COLLIER: I was born in Stoneham, Massachusetts.

ANDREW COLLIER: Wilmington, Massachusetts.

ANDREW COLLIER: I did.

ANDREW COLLIER: I went to Shawsheen Elementary, Wilmington Middle, and the Shawsheen Valley Tech.

ANDREW COLLIER: My brothers and sisters, all six of us, and my parents, Kelly and Joe.

ANDREW COLLIER: We did.

ANDREW COLLIER: They were.

ANDREW COLLIER: I do.

ANDREW COLLIER: It is.

ANDREW COLLIER: It had to have been close to ten years ago, maybe more.

ANDREW COLLIER: No problem. Start on the left we have my sister Jen, the redhead. Then we have Brendan, who is my brother-in-law. He is married to my sister Nicole, who is the next one with her eyes slightly closed. We have Sean next, right next to Nicole, behind her; and Jen, the second Jen, that is in front of Joe, my father; Kelly next to me; and I am finally the one in the Bruins hat.

ANDREW COLLIER: Yes.

ANDREW COLLIER: I was about four years old.

ANDREW COLLIER: I am.

ANDREW COLLIER: How old am I now?

ANDREW COLLIER: Then? Probably -- actually, I was probably about 14 in that picture.

ANDREW COLLIER: That would be Sean.

ANDREW COLLIER: Yup.

ANDREW COLLIER: They're about two years apart, I believe.

ANDREW COLLIER: Yup. Sean and I shared a bedroom for quite a while; both Jens shared a bedroom; Nicole being the oldest usually got her own; and Rob had his own for most of the time.

ANDREW COLLIER: Oh, yes, very.

ANDREW COLLIER: We did. Almost all the time.

ANDREW COLLIER: Yes.

ANDREW COLLIER: It is.

ANDREW COLLIER: We both -- we started racing 124-scale slot cars up in New Hampshire.

ANDREW COLLIER: Basically it's, you know, a smaller car. It -- you put it on a track, it runs around, and you basically have a trigger. It's a lot like a lot of kids use the smaller version of them, you know, parents will buy them and they just follow the track around. It's a larger scale of that.

ANDREW COLLIER: It was competitive. We did a couple of weeks through New England.

ANDREW COLLIER: Yes. So we -- through that we started getting into NASCAR. We eventually started racing go-carts together.

ANDREW COLLIER: Sean and I both worked. First Sean got a job at the soccer track, and then I did later on, and we just saved up. I helped fund his first one and I ended up buying my own.

ANDREW COLLIER: About 13, 14 years old.

ANDREW COLLIER: So I -- you know, we'd both work on them and race them. I tended to be a lot better at working on them than driving them and Sean tended to be a lot better driving them than working on them. So we teamed up a few times and had him work on it -- I mean, have me work on it and have him race it.

ANDREW COLLIER: You'd have a range. There were guys all the way up into their 60s racing against us at the track we'd run.

ANDREW COLLIER: It was up in Weare, New Hampshire.

ANDREW COLLIER: Oh, yeah, it was just like -- kind of like NASCAR. You had a point system, you'd race every week, get points, and at the end of the year you could win championships or stuff like that.

ANDREW COLLIER: As I said, I wasn't that great of a driver, but Sean did great. He always was winning races. He made a lot of people mad.

ANDREW COLLIER: Sean was someone that was, I guess, a moral compass, would kind of be a good description. He was always -- it was black and white. What's right and what's wrong. And he was the one always fighting for what's right.

ANDREW COLLIER: I would do something wrong and get a morality speech on it. Or --

ANDREW COLLIER: -- he would always choose to just do the right thing, I mean, down to you can't kill a bug. You have to put it back outside because you can't kill things.

ANDREW COLLIER: Yes.

ANDREW COLLIER: Before I was born, I believe. I mean, as long as I can remember, he wanted to be a police officer. We all kind of thought it was typical little boy wanting to be a police officer, but he never grew out of it.

ANDREW COLLIER: He would, you know, chase around us making siren noises, telling us we're breaking the law. He'd get very excited over seeing a police car, especially one with lights going and all that.

