GRAND BLANC TWP., MI — It was a weeknight like any other.
The regular crowd gathered inside the Red Baron to sip a pint of their favorite craft beer.
Some at the popular Burton bar hovered over the pool table, while others grabbed chicken wings or watched TV at a barstool while catching up with the barkeep.
That’s what Davison resident Bobby Kalush came in for — camaraderie and a sense of belonging — a place where joy elevates with every sudsy drink.
When Kalush walked through the heavy, thick wooden doors, something was off.
He saw Thomas Jacob Sanford, sitting alone in a corner booth with a cold beer.
Solemn, head down and quiet, Sanford wasn’t himself.
It stood in stark contrast to the person that Kalush called a childhood best friend.
Kalush said it struck him as eerie and unusual to see him that way, so he approached Sanford and tried to strike up a conversation.
“He was so short and just distant. He’s usually the guy to give a big bear hug and ask how your family’s doing. You know, he was always joking and he always poked at people and joked around,” Kalush said. “Not that night…he was just so isolated.”
The night was just two weeks before police say Sanford smashed an explosives-laden truck pickup into the wall of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Grand Blanc Township, shooting several worshippers and setting the building on fire the morning of Sunday, Sept. 28.
Two people were fatally shot, while two died in the fire.
Eight other people, reported by medical professionals between the ages of 6 and 78, were injured.
Sanford was shot and killed after exchanging gunfire with a Department of Natural Resources officer and a local police officer.
When Kalush sat down with Sanford, their last moments together consisted of a casual greeting before his old friend briskly stood up, brushed by without another word. He cashed out and left.
“He said, ‘Hey Bob, good to see you,’ and that was it. It was our shortest conversation ever,” Kalush said. “It was clear to me there, he was just so lost, and just wasn’t the same person. He was dealing with something at that time, for sure.”
Kalush remembers Sanford as “the kind of guy that would talk to everybody.”
He said Sanford was like the town mayor, always trying to be everyone’s friend and make people laugh.
“It’s horrible. I’m broken. It’s sad. You feel so sorry for everybody out there, but when I see Jake, I see little Jake, you know?” Kalush said. “Him and I, you know, chasing frogs in the creek and on Atlas Road. That’s the stuff I remember and am trying to hold onto.”
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High school yearbook, neighborhoods where he grew up give insights into life of Thomas Jacob Sanford
‘He had heart’ to ‘heartbroken’
Kalush met Sanford while playing AYSO soccer in elementary school and soon discovered their fathers went to school together.
“We lived down the road from each other, road bikes every day together doing what little kids do — going to the creek and fishing,” Kalush said.
The pair were friends throughout high school as well, playing baseball together in Sanford’s freshman and sophomore years.
Sanford played catcher that year, Kalush recalled, and was the kind of teammate who’d support everybody on the team while giving each play 100 percent.
“He was a leader,” Kalush said. “He wasn’t the most talented athlete, but he tried. I mean, he had heart.”
Before school every day, Kalush said Sanford worked at a dairy farm in Goodrich, starting his days there as early as 4 a.m. before heading to school.
According to his high school yearbook, Sanford joined the band and basketball team during his freshman and sophomore years, played football as a freshman and participated in the school’s prom fashion show fundraiser as a junior and senior.
He once dressed as Mike Myers’ popular character Austin Powers, donning a frilly, ruffled button-down shirt, vest and black-rimmed glasses on stage.
When Sanford got his very first truck as a teenager, Kalush remembers he was fooling around while driving it and crashed it within four hours.
He related the crash to just kids being kids.
Sanford was voted as the class clown in their senior year.
“He was so full of energy — a big, big goofy guy,” Kalush said. “I remember one year in homecoming, they would sell roses to raise money, and they would, you know, give them to your date or in class.
“I remember, he bought like 50 of them, gave them to, like, every single girl out there. He was just that crazy, fun (and) awesome dude.”
After sophomore year at Goodrich High School, the friends began to drift apart.
Sanford stopped playing sports and started hunting and fishing more.
As graduation approached in 2004, Sanford assumed a slightly more serious persona.
He asked to be called “Tom,” rather than by his nickname, “Jake,” and enlisted in the military, his friends said.
“When he came back from Utah, he was a completely different person,” Kalush said.
