Sierra Cook

Name: Sierra Cook

Gender: Female

Age: 18

Grade: Senior

School: George Hunter High School

Hobbies and Interests: Outdoorsmanship (particularly hiking and camping), working out, animals, nature, sketching, archery, stuffed animal collecting, partying, spiting her parents

Appearance: Sierra stands at 5'6", weighing in at 132 Ibs. Her body is well toned and lithe from years of exercise and outdoor activities, with notably strong legs and shoulders. Her figure is somewhat curvaceous, but due to her preference for loose clothes it is more or less hidden. She is ethnically Caucasian, with smooth, tanned skin. Sierra also has two tattoos, one of a blue morpho butterfly on the back of her neck and blue Chinese dragon formed into a heart on her lower back.

Her face is smooth and oval-shaped, with a small, straight-edged nose, deep set eyes that are hazel in color, full lips, and her eyebrows are soft angled and neatly trimmed. She has straight, shoulder length hair that she normally keeps loose but does tie it back in a braid to keep in from getting her eyes. Her hair is naturally walnut brown but she usually dyes it and currently has dyed it black with blue highlights.

In terms of clothes she prefers casual attires, as befitting of her lifestyle, preferring function over form. She generally likes her clothes to be somewhat loose on her body as to not have her movements constricted. She favors things like jeans, t-shirts, and tank tops, and dislikes having extravagant outfits due to them requiring more thought placed into her appearance than she is actually comfortable with. A constant in her attire is her red plaid jacket which she wears everywhere, but when it is hot out she usually ties it around her waist. In terms of footwear she prefers a good pair of boots for her day-to-day activities, but she'll switch over to sneakers if they are more suited for whatever activity she is currently partaking in. On the day of the abduction, Sierra wore her red plaid jacket, with a black tank top with a pink Batman logo on the chest underneath, torn blue jeans, white socks, and tan hiking boots.

Biography: Sierra Cook was born to Walter and Lidka Cook (nee Czajkowski) in Anchorage, Alaska. Walter was a Tennessee native and an avid outdoorsman who moved to Anchorage during the early 1980s, looking to experience the unique Alaskan wilderness himself and to experience life outside of Tennessee. Lidka was a Polish second generation immigrant who had lived her whole life in Alaska, who after completing her education at Alaska Pacific University gained her teaching certification and would work at various schools as a substitute teacher in Anchorage. The two met during Mass at a local Catholic church and hit it off almost immediately and began seeing one another outside of church, eventually resulting in them getting married in 1989.

Married life was good for Walter and Lidka, however after the first couple years they decided to take the steps to start an actual family together and have a child. However, over the next few years the couple were met with grief as they experienced a series of miscarriages with every attempt at trying to have a child. The two were close to giving up when they finally had a successful pregnancy in their mid-forties, with Sierra being born soon after on January 10, 2000 as their sole child. Shortly after her birth the Cook family decided to move to Chattanooga as Walter wanted their new daughter to grow up with her extended family nearby, and Lidka was excited to experience life outside of Alaska with her new family. After settling down in Chattanooga, Walter got a job as a zookeeper at the Chattanooga Zoo and Lidka became a history teacher at a local high school.

Growing up Sierra was raised Catholic and, being an only child, was doted on by her very religious parents as their "miracle baby", and they would spend as much time with Sierra as possible during her early childhood. Sierra was an energetic, impulsive, and inquisitive child, who was very much a tomboy and would more often than not cheerfully show up home with fresh scraps and bruises she got from playing. At an early age she expressed an inclination towards drawing, and as she aged she steadily improved and began sketching more complex images of subjects that interested her — particularly animals and scenes of nature — and would take a sketch book everywhere she went.

As a child Sierra was closest with her father, who helped foster a love for both animals and nature into Sierra at an early age. Her father would regularly take her on trips to the zoo or take her hiking, camping, or fishing. Sierra loved doing these activities with her father, and especially loved learning about nature from him. While she wasn't as close with her mother, Sierra's relationship with her was still a loving one. Lidka Cook was more concerned with Sierra's learning and upbringing, and was more or less left in charge of her daughter's education by her husband. Lidka taught her daughter how to read and write, do basic math, and how to speak fluent Polish. Lidka was also quick to encourage Sierra's creative side, often giving her the supplies needed to draw and would put the pictures her daughter made up around the house.

Sierra's school life during elementary was generally uneventful. She was rather social and pleasant with the other children, making a great deal of friends with the boys in her class due to her tomboyish nature. Sierra was exceptionally bright for a child of her age, thanks in part to her mother's assistance in her education and Sierra's own natural inquisitiveness gave her the drive to learn as much as she could. Her pleasant demeanor and intelligence allowed Sierra to endear herself to the teachers at her school, who were quick to comment and praise her for her good grades; inadvertently establishing an ego in her at a young age.

