Page 20 - Flathead Beacon // 10.22.14

20 | OCTOBER 22, 2014
COVER FLATHEADBEACON.COM
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HITEFISH – For most of his life, Rocky Hoerner has been on the move. His abil- ity and propensity to shift
ized what was happening.
A mere minute before, he and Ei-
leen Holmquist had been working in his gallery, which had been open for four days. It was late, about 10 p.m., when Aceto had first driven by.
Aceto was a jilted ex of Holmquist’s, and had a history of violence. Hoerner walked out the door, and Aceto drove off. But a couple of hours later, around midnight, they noticed his car sitting in a nearby alley. Hoerner walked out- side, ready to confront the man, when Aceto got out of his car, took a couple steps, then pulled a gun.
“I screamed ‘He’s got a gun!’” Ho- erner said. “What saved my life is I wasn’t hesitating.”
Already running before Aceto fired his first shot, Hoerner hid behind a tree, and eventually made his way back into the gallery, somehow avoid- ing being shot by the many bullets loosed from Aceto’s gun.
After the picture window shat- tered, Hoerner hit the ground and rolled off to a partitioned office. Hol- mquist had already run inside and locked herself in a different room.
“He thought for sure he got me,” Hoerner said, which explained why Aceto turned his attention to Hol- mquist.
Hoerner remembers hearing three shots – two Aceto fired at the door, and one he fired once he was in the room with Holmquist. With the final bul-
and adapt has been necessary at times, and a force of habit at others.
Moving without hesitation saved his life 14 years ago, when he was able to dodge multiple bullets fired from the gun of a notorious criminal in Co- lumbia Falls, but the transient life that came next – two trials, the dissolution of a marriage, living in 33 places in 14 years – kept him in a sort of purgatory, stuck between fear of the past and the promise of the future.
Now, Hoerner, 57, has quit run- ning. He’s quit covering his tracks for fear he or his family will wind up in the crosshairs again.
Joseph Aceto, the man who shot at Hoerner on May 22, 2000, died in Montana State Prison in May.
For Hoerner, Aceto’s death is a chance at a new life, one without the heavy mantle of fear and dread. It’s the feeling of spring’s warmth and green buds after a long, cold, bitter winter, or of coming up for air after staying un- derwater too long.
“All that weight, I didn’t ever real- ize it was there; it just went poof,” Ho- erner said recently in his kitchen. “My art is just exploding. Now that it’s over completely, I’m going to get it all out there.”
A FRESH
CANVAS
Whitefish artist Rocky Hoerner feels he has a new lease on life now that the man who tried to kill him is no longer a threat
By MOLLY PRIDDY of the Beacon
IA
t wasn’t until after the pic- let in the gun, Aceto put the barrel to ture window in his Colum- her head and forced her to drive up the bia Falls art gallery exploded North Fork.
in
hiding in the gallery’s office to call
911, after hearing three gunshots and
screams from his girlfriend in the
room next to him, that Hoerner real- and his mother, Frances Cole, was a
gunfire, after dodging bullets and
s a child, Hoerner grew up in Kalispell. His parents had split up when he was young,