EVERETT — Colton Harris-Moore is trying to create a miracle from his prison cell near Aberdeen. His mother’s health is deteriorating, and her doctors say they cannot do any more to stop the cancer eating her lungs, he said.
There is always another option, Harris-Moore said in a telephone interview from Stafford Creek Corrections Center. That is where the 25-year-old is serving a six years stemming from a two-year-long crime spree that stretched from the Pacific Northwest to the Caribbean, and earned him the moniker “The Barefoot Bandit.”
Harris-Moore is trying to raise enough money through crowd-funding to cryogenically freeze his mother, Pamela Kohler, after she dies, in the hope that one day she will be brought back to life.
Her doctors in Everett and Seattle seem to have given up hope in fighting her cancer, he said.
Kohler could only have days to left to live, so “holding out for treatment is a waste of time,” he said.
His mother’s best hope is to be put into a deep freeze that preserves the body and vital organs, a process called cryopreservation that essentially puts the body on pause. The hope is that advances in medical technology will allow her to be revived and her cancer successfully treated.
“It’s outlandish, sure, but it is the most realistic option” given her condition, Harris-Moore said.
It is also an expensive option.
The company Harris-Moore wants to use, Alcor Life Extension Foundation, charges $280,000 for the procedure and other fees. It is less for Alcor members, according to the Scottsdale, Arizona-based company’s website.
Kohler has relied on disability payments and public assistance to get by, he said.
Harris-Moore is trying to raise the money through GoFundMe, a crowd-funding website. The page is titled, “IMPOSSIBLE IS NOTHING: Saving Pam.”
“There’s always another option,” he said. “It’s never truly the end.”
A person doesn’t die when her heart stops beating, but when the body breaks down to the point that it cannot support life, according to Alcor’s website. “Death is not when life turns off. People can and have survived being ‘turned off.’”
Alcor preserves the body, using chemicals to allow chilling it to -120 degrees Celsius without ice crystals forming in the cells, the company’s website states.
The company’s site acknowledges that cryonics “cannot be demonstrated to work today.” Current technologies cannot revive a person put into cryopreservation. Future advances will eventually make that possible, proponents say.
“The future is truly an amazing, amazing thing,” Harris-Moore said. “That is where my faith is. My faith isn’t in the doctors” and today’s technology.
Dan Catchpole: 425-339-3454; dcatchpole@heraldnet.com; Twitter: @dcatchpole.
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