With more than 100,000 visitors yearly, Focus on the Family's Colorado Springs campus is a busy place. That's how it was Thursday May 2, 1996. Laurilee Keyes was tending the reception desk when a man abruptly yelled, "Hang up the phone!"

Trying to politely finish her conversation, Laurilee didn't look up and gestured for the man to wait.

"Laurilee!" shouted Judy Baker, sitting next to her. "Hang up the phone right now!"

"I looked up and a gun was pointed at me," says Laurilee. "Then the gunman started screaming that he wanted everyone else out of there.

"It really scared me when he started stripping off his clothes," Laurilee says. "But he stopped at his waist and put on a vest that he said contained explosives. He held the gun in one hand and a detonator in the other."

For the next 90 minutes, the two hostages talked calmly with the gunman.

"What's your name?" Laurilee asked as Judy offered him a glass of water.

"Kerry Dore," he said, accepting the water. They asked about his family and learned he had children.

When Dore told the women that he planned to end his life that day, Laurilee tried to dissuade him, "I told him that his children didn't want a dead father."

Then, in what Laurilee describes as a divine moment, Dore was on the phone with the police negotiator, and the women heard him say he wouldn't hurt the hostages. He never looked at the women to give them permission to leave; they didn't look at each other; no one spoke; Judy and Laurilee simultaneously got up and slipped out the door.

"I fully expected to hear a gunshot any second," Laurilee recalls, "and I started thinking whether I was ready to die. I prayed and felt totally peaceful."

Both women walked to safety, and a short while later the gunman surrendered peacefully.