REMEMBERING THE W

hile heading home from an art walk last fall, Erin Siobhan Smith passed by the Cookie Cottage on downtown Norman’s Main Street.

Smith saw her friend Shannon Hanchett performing one of the most “Shannon-esque” acts: Sitting beside a homeless woman, offering help and warmth to the woman who had stopped outside Hanchett’s cottage looking for a place to rest.

That was the last time Smith would see her friend.

Tearing up at the memory, Smith said spreading such kindness encapsulates Hanchett’s spirit. Somebody who would always help, who would always treat people with kindness, who would always make a person feel safe.

“That was just who Shannon was in a nutshell,” Smith said. “There’s not a minute that I’m not thinking about her, and that’s the memory that I try to hold on to most whenever I’m having a hard time, and I really need to remember her.”

Hanchett, the owner of Okie Baking Co. and her downtown Cookie Cottage, died Dec. 8 in the Cleveland County Detention Center after being detained for 12 days. She was a 38-yearold mother of two.

Body camera footage released Dec. 13 showed Hanchett seeking a child welfare check before she was arrested for placing false 911 calls and obstructing an officer inside a store.

Although friends say they were unaware Hanchett was in custody during the final days of her life, the Norman community immediately rallied around her upon news of her death, hosting memorials and vigils in her honor as well as calling for investigations into her arrest, time in custody and ultimately her death. Her friends question how she was detained for 12 days without them knowing, and why, if she was undergoing a mental health crisis, she wasn’t taken to receive treatment.

Hanchett, before opening her cottage downtown, worked for the Oklahoma Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services with her friend Ashley Roby. Roby said the circumstances surrounding Hanchett’s death caused people to dismiss some of her unforgettable qualities, adding that her death was an example of everything Hanchett fought against and advocated to reform.

“How she passed, at least to me, was the antithesis of everything she worked for,” Ashley Roby, a friend of Hanchett’s, said.

Less than two weeks after Hanchett’s death, a second inmate, Kathryn Milano, died after being in custody at the same detention center. Two of the facility’s administrators resigned in January, though their reasoning was not cited as being related to the recent deaths.

Since Hanchett’s death, her family has decided not to speak publicly. Hanchett’s legacy of kindness, compassion and cookies has been overshadowed by the circumstances surrounding her death, according to her friends. Her friends said they need to continue fighting for justice while still highlighting the person they knew and loved.

They remembered her as a lover of Dr. Pepper, pink, fall weather and her two sons. They remembered her Miami Mud and Collinsville Coffee Glazed Oatmeal cookies, drag queen story hours, estate sale finds and frequent kind words over Facebook and in passing.

They remembered her sarcasm, honest advice and infectious laughter. They remembered her as a doting mother, a social advocate and a loyal friend.

They remembered Shannon Hanchett as a once-in-a-lifetime person.

Living her dream

Roby knew Hanchett well and the passions in her life: mental health, advocacy and baking.

Hanchett coached Roby when she first started working for the Oklahoma Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services, and she immediately felt drawn to her drive to improve care in the state and help eliminate stigmas surrounding mental health struggles.

“She was always a very open person, who was very communicative about her own mental health struggles and family mental health struggles,” said Roby, who is now a Systems-of-Care coach and trainer for the agency. “She was a person that was always looking for new innovative things to try to make our work easier.”

Hanchett worked out of Norman while with the department, but she traveled to all 77 counties in Oklahoma, visiting towns big and small to help people. Roby said Hanchett worked to break down stigmas surrounding mental health, but she eventually began to get burnt out.

In 2018, after she was diagnosed with lupus, Hanchett reflected on her life. After spending 11 years working for the state focused on children’s behavioral development, Hanchett walked away from a career she was passionate about to pursue a different passion: baking.

Hanchett was quickly dubbed the “Cookie Queen.”

Hanchett started baking while she attended

Pauls Valley High School and continued as she moved to Norman to attend OU. Hanchett baked throughout her life in Norman, and her love for it only grew after having her first son nearly 13 years ago.

While working for the state, Roby remembered the countless times Hanchett brought cookies and sweets to parties and celebrations with coworkers. Roby said baking was another way Hanchett showed her care for others.

“Making cookies was a different way of her being able to touch people without the high stress that can come with the field that we’re in,” Roby said.

