Sam was 31, an artist and free spirit. Her death by suicide has left her community grieving.

GREEN BAY – Sam Mrozinski's illustrations burst with gore, macabre humor, and plenty of wide-eyed cats and other fauna in disastrously human scenarios.

World-weary cats stand upright with cigarettes dangling from their mouths, hearts smile bearing yellowed teeth.

But amid the gristle, there is a warmth. Cats in cartoonish sweaters and rain jackets send up hearts and balloons, and they hug anatomical human hearts, and many of the cats are modeled after disabled cats from the local animal shelter.

Love and pain, family and friends said, held together Sam's world.

Sam Mrozinski, 31, died by suicide on Christmas Day, less than an hour after her younger sister Nichole Mrozinski dropped her off at home. Her death has brought her community to its knees. Some local stores and restaurants closed up shop to allow staff to grieve her loss. Others are promoting suicide prevention. Many are celebrating — and grieving — a life that ended far too soon.

That outpouring of support doesn't surprise Shay Cullinane, Sam Mrozinski's older sister, who always thought Sam would be a famous artist.

From an early age, Sam Mrozinski's passion and energy for drawing seemed endless, Cullinane, 34, said. Cullinane recalled an early memory of Sam, who, despite breaking her arm, continued to draw with a cast on.

"She was amazing. I honestly can't remember my life before she was born. She was always there. She was an amazing sister," Cullinane said.

Hours before her death, Sam Mrozinski joined her family to celebrate Christmas. Certain details will stick with Nichole Mrozinski, like how Sam switched on the movie "Scrooged," one of the Christmas movies she really liked, or the flash of pain Nichole saw on Sam's face as she drove her home that afternoon.

"She was absolutely adored and loved by everybody she ever encountered. She made a huge impact on so many people's lives," Nichole Mrozinski, 29, said.

"Brain pain," as Sam Mrozinski sometimes termed it on her Instagram page, had shadowed her for much of her life. For the better part of a decade, Sam Mrozinski had been hospitalized multiple times for attempted suicide, Nichole Mrozinski said.

Nichole Mrozinski said she casts no blame on her sister for ultimately taking her life, but she wished Sam understood how much her life mattered.

"I just want people to know that, like my sister, sometimes it's hard to remember how absolutely loved you are, and to always remember that," Nichole Mrozinski said. "She tried for many years. She was a beautiful person inside and out. She was, and still is, loved deeply."

Following her death, a community responds with an outpouring

Around the Green Bay community, Sam Mrozinski was better known as Sam Hain, a nod to her love of punk rock.

Her music flyers, commissioned by the former music venue The Lyric Room and Green Bay UFO Museum Gift Shop and Records, papered windows across the city. Eye-popping at times, her flyers included illustrated werewolves eating candy, wintry scenes of boozy cats tumbling out of trashcans, and baby alligators dizzily hatching amid music lineups.

Pierre Jacque, founder and owner of Green Bay UFO Museum Gift Shop and Records, knew Sam Mrozinski for 12 years, when they frequented the same punk shows. They met when Sam Mrozinski worked at a local Domino's. Jacque learned they had many mutual friends from the local music scene.

"We went to a lot of the same shows, especially when the Lyric Room was still around and she worked at Glass Nickel," Jacque said. "It was frequently kind of theatrical stuff like Peelander-Z, Impaler, or Mac Sabbath, but she would come around when we had little punk shows behind Exclusive Company, too."

When Jacque heard the news of Sam Mrozinski's death, one of the first things he did was check in with the friends and staff members at his store to "make sure that people knew we could struggle with it together and support each other."

"It was the biggest bummer to have such a bright beautiful light go out so suddenly," Jacque said. "I don’t know if we’ve all processed that she’s gone."

The day after her death, on Dec. 26, Glass Nickel Pizza Co. announced it wouldn't open its doors so the staff could grieve the loss of their coworker. The next day, co-owner Desiree Wescott posted on Facebook asking the Green Bay community for patience, as her staff continued to reel from the loss.

Wescott said Sam Mrozinski had been part of Glass Nickel's staff for a total of seven years and fit in with a team that a former manager affectionately called, "The Island of Misfit Toys." During those years, her openness about mental health shaped the ways the restaurant responded and dealt with the topic.

"She made some real connections with staff and customers, neighbors and friends here and around GNP," Wescott said. "I have almost 7-year-old twin daughters and she was their favorite person here. They loved coming in and seeing her. They loved her hair and style. They thought she was so beautiful and cool."

At Glass Nickel, Sam Mrozinski would doodle spot-on illustrations of staff members that always made people smile, and, of course, she drew cats and other creatures on the restaurant whiteboard, Wescott said.

Her love of cats first brought her to Safe Haven Pet Sanctuary in 2017, where she and her boyfriend at the time fed the cats fish scraps from the now-shuttered sushi restaurant, Phin Sushi. She quickly went from cat enthusiast to resident artist, volunteer and frequent visitor. She illustrated some of Safe Haven's cats, including a gray cat named Smeagol whose adorably awry pupils made him a distinct model. Her illustrations captured the essence of the cats at Safe Haven in need of adoption and fostering.