At the age of ten Sierra's father decided that Sierra was old enough to join him on what of his favorite outdoor hobbies: hunting. At first Sierra was quite enthusiastic to join her father, since hunting was always the one thing they never did together, but once the father-daughter pair managed to track down their prey, a bull elk, Sierra couldn't bring herself to harm the creature. She knew the whole point of hunting was to kill animals, but once she had what they were looking for in her sights, she was more interested in observing it than killing it and refused to pull the trigger of the rifle her dad handed her. Walter was disappointed that Sierra didn't want to shoot the elk and after a bit of arguing with her about it, pried the gun from her hands and shot the elk himself. The experience was a traumatizing one for Sierra and she spent hours crying over the elk's death, and refused to even speak to her father for the next three weeks.

Over the course of those weeks her father tried to patch things up with his daughter by placating her with stuffed animals. Every day she didn't talk to him he would give her a new stuffed animal, which by the time she started talking with him again she had gained a rather large collection. During the ensuing conversation, Sierra expressed to her father how the hunting trip had left a negative impression of the activity on her and told him that she never wanted to try it again. Her father was disappointed but overall understanding of her feelings, promising her that he wouldn't try to coax her into trying it again. However, he was insistent she try and pick up some skill that is at least related to hunting even if she never uses it for that purpose. The two talked back and forth on the subject, Sierra ultimately relenting to her father's request.

Sierra's father tried to teach various skills to her — such as tracking, shooting, and about a dozen different survival skills — but Sierra showed little interest in these and would force her father to think of something else. Walter was about to give up when he finally found something that piqued his daughter's interest: archery. Sierra was given his old compound bow and was taught how to use it by shooting arrows at balloons her father had hung up around the backyard. Walter treated the activity as a game to ease Sierra into it, which helped Sierra picked up the skill with gusto, quickly moving from shooting at balloons from ten feet away to proper targets at much greater distances. She found the activity both fun and relaxing, feeling a small sense of pride whenever she successfully hit a target. As she improved she became quite proud how of her skill, eventually joining the Junior Olympic Archery Development Program (JOAD) at the age of 12 and participating in a number of local and regional archery tournaments over the course of her middle school and early high school years.

She competed in whatever tournaments her parents would allow her to join. She did well in these tournaments but she had lost a great deal of them. However, Sierra never let the losses get to her, striving to improve and get better on the hope she would one day be number one in every tournament she competed in. This drive to be the best fueled her, eventually she developed a desire to one day go to the top and be on the U.S. Olympic Archery Team. She sunk a large amount of her free time to her archery practices, getting better each day, and doing better and better in tournaments as time went by. Eventually, she successfully took first place for the first time in a junior tournament at 13, taking home the gold medal; an achievement which she is quite proud of.

Since her father got her stuffed animals to appease her when she was mad at her, Sierra had become something of an avid collector of stuffed animals, naming each new one she adds. Since then she has built up a rather sizable collection that still continues to grow to this day. She finds this hobby somewhat embarrassing to reveal to people, so she tends to keep quiet about it but still remains on the lookout to expand her collection with new additions.

During her middle school years Sierra went through an identity crisis as she went through puberty. At 12 years old she found herself developing crushes on various girls in her school and quickly caught on that she was as attracted to other girls as she was to boys. While she wasn't surprised to be attracted to boys, it was the attraction to girls that she found the most distressing. Her parents were quite conservative in her upbringing, explaining away homosexuality as being a sin and a result of bad parenting. Sierra knew her parents would blame themselves, and she felt guilty because she loved her parents dearly and didn't want them to think they were at fault. So she resolved to keep quiet and try to "get better", generally by spending more time with her male friends than her female friends and parroting her parents' more homophobic beliefs to mask her own feelings.

This went on for a time, although as she approached the end of her middle school years her attraction to the same sex never went away as she thought it would despite all she did to distract herself from it. She prayed to God, desperately begging Him to fix her, but her prayers were never answered and the sense of self-loathing she felt when she first realized her bisexuality only got worse as she now viewed herself as what she was always told homosexuals were: an abomination in the eyes of God.

Towards the last few months of middle school, Sierra began researching into sexuality on the internet, looking for some sort of answer on how to deal with her attraction to other girls. In her search she found online communities of people just like her, some with stories that mirrored the exact same feelings she had about herself. As she read through these stories Sierra slowly came to realize that she wasn't a freak or some abomination in the eyes of God, and for the first time in years began to feel like a person. Despite her newfound acceptance of herself, Sierra still feared how her parents would react and chose to keep her sexual orientation hidden from them until she felt she was ready to tell them. Soon she graduated from middle school on time and was enrolled into George Hunter.

