James Helm
speaker
155 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard May 2025
last heard May 2025
James Helm’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
James was, in many ways, one of the core members of this group of kids. As an adult, he remembered them fondly, and the feeling was mutual. According to everyone who knew him around this age, James was well-liked by kids, teachers, and adults alike. He was even known to have a lot of empathy for a kid his age.
A neighbor, Catherine Barrett, would later talk about a time when all of the neighborhood kids went to a water park together.
they had been waiting in line forever but finally they had made it to the front however when they did one of the workers told james's little sister that she was too small to ride the ride but instead of leaving his sister behind james told her that's okay i'll stay with you he then put his arm around chris and walked her back down while the other kids went on the ride many neighbors recounted that chris looked up to james and that even when she was too little he always made it a point to include her in their games
For the next few years, James seemed to be doing really well. He was an excellent student at Castroville Elementary and was always on the honor roll. One of his teachers, Ann Hestand, remembered him vividly. She told several newspapers that he was intelligent, smiling, active, helpful, and sweet.
In addition, she noted that he wasn't extroverted, but he also wasn't really introverted either, and he was actually pretty popular with his fellow students. Another teacher, Paul Carer, stated that James was balanced, like a Renaissance kid, meaning he was very well-rounded and curious. Now, he was in Mr. Carr's classroom from the age of 10 to 11, and he showed zero red flags.
That year, he and another student were given special privilege to create a class website using a computer code that they had become enamored with learning about. This was in 1998, when coding wasn't on most kids' radar whatsoever. So James Holmes was a student who really stood out. However, according to James himself, it's around this time when dark thoughts began to infiltrate his mind.
Now, in the year 2000, shortly after these violent thoughts began to pop into James's head, he got some unfortunate news. His parents decided that they were ready to move back to San Diego. This time, it was Arlene's parents who were sick. And luckily for them, Bob was even offered a job in San Diego, so it was an opportunity they couldn't pass up.
But this time around, moving was a lot harder for James. At 12 years old, his whole life was in Salinas. He already had his friend group established. He was familiar with his school and he was involved in different sports. But one night, his parents sat them down and told them they were leaving.
And to make matters worse, there were only two weeks left of school and James wouldn't be able to finish out the school year with his classmates. No end of the year parties, no summer neighborhood hangouts or anything. He would now have to start his life over in a city where he didn't know anyone.
After moving to San Diego, James was really struggling. Without any friends in the city, he spent that summer completely isolated. He would later say that other than spending time with his family, he mostly sat alone in his bedroom closet reading books. He also played video games and watched television. His mother encouraged him to play with the neighborhood kids, but he didn't show any interest.
Then, soon enough, the school year began. James was starting the 7th grade. Now, according to him, he did make some friends who invited him to play a game called Magic the Gathering. He was grateful to be invited into the group, but he said that he felt really awkward around them.
One of the boys from this group would later say, Jimmy was very quiet, very soft-spoken, not warming up or even talking to you until you get to know him. James himself said that he was painfully awkward around this time.
He said that he often turned to video games for an escape, and at home, his parents noted that he was irritable and unwilling to talk to them, which is pretty common around this age. But his mother Arlene said that he couldn't even talk to people on the telephone. Every time the phone was handed over to him, he would just freeze up, unwilling to speak.
She would even make him scripts to use during the phone calls, but still, he couldn't do it.
Dr. Reed wrote, There's a lot of psychological evidence that Jimmy was afraid of letting his angry feelings get out of control, that those emotions might hurt others or drive them away. That's a routine childhood fear shown in different ways by children of all ages, and it was of great concern to Jimmy.
For example, like all kids, sometimes he got mad at his mother and sometimes he felt that he hated her. He was so afraid of those feelings or that he would lose control that he made a pact with himself never to hate her. It wasn't acceptable to be angry at her, he told me. If a kid gets really angry at his mother, she could treat you differently and maybe ignore you.
He wants to know how graphemes are mediated in spatial frequency channels.
When James started college at UC Riverside, he moved into the Pentland Hills Residence Hall, a freshman dorm building. And while there, he really thrived. His grades were phenomenal, and he even met a group of friends that he grew close to. Ryan LaCroix, one of his best friends during his years at UC Riverside, said that James was shy, but that he fit in well with their friend group.
They spent most of their time together playing Mario Kart, watching Lost as it premiered every week, and going on fun trips together. James went snowboarding, out to dinner, on hikes, and played video games late into the night with his friends. While his friends liked playing Halo, they recalled that James wasn't a fan of aggressive first-person shooters.
Instead, he preferred strategy games like World of Warcraft 3. And again, the people around him thought he was pretty normal.
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