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Photos courtesy of Brandi Lawrence.
Dori Lawrence attended the Key Club conference in Montgomery in March 2023, three months before her death.
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Photos courtesy of Brandi Lawrence.
Dori visited Universal Studios with Chelsea High School’s marching band in March 2023.
Friends send Dori Lawrence texts. They send her Tik Toks. They leave her voicemails.
But Dori passed away more than a year ago.
Her mother, Brandi, keeps the phone bills paid so that Dori’s friends can still send anything they want to her, even a year after her death.
“It’s a good way for them to express how they feel in a private way,” Brandi Lawrence said. “Each one keeps her memory alive.”
Dori was one of four teenagers who took their lives in the span of 17 months in the Chelsea community. Dori, who was about to turn 15 years old, was the last of the four.
“The last year for me, personally, has been awful,” Brandi Lawrence said. “It was supposed to be her 16th birthday, instead we’re going to her grave.”
The deaths in the Chelsea community have led to an awareness, if not outright change, in the community when it comes to suicide prevention.
Brandi Lawrence took it upon herself to start scholarships for students at Chelsea High School and Chilton County High School in the class of 2026.
Cody Sumners, a Chelsea city councilman, said as word spread that Dori, the fourth teenager, had died by suicide, he started getting calls and texts from members of the community, all with the same message: “We’ve got to do something in Chelsea.”
Soon after, a group — the Chelsea Mental Health Action Committee — had organized around trying to prevent teen suicide. Partnering with mental health groups and the Shelby County Schools, the program beginning this year will train teenagers to help them see signs of mental health distress.
Part of the challenge, Sumners said, is overcoming the stigma about suicide.
“If we can go ahead and make it a regular conversation now, it will be a normal conversation in 10, 20, 30 years,” he said.
The Chelsea Mental Health Action Committee has since become a subcommittee affiliated with the National Alliance on Mental Illness.
Sumners said his goal is to extend the new mental health awareness program to other communities.
What happened in Chelsea, he said, had no rhyme or reason.
“It’s weird, the four deaths we had,” Sumners said. “They were all just random. There was nothing to connect them.”
Brandi Lawrence thinks the suicide prevention program will help other teens who struggle like her daughter did.
“I believe the program implemented at the high school will help all the way around,” she said.
The work done since Dori’s death has given Brandi Lawrence a purpose, she said. But, that doesn’t stop the pain.
“I have no child,” she said. “She was my world. It’s just a weird, odd feeling of why her? Why me? There are so many whys.”
But, Brandi Lawrence hopes her foundation, Spreading Sunshine, The Dori Alise Foundation, can help others.
“The main thing is if someone tells you something, even if you don’t know if it’s true or not, at least you tried to help them,” she said.
This story is part of our September series for suicide prevention month. Read our stories on Suicide Prevention Month, suicide rates among veterans and suicide rates among senior citizens for more information.
