Following Charlie Kirk’s assassination on September 10 in Utah at age 31, new details have emerged about his family, including his younger sister Mary Kirk, a 29-year-old art professional who charted a dramatically different course from her famous brother.

From Young Republican to Bernie Sanders Supporter
Growing up in the Democratic-leaning suburbs of northern Chicago, Kirk was already an outlier in high school politics. For a time, his sister Mary stood beside him, joining the Wheeling Young Republicans in 2011.

But her views shifted in 2015, when she encountered Senator Bernie Sanders on the campaign trail. “#tbt to when I met Bernie a year ago and had no idea who he was and now he is the light of my life,” she wrote in 2016, sharing photos from their meetings.

Later, she posted a viral Sanders campaign moment, a bird landing on the senator’s podium, captioning it simply: “I was the bird.”