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Stories about kids, guns and how to stop the violence. Precious Lives, created by 371 Productions, is a 2-year, 100-part weekly radio series about gun violence and young people in the Milwaukee area. The series applies a public health lens to each story to help listeners understand the full scope of the problem: who are the victims and the shooters; how are the weapons obtained; and what can we change about the environment that contributes to violence in Milwaukee?

#084 Precious Lives: The Cost of Saying Goodbye

Mike De Sisti | Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Kimberley Zulkowski (right) hugs Destiny Boone, 9 year old Za'Layia Jenkins mom (center), at Za'Layia's funeral.

Milwaukee zip code 53206 comes with a lot of labels: mass incarceration, poverty, violence.

Underneath those labels there’s a lot of pain, but there’s also a lot of love. Kimberley Zulkowski love her community.

"Love will make you a master at many things quickly," she says. "I love my community and I love the people in it."

She is from 53206 and says it’s hard to shake the labels. Kimberley's seen many people she knows leave in caskets.

And when homicides picked up in 2015, her connection grew deeper.

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