Elizabeth Feldhausen, CEO of Safe Haven, said it was Sam Mrozinski's connections to the restaurant industry that helped inspire and establish Safe Haven's first cat café and restaurant, called Meowsabi, which is slated to open soon. The space in Bellevue will also offer affordable housing that allows tenants to bring their pets without a monthly pet deposit fee.

"Sam created the whole partnership," Feldhausen said.

In issuing this tragic announcement on Facebook, Feldhausen also shared that Safe Haven would devote gallery space to memorialize Sam Mrozinski's work. On Jan. 27, Safe Haven will open its doors and sell her artwork. It will also be an opportunity for family and friends to share space and sit with her pieces.

"She meant so many different things to so many different people, even among the staff members. She had different relationships with all of us," Feldhausen said. "But really, her connection with the cats was different. She had a very deep connection to animals. And that was really obvious. And I think that shows a lot in her work."

Suicide rates continue to rise. Here's how friends and families can identify signs.

According to the Wisconsin Department of Human Services, suicide rates in the state have increased by 32% from 2000 to 2020.

Wisconsin's problems with suicide continue to grow on a yearly basis. Over the course of three years, from 2020 to 2022, the number of suicides jumped from 859 in 2020 to 930 by the end of 2022, and the means of death more absolute and final. That window alone represents an 8% increase.

That rise in need is challenging workforce numbers across the state. Primary care physicians say that mental and behavioral health is now one of the leading issues for which young people are scheduling appointments, but that doesn't mean physicians have the appropriate training to respond to crises.

And although Gov. Tony Evers has pledged to reduce suicide numbers by 20% by 2025 with the help of grants from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the current trend in suicide numbers tells a different story.

That doesn't mean friends, family and loved ones can't play a pivotal role in suicide prevention. One misconception about people at risk is that they don't talk about wanting to die with other people, said Jenny Younk, director of Family Services' Crisis Center in Green Bay.

"That is not accurate. People do sometimes say things, then other people dismiss them or explain them away," Younk said, who also chairs the Brown County Coalition for Suicide Prevention. "Saying things like, 'I wish I were dead' or 'I don't care if I die' or if it's someone grieving a recent loss, saying 'I wish I could be with him or her.' These might be benign statements, but they always merit some follow-up."

Other signs and symptoms to pay attention to include someone telling people where their will is, expressing what they want at their funeral, giving away possessions, and either acting very sad or the opposite: suddenly being chipper after months of being blue. The latter may indicate they have made a decision to end their life, Younk said.

Sometimes, however, people who die by suicide don't give any telltale signs of distress, especially if it's a more impulsive decision where drugs or alcohol are involved.

In the aftermath of a suicide, Younk tries to emphasize as often as she can with her staff that there's no one "right" thing to say to someone grieving a loved one's suicide. In fact, there's probably more ways to say the wrong thing than there are right things to say, Younk said.

"I think it's really just telling someone, 'I'm here for you, I'm willing to listen if you need to talk,' and then following through on that," said Younk, "No matter how we lose someone, it's a loss."

It's estimated that every one suicide death affects as many as 135 individuals, including family, friends, coworkers, professionals and anyone who valued the life of the individual lost to suicide, according to DHS.

That ripple effect is part of why Brown County offers the peer-support program, Local Outreach for Survivors of Suicide, or LOSS, Younk said, which meets on a monthly basis in-person or virtually. The purpose is to help survivors of suicide cope with the loss, and how to move forward despite not having answers to why someone chose to end their life.

Efforts to offset financial burdens

Sam Mrozinski's sudden death pushed her cousin, Danielle Mensik, to create a GoFundMe to help offset the family's new financial burdens. The family hopes to raise $10,000 to cover some of the expenses, including a funeral service.

You can donate to the Mrozinski family by following this link: gofund.me/b5899d6a

Other businesses are contributing to the cause with a creative, more permanent gesture.

Kaciey Lammers, a tattoo artist at Skinny Buddha Tattoo, opened her parlor doors to tattoo one of three illustrations by Sam Mrozinski. All proceeds will also support the Mrozinski family. So far, 30 people have stepped forward to get inked for the cause.

"Sam was a close friend of mine, I’ve known her about 10 years," Lammers said. "After a year of losses (many being artists) and seeing the ripple through the community with each one, I wanted to be able to help. With her it was different. I’ve seen such an outpour of love from so many people who really cared about her."

Ahead of Sam Mrozinski's funeral Saturday, Lammers will be tattooing a group of her family members to memorialize her, Lammers said. (The funeral will be at 10 a.m. Saturday at Proko Wall Funeral Home, 1630 E. Mason St.)

That outpouring has been very powerful for Nichole Mrozinski, who said she had no idea just how many people out there had been touched by her sister.

"It made us realize how absolutely adored and loved she was by everybody she ever encountered," Nichole Mrozinski said.

Natalie Eilbert covers mental health issues for USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin. She welcomes story tips and feedback. You can reach her at neilbert@gannett.com or view her Twitter profile at @natalie_eilbert. If you or someone you know is dealing with suicidal thoughts, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 988 or text "Hopeline" to the National Crisis Text Line at 741-741.

This article originally appeared on Green Bay Press-Gazette: Green Bay community reacts to artist's death with outpouring of grief