Hanchett founded Okie Baking Co. in February 2018, operating out of her home until she moved into a space at Yellow Dog Coffee Company in November 2019. A year later, Hanchett set out to find her own place to bake and sell cookies in Norman.

In October 2021, Hanchett opened her Cookie Cottage on Main Street, welcoming customers and friends to a small, retro bakery that was all hers.

“I wanted something that would make people feel that nostalgia associated with cookies. Not too fancy, just something you would walk into your grandma’s house and get,” Hanchett told the OU Daily in 2021 before opening her cottage.

Inspired by the counties and towns she traveled to while working for the mental health department, Hanchett made cookies to honor the people she met and the places she’d seen:

Norman Crimson and Creams, McLoud Spiced Blackberry Jam Thumbprints, Lawton Lemon Cakes, Durant Duos and Ardmore Irish Shortbreads.

Smith said the way Hanchett poured her passion for people into her work inspired everyone to follow their dreams while helping people around them.

“She was living her dream,” Smith said. “Opening the Cookie Cottage and being able to serve people the way that she did … That really encouraged everybody around her to do the same.”

Definition of the word ally

Joshua Jay Wimhurst met Hanchett while working with her on the Norman Pride board of directors in 2019. They immediately hit it off.

Wimhurst said Hanchett loved drag and attended every drag show she could find. Wimhurst, who had been practicing drag for about a year at that point, wanted to bring a drag queen story hour to Norman, similar to the ones they’d seen in Oklahoma City.

A month later, Norman’s first Drag Queen Story Time became a reality.

“Community activism, providing safe spaces for queer children and young adults is something that matters a lot to me, and it also mattered a lot to her,” they said.

Wimhurst, an OU graduate research assistant and doctoral candidate, is originally from the United Kingdom, and after moving to Norman and meeting Hanchett, they said she acted as much as a second mother to them as a best friend. They said Hanchett’s spirit, altruism and authenticity shined in her life, and it has shined after.

“She was always the most altruistic being,” Wimhurst said, who is 10 years younger than Hanchett. “It didn’t matter how well she knew you, she would drop everything she was doing at a moment’s notice and help you with whatever you needed. She was like a mother to me, and I think she was like a mother to a lot of people.”

Wimhurst said being a business owner offered Hanchett many connections in the area. The duo was able to secure Gray Owl Coffee as a location for the Drag Queen Story Times in 2019. At the time, Wimhurst had been doing drag for about a year.

During the events, drag queens read stories, made crafts and had photoshoots with local families. Wimhurst said Hanchett was passionate about advocacy and activism, especially for the 2SLGBTQ+ community.

“Being able to provide a space to be surrounded by positive, queer role models and have a space where they can be happy, be themselves and be authentic,” Wimhurst said. “Being able to have cultivated those kinds of spaces with Shannon are the things I think about most fondly with her.”

Eventually, the story times outgrew the coffee shop and were relocated to STASH on Main Street. After about eight months, however, the story times were paused amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

Hanchett and Wimhurst had since turned most of the story times into private events since most young children couldn’t receive the COVID-19 vaccine until last June. Wimhurst said they wanted to bring the story times back as fully public events, and are even more determined to do so since her death.

After Hanchett’s death, Wimhurst said the outcry from the local 2SLGBTQ+ community was explosive. Wimhurst said people who hadn’t met Hanchett still felt affected by the news, as she was known locally and statewide as a fierce advocate for the community.

In her honor, Wimhurst and Norman Pride hosted a memorial drag show to help the Norman 2SLGBTQ+ community grieve. About 12 performers from Norman and Oklahoma City performed shortly before Christmas to raise money for Hanchett’s kids.

“I wanted to make sure that the drag community, the queer community more broadly, had an opportunity to say goodbye to her on their terms,” Wimhurst said. “With how much she loved drag and how much she loved the queer community, I couldn’t think of a better way to pay respects to what she loved and the person that she was.”

Wimhurst remembered Hanchett’s maternal energy, from scolding them over tattoos they thought of getting or gossiping over lunch at some of their local favorites: Victoria’s Pasta Shop, Midway Grocery and Market and Neighborhood Jam.

Wimhurst said the pair sampled lots of local businesses and ordered specials and recommendations from waiters and owners. They wanted to give back to the community that gave so much to Hanchett.

Though they knew her from different times in her life, both Roby and Wimhurst remember Hanchett as a force and fierce advocate for the communities close to her heart, for her friends and family. Hanchett didn’t care what people thought of her, and she taught other people how to live authentically and respect themselves.