Her early months of her first year at George Hunter, Sierra had become much more open with her bisexuality to her classmates. She had faced some prejudice and bullying for her sexuality - some from people she once considered "friends" due to their shared homophobic beliefs, and while it did hurt she did her best to ignore her tormentors by avoiding them and hanging out with her more open minded friends and classmates, or looked into extracurricular activities to invest her free time into to. She joined a few clubs on impulse at first, but quickly fell out of them when they failed to capture her interest. Eventually, she discovered that the school had an Archery Club and joined it within a heartbeat, eager to show off her talent and to have a place other than home to practice in her spare time.

The team was small compared to the other Athletic teams, but Sierra managed to carve out a place for herself among its members. Some of the Archery team were put off by her pride and boastfulness of her skill, but she never looked down upon any of her teammates. She praised her teammates on their form and technique whenever she was impressed by them, and freely offered advice on how to improve if she found them lacking. Eventually, she would even become captain of the archery team, something she takes great pride in.

As she progressed through her first year of high school, Sierra slowly built up her confidence and took steps to come out to her parents, eventually deciding that she would tell them the truth on her 14th birthday. The days leading up to her birthday Sierra became increasingly anxious to what her parents might think of her and how best to deliver the news, often rehearsing what she would say whenever she was alone or asking her closest friends for advice. When the day finally came her parents took her out to spend time at the Fall Creek Falls State Park for her birthday, much to her delight. The day went well for the Cook family, but as the day turned into night and they made the ride back home, Sierra began to have doubts about her decision to open up to her parents.

Every fear, every negative scenario that she could think of played through her mind as they drove home. Sierra silently reassured herself that her parents loved her, that they will always love her, and she'll see just that when she tells them her secret that she had been hiding for years. Upon arriving home, Sierra took her parents and sat them down in the living room of their house, telling them she had something important to tell them. She told them of how she first came to realize her sexuality, how she tried to deny that part of herself, and how she eventually came to accept and embrace her bisexuality. She told them it was just something that has always been inside of her, and that she wanted to share it with them because she loved them.

Unfortunately, her parents did not take the news of their daughter's bisexuality well. An argument broke out between Sierra and her parents, with Sierra desperately trying to convince them to see from her perspective, which they refused to do. Sierra was heartbroken and quickly shifted from trying to reason with her parents to saying hurtful things that she didn't truly mean. Ultimately the argument ended with Sierra storming off and locking herself in her room.

From that point on Sierra's relationship with her parents had become strained. The once loving atmosphere she had enjoyed in her home was no longer to be found. Fights between Sierra and her parents became a frequent occurrence, with her parents trying to get her "help" for her "problem", which only caused Sierra to resent them further. Eventually, Sierra did all that she could to avoid interacting with her parents as much as possible, to the point she is hardly ever at home anymore. With the change in the relationship dynamic came a change in her demeanor. Sierra began to act out against her parents, often doing things just for the sake of spiting them. At first she just did things like staying out late, dying her hair, and dating people they wouldn't like. Over time she would go out to parties, started drinking and using recreational drugs, and started to hang out with known delinquents and other individuals considered the wrong crowd. Sierra also began to push others away, becoming increasingly cold and bitter as time went on, and her grades began to slip. This caused her social life to take a hit as her newly formed cynicism caused her to become increasingly blunt and sarcastic to those around her, making her come off as a rude, abrasive jerk.

Sierra's faith in God had also taken a serious blow. She had ultimately stopped attending church with her parents in her desire to distance herself from them. This in particular upset her parents the most and only helped further the divide between them and their daughter. Sierra still believed in God, although she began to develop a negative view on Him as she wondered why he would make her the way she was if He hated what she was.

Things eventually settled down by her sophomore year of high school. Sierra's social life had recovered somewhat as she attended parties, and thus interacted with her fellow classmates, at a greater frequency. She still avoided her parents, however, focusing her time with parties, archery, or going on hikes through nearby wooded areas. Sierra also became more focused on her dream of being an Olympic athlete and began working out extensively, with the hopes of leaving her parents' home after she graduates from high school to begin her career. She specifically to tried to improve her stability and body control for proper archery form, focusing on excises that helped strengthened her core and upper body — such as deadlifts and push-ups — and often includes practicing her archery into her fitness routine since it helped strengthen her pull on her bow's draw weight. Over time she would add more and more additions to her exercise routine and is quite serious about it maintaining it. She considers regular fitness training to be essentially to her day-to-day activities and makes it a point to put in at least an hour minimum a day to just exercise.

