BOULDER — A surgeon was the first person to call George Knorps in the Chicago suburb of Winnetka, Ill.

It was the kind of call that can stop a parent's heart.

"You think the worst and pray for the best," Knorps said Tuesday.

Michael Knorps, his 17-year-old son, was starting his first day of college at the University of Colorado, hundreds of miles away, on Monday. He was stabbed in the neck by a man who then turned the knife on himself, according to police.

The surgeon called Monday as he was about to operate on the second-youngest of George Knorps' seven children.

"It was a pretty upsetting situation," he said. "No. It was very upsetting."

George Knorps stood outside his daughter's Boulder home at 10 a.m. Tuesday as his son slept inside — the muscles and skin of the teen's neck held together with stitches.

The father talked about the encouraging strength of his son, the fine line the student walked between life and death, and the risk a parent takes when letting a child go.

"If the cut would have been slightly deeper, he would have faced very serious complications, if not death," Knorps said.

Less than 24 hours earlier, Kenton Astin, 39, had jumped the new student on the University Memorial Center's south patio, cut his neck and then threatened to detonate a bomb using his cell phone, police and witnesses said.

When police arrived, they said, Astin stabbed himself in the chest repeatedly until officers hit him with a Taser.

Astin was rushed to the hospital with serious injuries, minutes after Knorps was wheeled into an ambulance and taken to the emergency room. As paramedics strapped Knorps onto a gurney, the student held his neck with one hand and flashed the peace sign with the other.

"People in the ER were amazed at Michael's composure," George Knorps said. They gave him a CU hat and T-shirt that read, "Go Buffs," his father said.

"It was composure well beyond what they had experienced," he said.

He and his wife landed in Colorado about 8 p.m. Monday, a few hours after their son was released from the hospital. Before his parents arrived in Boulder, Michael Knorps had already ordered a coffee milkshake from Snarf's, his father said.

The finance major didn't attend classes Tuesday, and he might not all week. But, family members said, the student is making weekend plans — his brother-in-law said he's hoping to go to the Buffs game Saturday.

The freshman chose to come to CU, in part, because two of his six siblings attended the university, George Knorps said. Both of the Knorps alumni had great experiences, and the father said he's always had a positive perception of CU.

George Knorps said dangerous things can happen anywhere: Another of his sons had been a freshman at New York University for 10 days when two planes struck the city's Twin Towers on Sept. 11, 2001.

The father said he doesn't know how his son feels about returning to CU after Monday's attack. Michael Knorps hasn't talked much about the incident with his family yet, George Knorps said.

"He doesn't want to repeat that," he said. "We don't want him to see the news reports."

What the student needs most is support, his father said. And, he said, the whole family is getting plenty of it.

When he and his wife stepped off the train at Denver International Airport on Monday, CU Chancellor Bud Peterson was waiting to escort them to Boulder.

"The university has done a good job," Knorps said.

So have students, he said. Text messages have flooded Michael Knorps' cell phone, and notes have been scrawled across the white board outside his dorm room.

"Get better boss!" one person wrote.

"Yo, what you know about crazy Mike?" another person jotted on the dorm door next to Knorps' room. "Kid got stabbed in the neck and lived."

A Facebook.com page has been dedicated to the freshman. It's called "Students for Michael Knorps."

The day-old group already has 125 members, several messages and a mission: "Students of this group are committed to supporting Michael and his family through the entirety of this ordeal."

To that end, students have organized a get-well card initiative, which prompted thousands of people to sign over-sized poster boards Tuesday in the student center.

"It still hasn't hit me that it happened like 30 seconds that way," CU sophomore Erik Fredrikson, 21, said before signing his "best wishes."

"This isn't what 'the usual Boulder craziness' typically means," one person wrote.

"You now have the ultimate trump story for bad first days of school," another student joked on the poster board.

CU junior Jessica Lilly, 20, thought up the card-signing effort because, she said, she couldn't get the attack out of her mind.

"I just kept thinking about him," she said.

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