For years, Sierra Poynter was called a hero, and she could only feel guilt and doubt.

With a ticket to her GED in sight and a crowd’s standing ovation in her ear, Poynter decided she had what she needed to be the hero everyone said she was.

On Monday, the City of Helena honored Sierra Poynter for reporting a mass-shooting and bombing threat targeting Helena High School.

“There are times, I suppose, in each of our lives where we come to forks in the road,” City Commissioner Sean Logan said. “Have to make decisions that will sometimes forever alter our life in making that choice. … You have altered countless lives.”

Poynter was just 17 when it happened.

Her coworker and Helena resident Logan Sea Pallister, 26, had an obsession with the 1999 Columbine High School massacre in Colorado,

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