At some point during this time Sierra was also temporarily suspended from school after an incident where she punched fellow classmate, Faith Clementine Marshal-Mackenzie, due to the school's zero-tolerance policy towards fights on school grounds. The incident and the suspension did little to improve relations with her parents, who saw this as yet another incident of their daughter acting out.

During her Junior year of high school Sierra began to see an older boy named Ryan McKinney. Ryan was a high school dropout living out of his father's basement and a local drug dealer who sold marijuana to high school kids around Chattanooga. The two meant during a party and Sierra immediately latched onto him for his bad boy persona. About a week into the relationship Sierra learned that Ryan was an aspiring tattoo artist and had a chair and tattoo equipment set up in his basement, and offered to give Sierra a tattoo as a means to expand his portfolio - an offer she was all too eager to accept. It took several hours for Ryan to complete the tattoo and Sierra got herself a tattoo of a blue butterfly on the back of her neck. She was quite thrilled about how well it turned, and to this day she is very eager to show it off to people. Her parents were utterly furious with her when they learned she had gotten a tattoo, since it was illegal to get a tattoo in Tennessee when under the age of 18. Sierra paid their concerns no mind and was pleased that getting a tattoo had upset them so much.

Her relationship with Ryan would come to an end three weeks later, after he was arrested for drug possession in Nashville. Sierra still fondly looks back on her time with Ryan but has no intention of going back to him once he gets out of jail.

Sierra is someone who can be rather difficult to be around if you don't know her due to her trying to keep people she doesn't know at an emotional distance with sarcasm and her blunt manner of speaking. However, if someone takes the time to actually get to know her and get past her shell they'll find she can be rather friendly and warm to those she considers friends. To her friends, aspects of her original personality leak through as she is more relaxed, reining in her sarcasm and talks in a more casual tone, and is more likely to confide in them and seek out emotional support. Sierra's political views are generally pretty liberal - especially in concerns regarding homosexuality - due to her issues with her parents, and thus has developed a general disliking of others with conservative views, often to the point of irrational hatred.

Sierra has dated a fair share of people in her time in high school with varying degrees of seriousness. She likes to date people she knows her parents wouldn't like to see her dating, and tends to lean towards dating other girls than guys. She has no problem dating guys, but she often prefers the bad boy types since she sees them as the most likely to bother her parents.

Academically, Sierra saw some fall off than when she first started high school. Before she got rather high marks, but once she started acting out against her parents she had started neglecting her studies. She still does rather well for herself regardless - consistently getting above average grades in most subjects, but it is acknowledged she would be doing better if she spent more time studying. Sierra struggles with the subject of math and science, the latter in particular due to not caring for it all that much. The only classes she still gets consistently good grades in are PE and art class, largely in part of her working out and drawing, respectfully. Sierra hasn't really decided on what she'll do after graduation beyond leaving her parents' home, and has no real plan for perusing a secondary education but has considered going to a public university if she should ever change her mind.

Sierra hasn't learned how to drive yet, mostly as a personal choice as she prefers either biking or walking to get where she is going. If she needs to get some place that is too far for either method, she'll either take public transportation or hitch a ride with a friend who can drive. She often drifts around town taking up the occasional part-time job or odd job to earn some money for herself but often quits these jobs after some time. Her current goal is to save up as much money as she can so she isn't dependent on her parents once she graduates.

Advantages: Due to her athletic lifestyle Sierra is in rather good shape, and her skill in archery has helped her develop excellent upper body strength and hand-eye coordination. Her experience in outdoor activities has also trained her to have the stamina needed to move for long distances over rough terrain. She also possesses a decent level of knowledge on flora and fauna due to a developed interest of nature since a young age.

Disadvantages: Outside her circle of friends, her tendency towards sarcastic and blunt remarks and her pessimistic mindset could end up with her saying something insensitive, causing potential allies to be turned off from allying themselves with her or become hostile. Her sheer dislike of anyone with conservative views will also means she'll have a hard time trusting or actively working alongside those she knows hold those viewpoints on the island.

Designated Number: Female Student No. 005

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Designated Weapon: Stun gun

Conclusion: There's some good shit here, but I can't help thinking that the whole might be less than the sum of its parts, or however that goes. Keep your head screwed on straight, kid, and you might make it. I did. - Veronica Rai

'The above biography is as written by TheLordOfAwesome. No edits or alterations to the author's original work have been made.'

Evaluations
Handled by: TheLordOfAwesome

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Collected Weapons: Stun gun (assigned weapon)

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Threads
Below is a list of threads containing Sierra, in chronological order.

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