First, the Chickens Died; Then Denver Woman’s Life Careered to Horror : Domestic violence: Stephanie Sund got a restraining order to protect herself from Jeff Thomas. He was not deterred; he shot her as she ran to the police station for help, order in hand.

The first inkling of trouble was when the chickens died.

Returning home late from work, Stephanie Sund was met by her boyfriend, Jeff Thomas. Her dogs, he said, had killed some of her chickens and her landlord had ordered him off the property. Confused, Sund confronted the landlord; he would say only that Thomas was violent and she should avoid him.

“When he said that, it scared me. I got this sick pit in my stomach and I thought, ‘Boy, he better not be right,’ ” she said.

But he was. In the next seven months, Thomas verbally abused her, harassed her, threatened her.

And then, on Feb. 25, 1992, Thomas gunned her down outside the Ft. Collins Police Department as she ran for help. In her hand, she clutched a restraining order against the man with whom she had lived.

Much has happened since she was shot. Thomas, 30, is serving a life term for the attack. Sund has recuperated from her wounds. She and another victim of domestic violence have formed a nonprofit organization to provide security to others who face the same peril.

On a recent afternoon, Sund sat in a corner booth at a restaurant where, between sips of coffee and drags on cigarettes, she recalled the events that turned her life upside down.

Sund, 24, has been on her own since she left home at 16, with $60 and a ’72 Plymouth Duster “that drank oil.”

A service station owner let her wash vehicles for half the profits; she worked on a landscaping crew alongside ex-convicts. Eventually, she earned an associate of art’s degree in criminal justice and became a heavy equipment operator.

One day, she was working on Interstate 25 near Denver when Thomas drove into her life. There she stood, concrete in her hair and mud on her face, but it didn’t seem to bother Thomas.

“He was so nice. Talked a mile a minute,” she said. “So smooth, but it seemed sincere. It wasn’t a smooth man with gold chains on his neck.”

They shared a cup of coffee and a five-hour talk that night and went out the next night and the next.

During the next 2 1/2 months, they met at her farmhouse nearly every evening and talked long into the night. Thomas was supportive; her career was one of the things he loved about her, he said.

Although she never found out how the chickens were killed, Sund was troubled by her landlord’s mandate that Thomas remain off the property. At Thomas’ urging, she moved her dogs, cats and 14 truckloads of furniture in with him until she could find another place to rent.

Things changed drastically about a month later.

Suddenly, Thomas didn’t like her job. He didn’t trust her or her co-workers, most of them men.

She couldn’t call her friends or family.

She would talk of leaving, and he would demand she remove all her belongings in an hour, possessions she had purchased with pride over the years.

“I would end up in tears and say, ‘I can’t do that in an hour.’ I’d say, ‘You need to let me look for a place to live,’ and he would say, ‘No,’ ” she said, pushing her face close.

“He’d just rage and rage . . . he’d scream for hours. And I’m not exaggerating.”

Finally, she quit her job at Thomas’ insistence and, at her lowest point, she was ironing shirts for a quarter apiece. “I was a heavy equipment operator. Ironing,” she said with disgust.

The fighting grew worse.

“I’d think, ‘Who is this?’ This is dangerous. This is not somebody who is just mad. Stay alive. Do what he’s telling you,’ ” she said.

At first, this fiercely independent woman was too embarrassed to tell her friends and family what was happening. Then, she began fearing for their lives.

One day in early February, the two argued over an adult magazine Thomas had purchased, and Sund fled to her mother’s home in Ft. Collins.

Thomas harassed her, calling her mother’s home often. Sometimes he was polite; sometimes he threatened her and her family, she said. She obtained a restraining order to keep him away, but that didn’t end it.

Thomas chased Sund to the police department. She jumped out of her car and raced for help. As she reached the door, the first bullet grazed her head. A second bullet struck her arm and the third struck the middle of her back.

“I remember I was trying to pull the door open and my body couldn’t respond and I could feel it going down,” she testified during Thomas’ trial last fall. “I remember it was the most incredible experience, knowing just a few feet away there was help and I couldn’t open the door.”

She spent months learning to sit up, to turn over and to walk.

Thomas was convicted of attempted first-degree murder, first-degree assault and vehicular eluding in Sund’s shooting. He maintains his innocence and is pursuing an appeal in the Colorado Court of Appeals.

Today, the slender, dark-haired woman lives in seclusion, believing that Thomas would try to kill her again if given the chance.

She has eliminated routine from her life. If a dark-haired man with a build similar to Thomas gets in a grocery store line behind her, she bolts. If she sees a parked car that seems out of place, she heads the other way. When a car backfires, she jumps.

“There is no such thing as normal,” she said. “You think in a totally different way. The idea of dating somebody is ludicrous, is ludicrous. Everything I do has to be secret. Everything I own is under security.”

She keeps busy helping other domestic violence victims. She is vice president of Victim Protection Services Inc., which provides bodyguards drawn from a corps of volunteer law enforcement or private security professionals.

Fees are based on the client’s ability to pay, and range from $10 to $15 an hour, Sund said. Bodyguards can be hired for a few hours to accompany a client to a court hearing, or on a 24-hour basis.

She also is pressing stiffer penalties against convicted stalkers.

But she still lives minute to minute.

“I can’t say, well this happened and I survived, I’m doing this and I’ve met this person and I’ve spoken here and I’m helping here and people look up to me,” she said.

“I just don’t feel that way. I wish it had never happened.”