“What kind of came out of (her advocacy) is she was opening the door for people to be themselves unashamed, with no holds barred,” Roby said. “Having that respect for yourself first and just honoring the person that you are versus worrying about what everybody else thinks.”

Wimhurst described Hanchett as a sweet yet unequivocal defender of those she loved. And most importantly they said Hanchett was the definition of an ally.

“Sometimes, the word ally gets used flippantly to describe straight people who have a couple of queer friends,” Wimhurst said. “But, in my opinion, if you were to ever look up the word ally in the dictionary, there should be a picture of Shannon.”

Ambassador of kindness

Shannon Hanchett embodied what it means to lead with kindness and empathy.

Gabriel Bird, a local Norman dentist whose business resides next door to the Cookie Cottage, said she was the greatest neighbor, somebody whose legacy was one of kindness and acceptance.

“There aren’t people who I have found that didn’t like Shannon,” Bird said. “She was unconditionally kind to everybody around her. I call her an ambassador of kindness. She didn’t care who you were, what your background was, what group you fit into, what political affiliation, what orientation. … She just knew that she loved you and was going to love on you.”

After meeting her through local business circles, Bird said he was “thrilled to pieces” when he learned Hanchett would open her shop next door to his in 2021. Bird said Hanchett welcomed his daughter, who often got stuck at the office with him, with open arms and fed her sprinkles and cookies while he worked.

The recollections from Bird, Smith, Wimhurst and Roby alike pay forward what they each recall in their friend, someone who invested in her friends and made a point to prioritize relationships through thick and thin.

While undergoing fertility difficulties and the eventual premature birth of her daughter, Roby said Hanchett was by her side through it all.

“Through that time, which was a hard time for us obviously, she was there ready to bring us a meal and bring us some cookies or buy diapers or try to help,” Roby said. “She celebrated just as much as she would sit with you in the hard times. She really invested a lot of herself into her friendships.”

Her friends described an overwhelmingly kind and thoughtful person who in life — and death — brought the community together.

That, they say, is the perfect way to carry her legacy of kindness forward.

Wimhurst said Hanchett made the world a better place, calling her “one of a kind” when it came to serving those around her and the greater Norman community. In word and deed, Wimhurst said Hanchett taught them how to be patient and kind even to those they disagreed with.

Wimhurst said they now live their life through one simple belief inspired by Hanchett’s spirit: there is no function of being a mean person.

“I like to think that I’m a nice person, but Shannon was very much that and more,” Wimhurst said. “I could only hope that I could be at least somewhat as kind or sympathetic or altruistic of a person that she was. … Having Shannon in my life is one of the biggest reasons why I adopted that mentality of just being a good person and not seeing the functionality of just being mean for the sake of it.”

Wimhurst said Hanchett’s kindness is what will bring change and reform to the city and the institutions that, they say, failed her. Hanchett wouldn’t have stood by and let what happened to her happen to anybody else, they said, and the community shouldn’t either.

Smith believes Hanchett’s advocacy efforts led up to this moment. She didn’t stand by and watch as injustice occurred around her, she instead fought against it and for love, kindness and justice — for everybody in Norman.

“She pushed for equality. She pushed for happiness,” Smith said. “It’s almost as if her passing has really amplified her spirit. I don’t really see that happen too terribly often when someone passed.

She meant so much to so many people that you can’t help but want to do better as a human because that’s what she would’ve pushed for.”

Roby remembered her friend as a loving mother and caring person. She said Hanchett’s biggest legacy was inspiring others to realize the impact of small actions, kind words and loving others for the sake of it.

Describing her friend’s love for her kids and her community, Roby started to cry.

She remembered how Hanchett fought against everything that led to her death. How she worked to end mental health stigmas. How she battled corruption in city institutions.

Most of all, Roby remembered how much she cared.

“She was just — she was just a really good friend,” Roby said through tears. “She was just a really good friend. There’s not going to be another person like her. The community’s going to have this gaping hole for quite a while.”

Hanchett is survived by her husband, Daniel; her two sons Sam and Cooper; her mother, Maurine Jones; her stepfather, Larry Jones; her stepmother, Debbie Lee; her sisters Christy Hall and Rachel Laffitte; her brother, Dalton Jones; and members of her extended family. She was preceded in death by her father, Tommy Lee.