A finalist for Colorado’s Teacher of the Year used music and drugs to groom a 16-year-old student for sex — and then continued to contact him even after she was fired and hit with serious charges.
Tera Johnson-Swartz, 45, has been sentenced to 14 years in prison after being hit with two criminal cases — the first following a grand jury investigation into her relationship with the teen and the second for continuing to contact him in defiance of court orders not to.
“She is pretty stupid, I’m not gonna lie,” the victim told police after her second arrest, calling her an “unstable woman,” according to an affidavit obtained by CBS News.
“Already ruined her life, and she keeps just making it worse.”
The former teacher at STEM School Highlands Ranch, located outside of Denver, is a “predator” who will now have to “live with that label for decades,” Douglas County District Attorney George Brauchler said.
She began texting and exchanging music playlists in 2024 when the student was just 16 years old, the affidavit showed. She later bought him cigarettes and let him use her marijuana vape pen before they started to have sex, police said.
Their relationship was discovered and reported to police in January 2025 — five months after Johnson-Swartz had been named one of seven finalists for Colorado’s Teacher of the Year Award.
School officials immediately suspended her, and she was later fired and banned from campus.
However, less than a month later, on Feb. 18, 2025, the student was caught on security camera leaving the school and jumping into Johnson-Swartz’s car. He later told investigators she drove him to a nearby neighborhood.
She was later indicted and arrested on charges of felony kidnapping, three counts of sexual assault on a child and contributing to the delinquency of a minor.
She was released on a $100,000 bond the following day — but continued to contact the student against court orders, according to court documents.
Over the Fourth of July Weekend last year, the teacher and the boy ran into each other on back-to-back nights at a music venue in Greenwood Village. The band playing both nights was among those on the playlists the two had shared.
At one point, she cornered the teen and told him, “Just say you don’t love me.”
After seeing him both nights, Johnson-Swartz continued to text him. The boy and his parents reported the encounter to police and she was arrested again at her new, post-teaching job at a fast-food restaurant.
The boy said he was not surprised she was unable to stay away from him, calling her an “unstable woman.”
“She threw away her entire life for me. And I’m not entirely surprised by the fact that she then would have trouble letting go because she did throw her life for me. But no, I never told her I loved her, and she never said that to me,” he said, according to the affidavit.
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