Heidi Jones: Choosing Forgiveness After Tragedy

All In

DB Podcasts

Religion & Spirituality, Christianity

4.8 • 6.2K Ratings

🗓️ 26 November 2025

⏱️ 42 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

On October 15, 1985, Kathy Sheets returned home from her morning walk and noticed a small package on the driveway. As she reached for it, a bomb—placed by master forger Mark Hofmann in a desperate attempt to divert attention from his collapsing fraud scheme—detonated, taking her life. Kathy's daughter, Heidi Jones, struggled following her mom's passing with bitterness and deep grief but on today's episode, she shares how a decision to forgive made all the difference.

2:00- The 50-Year-Old Housewife
5:07-October 15, 1985
8:41- The Unseen Aftermath
11:18- An All-Consuming Grief
13:41- Letting Go of Bitterness
19:18- Reconciliation and Testimony
22:03- Forgiving the Unfairness of Life
27:25- The Unseen Aftermath…Again
32:06- Gaining Perspective
35:16- No Unfinished Business
38:59- What Does It Mean To Be All In the Gospel of Jesus Christ?

"To apply Christ's Atonement in my life I had to be able to take that huge burden, that oppression, and lay it at the Savior's feet and leave it. Lay it and leave it."

Transcript

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0:00.0	Heidi Jones's life was changed forever 40 years ago when her mother, Kathy Sheets, was a victim in the Mark Hoffman bombings.
0:09.2	Her mother had nothing to do with Hoffman and yet became collateral damage in Hoffman's efforts to divert attention away from himself and his forgeries.
0:19.2	Heidi was a young mother at the time and wrestled with
0:22.1	bitterness and anger in the years following her mom's passing, until she reached a breaking
0:27.7	point in which she knew that in order to be truly happy, she had to forgive. Heidi Jones
0:34.2	followed in her mother's footsteps and became a schoolteacher teaching for 22 years, a job which she calls the best job in the world.
0:42.6	She and her husband, Roger, are the parents of four married children and grandparents to 14 grandchildren.
0:49.1	She now calls herself a stay-at-home grandma.
0:56.6	This is All-in, an LDS Living podcast where we ask the question, what does it really
1:01.7	mean to be All-in, the gospel of Jesus Christ?
1:04.6	I'm Morgan Pearson, and I am so honored to have Heidi Jones on the line with me.
1:09.7	Today, Heidi, welcome. Thank you so much,
1:12.2	Morgan. It's a privilege. Well, I am so excited to talk to you, Heidi. A friend recommended
1:18.3	you and a friend that I think very highly of. And as I prepared for this interview, I was familiar
1:27.4	with the story of the Mark Hoffman bombings,
1:32.6	but I just fell in love with your mom based on the things that you said. And I even found,
1:38.8	I don't know if it was a blog post or something that a friend of your mother's daughter wrote. And she talked
1:48.4	about how special your mom was to her mother. And I just thought, man, this lady must be
1:56.2	incredible. So I'm excited to get a piece of her from you. I want to start on October 15th, 1985.
2:04.5	You lost your mother in the horrific bombings that were carried out by Mark Hoffman.
2:09.5	And I would love to have you, before we ever get into that day, I'd love to have you tell us a little bit about your mom who she was and what made her
2:18.8	so incredible. Thanks for this opportunity because, you know, the news stories when it came out,
	...

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