ANDREW COLLIER: He was really coming into just being a -- he was an amazing person and he was just getting better by the day. He loved helping people, he -- we were talking about it last night. It's very rare to have someone that does so much great things and won't talk about it. He just does it and he doesn't tell anyone. And it was really after his death that we found out how many great things he was doing for people in the community and everything.

ANDREW COLLIER: One of the -- I mean, he helped the MIT Outing Club. I remember one story of there was new parents, that the baby was having trouble. He was the first on the scene and he helped them until the ambulance got there. I mean, the parents described it as he possibly saved the child's life. And it was down to he emailed and contacted the parents a week later to make sure everything was all right. I mean, that's something most people don't get out of a police officer.

ANDREW COLLIER: Yes. We were kind of -- I think kind of typical boys where we -- I mean, we didn't talk on the phone every day, but when we did get together, it was like we were never apart. And that's one of the things -- I really felt like we were getting closer and closer and hanging out more and more and building a better relationship as time went on.

ANDREW COLLIER: Yeah. I mean, he was obviously a police officer, but he was also great with computers. And, you know, I'd go to him for stuff like, you know, my computer messed up and I couldn't figure it out. And I was a lot better with cars, he would come to me. But, I mean, even down to, you know, as I said, you know, advice on everyday life, he was great at giving that.

ANDREW COLLIER: Yes. We're a very close family. We go on annual trips and everything every year.

ANDREW COLLIER: That's Sean and I. Sean's on the left, I'm on the right. We're both in our pajamas. We both have our Teddy bears. So I stole -- he named his "Blue Baby," and then shortly thereafter when I was born I stole the name, and we both had Blue Babies.

ANDREW COLLIER: Sean wasn't happy. You know, typical younger brother stealing stuff from the older brother.

ANDREW COLLIER: That's a school picture of Sean.

ANDREW COLLIER: So that was on one of our family trips. It was a cruise, and the stop was in Cozumel, Mexico. My sister Jen, Sean and I all went off on our own. We bought cigars and walked around. We went to a couple of bars like Señor Frog's. And we walked by and they had that little picture booth, basically, and we thought it would be a good idea to sit down and take a picture.

ANDREW COLLIER: Yeah. I mean, we had a good time that day. We eventually ran into a little trouble, but...

ANDREW COLLIER: Excuse me?

ANDREW COLLIER: So that day -- the cruise ship stayed on Ft. Lauderdale time, and of course I was using my cell phone which automatically updates to go by time. So we thought we were being responsible. We went out, you know, we had a good time but we were going to head back early. So we were all excited that we're going to make the parents proud by heading back early and getting on the boat and it turns out since the time change we were getting there right as the boat was about to leave.

ANDREW COLLIER: We did, barely. We were the last people onboard, and they told us they were getting ready to say good-bye to us.

ANDREW COLLIER: We did some hiking as kids up in New Hampshire.

ANDREW COLLIER: That was our last family cruise I went on with Sean. We went on a New Year's cruise. That was one of the formal nights. We were taking a picture with our mom.

ANDREW COLLIER: That was -- I briefly saw Sean over Easter.

ANDREW COLLIER: Yeah, in 2013.

ANDREW COLLIER: Yes. So that was the last time I really took -- spent kind of quality time with Sean.

ANDREW COLLIER: I was at home in Concord, North Carolina, with my wife Tori.

ANDREW COLLIER: I woke up to a bunch of missed phone calls. The last one was from my sister Nicole. I called her back and she informed me.

ANDREW COLLIER: She -- I wasn't really thinking clearly. She told me that they were already working on a flight. She asked if Tori was coming up, which she was. And we basically had to wait in Charlotte for the next available flight.

ANDREW COLLIER: My thoughts were very scattered. It was very much disbelief, that it couldn't be true. Luckily, Tori was there to keep my head on straight.

ANDREW COLLIER: Yeah, every day.

ANDREW COLLIER: It's still a huge loss. It's something that will affect me and my family for the rest of our lives.

ANDREW COLLIER: Yes. I mean, there's always -- even when we're having fun, there's always a cloud over whatever event it is, whether it's a holiday or a vacation.

ANDREW COLLIER: That would be -- that's a really hard question. The only answer I can really come up with on what I miss most about Sean is I miss Sean. I miss everything about him. There isn't one thing that stands out that I can say: That's it. That's what I miss the most.