An RIA coach from Minneapolis writes about his city in this painful moment, visits where Alex Pretti died and reflects on the impact of his death

(Editor's note: This incident occurred amid widespread protests against Operation Metro Surge, an immigration enforcement action in Minneapolis. It followed the killing of Renée Good on Jan. 7 by a United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent.)

Three nights ago, a group of us were gathered for our book club. Eleven people; a warm living room; the kind of evening that usually stays contained and ordinary. 

We were mid-conversation when we realized it was close to 7:00 PM, the moment Minneapolitans were being urged to go outside, wherever they were, to hold a vigil for Alex Pretti, the Veterans Administration ICU nurse who was killed in a confrontation with ICE agents.  

No speeches. No plan. Just presence.

As we stood there, a neighbor came out of his house. He looked at us for a moment, then said quietly, “I went to school with Alex twenty years ago…” 

The sentence hung there. Not dramatic, not performative, just factual and heavy.

A life lost

He told us small things. Sitting in a dorm room listening to music. Late nights. Easy laughter. 

A person who was kind to everyone. Not impressive stories. Human ones. The kind that don’t survive headlines, but are the truth of who someone was. 

We listened. No one interrupted him. No one rushed the moment. Cars passed. The city kept moving, but our block felt still. 

It struck me how quickly Alex shifted from a name in the news to a real person standing among us. Someone who had occupied ordinary space. Someone who had been young here. Someone who had mattered.

That night didn’t feel like a vigil. It felt like memory surfacing. Like grief arriving sideways, through proximity. I went home unsettled. Not outraged yet. Not resolved.

Just aware that something had cracked open.

Quiet vigil 

Last night was different.

This time, I went to the actual site where Alex Pretti was killed. The geography mattered. The sidewalk mattered. The ordinary intersection mattered. Standing there changed the scale of everything.

About 200 people were there. News reporters, too. At the makeshift memorial, pinecones had been arranged in the snow to spell out “Long live Alex Pretti.” 

Flowers and candles surrounded the words, built up slowly as people arrived and stood together in the cold.

This was not about memory alone. This was about location. About standing where something irreversible had happened. About refusing to let it blur into abstraction.

I watched people read the notes taped to poles and signs. I watched strangers exchange looks that said, “Yes. I’m here too.”

Some cried openly. Others stood rigid, hands in pockets, jaws tight. Everyone seemed to be regulating something inside
themselves.

'Here'

What struck me most was the absence of spectacle. No one needed to convince anyone else why they were there. The meaning was already understood. 

Alex Pretti was 37 years old, a Minneapolis resident, an ICU nurse who worked with veterans, a person known for helping others. He died on this spot. Shot ten times. That was enough.

Standing there, the earlier conversation with my neighbor came back to me. The dorm room. The music. The kindness. It collided with the physical reality of the street. The curb. The traffic light cycling from red to green like nothing had happened. That contrast was brutal.

I realized how different grief feels when it has coordinates. When you can point to the place and say, “Here.” 

It removes the buffer. It eliminates distance. You can’t scroll past it. You’re standing inside it.

A cold finality

Minneapolis has been through this before. We know how to gather. We know how to grieve publicly. But this week felt quieter. More internal. Less about reaction and more about reckoning. Less about performance and more about witness.

I left the site slowly, lingering longer than I meant to. It was hard to leave. The cold finally decided it for me. The city felt altered, not dramatically, but the way a room feels after a difficult conversation. Same furniture. Different air.

Being a Minneapolitan this week has meant holding two kinds of knowing. The personal and the physical. A neighbor’s memory of a kind young man. A street corner where that man died. Together, they refuse simplification.

One without the other would be incomplete. Memory without place drifts. Place without memory hardens. Holding both is what gives this moment its weight.

That’s what these two nights gave me. Not answers. Orientation. And a deeper understanding of what it means to stand in this city right now.

Chris Holman is a longtime RIA coach, working for Horsemouth, which creates educational programs for financial advisors. He recently published a book, Discovery Shift, that emphasizes the power of listening in the performance of advising investors.

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