Love, loss and feeling lost
Sanford joined the U.S. Marines in 2004, earning honors for shooting skills and serving stints in Okinawa, Japan and Fallujah, Iraq, according to a 2007 story published by the Clarkston News.
A Marines spokesperson told People.com Sanford participated in Operation Iraqi Freedom between August 2007 to March 2008, working as a mechanic and a “vehicle recovery operator.”
After finishing his tour, Sanford received an opportunity to head west to Utah and work for a landscaping and snowplowing business around 2009.
Sanford was always chasing love, Kalush said, looking for a woman and changing himself to make them happy.
“He was always going out of his way for women,” Kalush said.
He remembered Sanford taking a nail file to smooth off every callus from his hands after working outdoors when a middle school girlfriend complained about how rough they felt.
In Utah, Kalush said he removed his tattoos for the girl he loved.
“He was always trying to make them happy, and he fell in love so much. He would do whatever he could to make them feel the same back to him. And when he got hurt, he would just be destroyed,” Kalush said. “He always did those little weird, quirky things that I don’t think I would ever do, but he would do these things for these women.”
Close friends, including Kalush and Peter Tersigni, confirmed Sanford began using methamphetamines after being introduced to the drug by coworkers.
Kalush said he met up with Sanford several times after his return from out west.
“He went to Utah and he met a girl that he desperately loved… and he got addicted to some crystal meth pretty bad,” said Kalush. “He was coping with his troubles from serving in the Marines.
“I think that the combination of being turned down by that girl and becoming addicted together just changed his brain. I mean, he was a completely different person when he came back. He just looked like he was so serious, wasn’t smiley. He just didn’t have the same Jake charm when he came home, I would say.”
Sanford eventually returned to his family’s Atlas Township home.
“He was a completely different person. He was just very kind of standoffish,” Kalush said after reconnecting with Sanford around 2012. “After he came back to Michigan, it was almost like he was a shadow of himself. Like, you looked at him, but you knew it wasn’t the same person in there. It was just very, very different.
“He was in love with a girl that was Mormon and she broke his heart.”
At a wedding with high school friends, Kalush said they told him Sanford was saying some horrible things about Mormons.
His friends asked him to knock it off and chill out, but Sanford kept expressing those negative thoughts.
When the news started to spread of Sunday’s mass church killing, Kalush was playing a recreational hockey game.
Kalush, a former Flint Generals player, was in shock when it was all tied to his childhood best friend.
“As we started hearing what had happened, I was just trying to make sense of what was going on. And then I saw the truck in the picture. I know that truck. It was Jake’s,” Kalush said. “I knew my buddy sold him that truck a few years back, so I called him to as what the hell was going on. We both knew this was bad. He said to me, ‘It’s Jake, man.’ That’s when my heart sank.
“At first, I didn’t believe it. This can’t be real. No way. And then all the speculations coming out. Why would he do this? We knew his feeling about Mormons, but you would never think it would get to this extent. He never had like a triggering event. … We’re just heartbroken.”
How to cope
Kalush said coping with everything that happened has been difficult, leaving him unsure of how to feel between his childhood friendship with Sanford and the impact it has on his home community.
“I don’t know. I mean, I don’t really know. It’s, I mean, shock. I still don’t understand,” he said. “I’ve never been through anything like this, so it’s been pretty hectic.”
Kalush has a set of 17-year-old twins at home and has tried to be honest with them as facts and news continue to unfold in the days after the incident.
“I’m showing my kids. I tell them I knew this guy, and they needed to know he held them when they were 2 years old — that even they are connected to him from years ago in some small way,” Kalush said. “Because of that, I’m just trying to talk about the good times, I guess, as much as I’ve been with my friends.
“I just remember, you know, going to bonfires and having a couple beers and talking about, you know, stuff that we did as a kid.”
Kalush said his heart is broken, not only for trying to make sense of what his old friend did, but also for Sanford’s wife and son, his parents, and especially Sanford’s father.
“It’s just so sad. I know Jake was the breadwinner. I just feel awful for this family. I don’t know what they’re gonna do, and I don’t know what you do,” Kalush said. “Do they move out of town? Do they change their name? It’s just so sad. I mean, I don’t know how you come back from this.
“And my heart goes out to his dad. His dad’s the most supportive dude in the world, and he tried over and over to clean Jake up. And Jake just didn’t get better.
“He just had too many demons.”
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