text: Larimer County has seen 77 suicides this year, including three involving children under 18 
   
   Two middle school students in Fort Collins have killed themselves this month, part of an increase in suicides that puts Larimer County on pace to surpass last year's total. 
   
   The first student, a girl, died Nov. 16, according to the Larimer County coroner's office. The second, a boy, died Saturday. Both students were 11, the coroner's office said. 
   
   The office has not released the students' names. An obituary for a girl who appears to be the female victim says she was a sixth-grader at Lincoln Middle School. The boy attended Blevins Middle School, according to the Fort Collins Coloradoan, which first reported the deaths. 
   
   Their deaths put the total number of suicides in Larimer County at 77 this year, according to the coroner's office. Three of those deaths, including the most recent two, involved children under the age of 18. 
   
   Last year, Larimer County saw 83 suicides, including two by children under 18. That tally was a 25 percent increase over 2013's total and the most the county had seen in at least 10 years. December was the deadliest month in 2014, with 11 suicides, according to the coroner's office. 
   
   The Poudre School District has provided extra counseling services at the two students' schools, the district said in a statement Monday. Over the past five years, the district has boosted efforts to support student mental health, including providing students and staff with suicide-prevention training, according to the statement. 
   
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   In the girl's obituary, her family asks that donations be made to groups that work to stop bullying in schools. Authorities have not publicly confirmed that bullying was involved in either death. 
   
   "We must validate each other's feelings during this tragedy," the girl's family wrote in her obituary, "and help one another know that we're not alone in this world." ||||| Please enable Javascript to watch this video 
   
   FORT COLLINS, Colo. — An unthinkable tragedy in Fort Collins is bringing the community together after two children took their own lives in the past week. 
   
   The family of one of the victims said bullying took their young daughter’s life. They hope her story will help end bullying. 
   
   Children in an east Fort Collins neighborhood spent their Sunday evening holding a candlelight vigil and balloon launch in memory of classmate Ariana Cordova. The 11-year-old Lincoln Middle School student committed suicide last week. 
   
   “She started being bullied when she was in second grade,” her older sister Isabella Cordova said. “It wasn’t until she came home with a broken arm that we had to figure out what happened.” 
   
   The girl’s family said she showed signs of bullying and depression in the past. She was put through counseling and programs. Her sister said Ariana was not showing any signs of suicide before her death. 
   
   “There are people on her bus that said she was counting down days but she never let any of us know. She acted like everything was fine,” Isabella said. 
   
   Cordova is not the only one. A second Fort Collins middle school student also took his own life during the weekend. The11-year-old Blevins Middle School student died Saturday night. His family has asked to keep his identity private. 
   
   The two deaths are raising new questions about the way schools handle bullying. 
   
   Cordova’s family said Lincoln Middle School was very good at handling situations where Ariana did not feel comfortable, including allowing her to take a course online. Isabella said more still needs to be done though. 
   
   “I feel like it’s really bad, but it kind of goes unnoticed because there are all these signs and slogans saying no bullying, this is a no bully school, but overall nothing has changed. Everybody says what they want to say and do what they want to do without getting in trouble for it,” she said. 
   
   She does not think more punishment for bullies is necessarily the answer though. 
   
   “Those people are always going to have to live with that guilt on top of them and have the burden of what they said and what they did and I don’t think the best way to get that across is to make them feel that same way too because it’s just this endless cycle that needs to stop,” Isabella said. 
   
   Ariana’s family now hopes their story will be a wake-up call for schools to implement real changes and serve as a message to other kids that asking for help is always the right answer. 
   
   “If they’re not going to listen to me then imagine my little sister dancing in the sky wherever she is looking down on you saying that it’s going to be OK. You can make it through this,” she said. 
   
   There will be a candlelight vigil for both young people Tuesday from 6:30 p.m. to 8 p.m. outside Colorado State University’s B.W. Pickett Equine Center in Fort Collins. 
   
   The families are raising money to cover unexpected medical and funeral costs: 
   
   Suicide and bullying resources
target: – These are troubling times for parents in Fort Collins, Colo., where two 11-year-old children took their own lives within days of each other. The suicide of a girl in sixth grade at Lincoln Middle School last Monday was followed by the Saturday night suicide of a boy who attended Blevins Middle School. Both schools are in the Poudre School District, and authorities are investigating whether the two deaths are linked, reports the Coloradoan. The girl's family says she suffered from bullying and depression, but one of the boy's friends tells the Coloradoan that he was a well-liked prankster; the classmate doesn't believe the boy was bullied. A police spokeswoman tells the Coloradoan that they have "not received any information that bullying was a contributing factor in either incident." But the girl's older sister tells KDVR that the 11-year-old had been bullied since the second grade and the family didn't discover it until she came home with a broken arm. She says the family wants the death to bring about changes in how schools deal with bullying—and to send the message to bullied children that they should always ask for help. "If they're not going to listen to me, then imagine my little sister dancing in the sky wherever she is looking down on you saying that it's going to be OK. You can make it through this," she says. The Denver Post reports that Larimer County has logged 77 suicides year-to-date, including these two and one more of a child under age 18. The year prior, there were two under-18 suicides in the county. (Read about how a mother survived her son's high-profile suicide.)