Editor’s note: This story talks about suicide. If you or someone you know needs help, call the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline at 988.
Michael Durkin, 16, loved to cook, particularly pasta dishes in heavy cream sauce, despite his older sister Isabel’s dairy allergy.
He liked working at Dairy Queen and participating in speech and debate at Chesterton High School, where he was a junior.
He cared about his friends, said his mom, Nicole Durkin, sitting in the kitchen of the family’s Valparaiso-area home in Liberty Township while chocolate Lab Nala, 6, nuzzled for attention.
Only later and after more reflection, about an hour after she concluded an interview with the Post-Tribune, did Nicole text how Michael would want to be remembered.
“Even in the hard moments, and regardless of who was around, Michael nearly always ended the night, a conversation, or a voicemail with, ‘Love you, Mom.’ And of all the words and memories I could hold onto, those are the ones I choose to carry with me and how I think he’d want me to remember him.”
Early in the morning on Sept. 28, Michael died by suicide when he was struck by a train on the tracks not far from his family’s home.
Michael, his mother said, had struggled with his mental health over the years, including a previous suicide attempt with pills at age 13 that resulted in counseling and intensive therapy. Still, he was doing better, planning a life after high school.
Nicole, a certified public accountant who works remotely, and Michael’s dad Mike, an elevator mechanic in Chicago, had strict parental controls on the internet for their son and his older sister, Isabel, 18, a first-year student at St. Mary’s College.
Those controls included what their children could access and how much time they spent online. The children got more screen time over the summer, their mom said, and Nicole and Mike had eased the controls on internet access recently when Michael started driving, so he could use mapping programs.
Late in the afternoon the day Michael died, Nicole said the family looked through his phone, which he left behind, to see if he had left a suicide note. That was when they found a series of pictures Michael had taken and shared on a messaging app outside the controls in place, and the threats from the person he sent the photos to.
The threatening texts were sent around 11:30 p.m. or so, just hours before Michael left the house while his parents slept.
“It was pretty terrible,” Nicole said, adding the information has been provided to the Porter County Sheriff’s Department and federal authorities for an investigation. The sheriff’s department did not have any updates on the investigation, according to a text from a spokesman there.
Even in his texts with the other person, Nicole said, Michael was skeptical, yet that person was still able to manipulate her son and create a sense of urgency.
“It’s absolutely horrific that somebody would do that to a teenager — pay me X amount of money or I’m going to put these (pictures) all over your social media,” Nicole said. “In his brain, I think he just thought there’s no way to recover from that. They’re going to send it to everyone.
“He didn’t think there was a path and there’s always a path,” Nicole said. “We can work through these things.”
According to statistics from the Indiana Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, cyber crimes against children continue to increase.
Between 2021 and 2023, the number of online enticement reports to the NCMEC increased by more than 300%. Likewise, the number of cyber tips received by the Indiana task force from the NCMEC hit 29,635 cases last year, a jump of more than 11,450 cases from 2024.
The Durkins decided to share Michael’s story, and their own, to help other families struggling with rapidly evolving technology and the need to protect their children.
“We all came to the same conclusion, that if this could help somebody else’s child and the unbearable pain, it would be worth it to share,” Nicole said.
Michael had been doing well before he died, considering a possible career as an airplane mechanic and talking regularly with a therapist, Nicole said.
“By all accounts, we were dealing with normal teenage stuff,” she said, adding Michael would stay up late on weekends gaming with friends, and helping pay for a new computer with his salary from Dairy Queen.
While Nicole hopes there is some sort of legal justice for what happened to Michael, “the realistic part of me knows that most likely will not occur. So how can we help prevent this from happening to somebody else or somebody else’s kids, is kind of what we discussed.”
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The family shared their story on Facebook and it spread rapidly. Around 15 people reached out to say they had experienced something similar.
“There’s so much going on,” Nicole said. “Technology is changing faster than me, you or the phone companies can keep up.”
Through tears, Nicole noted talking with kids about mental health, supporting them and educating them, “because people think it’s not going to happen to them or their kids.”
Nicole is a lifelong Chesterton resident and, until recently, her parents owned a car wash in town. The community support, in Duneland and beyond, has been tremendous, Nicole said, including donations in Michael’s memory.
The night before Michael died, Nicole was sick and went to bed early. Michael brought her water and checked in on her.
“He was helping take care of me. He was making fun of me, that I was being such a baby,” she said.
When she woke up at 7 a.m. the next day, her husband had already left for work and Michael wasn’t home. Mike thought his son was sleeping when he left the house. Nicole checked video from the home’s security system.
“I saw him leave at 3:16 in the morning and I didn’t see him come back” on the video, she said, adding she contacted the sheriff’s department. By then, she had seen social media posts about a train-pedestrian fatality in Liberty Township.
She found Michael’s cellphone and backpack at home. Her son usually didn’t leave for school until his mom was awake.
“I think part of me was hoping he was doing stupid teenage stuff like getting something to eat at 3 in the morning, but that wasn’t the case,” Nicole said.
There are all kinds of things that run through Nicole’s head, she said. She wishes she’d gotten up the night she was sick, and that Michael’s phone plan hadn’t been switched.
She sighed.
“Ultimately, I’m trying to make some peace with that,” she said.
During the Aug. 11 derecho, Michael was home alone and a tree hit the basement sliding door, right after Nala had forced him upstairs during the storm.
“I thought he had a newfound appreciation for life,” she said.