EVERETT — The email arrived a few weeks back.
A man was asking Murray Gordon for a favor. He wanted Everett’s fire chief to pass along his thanks to the paramedics and firefighters who helped his family in its greatest moment of need. It was seemingly out of the blue.
The note was sen
t 16 years after the man’s young son fell three stories at a north Everett apartment complex.
Kenny Collett, then 3, was carrying a handful of pictures he’d drawn that day while visiting one of his mom’s friends. His mother was holding Kenny’s 1-year-old brother in one arm and Kenny’s hand wi
th the other. She briefly let go of Kenny’s hand to write down a number. Kenny stepped backward, through the railing, and plunged to the concrete.
A photo of paramedics cradling the boy as he clung to life appeared on the front page of The Herald on May 24, 1995.
Kenny’s heart stopped beating that day; medics brought him back.
For 16 years, Jeffrey Collett kept the names of the firefighters: Ken Fletcher, Tom Cobb, Joey Means and Greg Houghtaling.
“They were able to keep my son alive and get him to Providence Hospital,” the father wrote. “After many months in hospitals and many years of therapy, our son Kenny was able to make a full recovery by grace and healing of God and with the help of many doctors, nurses and therapists.”
Kenny Collett, 19, was scheduled to graduate with honors from Horizon Christian School in Hood River, Ore., Saturday night. Life is good: He has a girlfriend, plays in a band, lettered in football and is an Eagle Scout. He’ll be off to college in the fall.
Hearing stories such as Kenny’s years later make the job of a firefighter all that more rewarding, Everett fire marshal Rick Robinson said.
“That’s why we serve,” he said.
Graduation was a milestone that seemed unimaginable in the spring and summer of 1995.
“At that point, we were just hoping for one extra day,” Jeffrey Collett said.
Kenny was flown to Seattle’s Harborview Medical Center. Ten days later, as soon as he was out of intensive care, he was moved to Seattle Children’s Hospital.
At first, success was measured in the tiniest of increments. There was great cause for celebration when Kenny was able to swallow again on his own.
The focus shifted from whether he’d live to what kind of life he would lead.
“In Children’s, we got reports anywhere from he would never walk or talk again to he would never have his sight the same again,” Jeffrey Collett said. “There were lots of different things he would never do. Slowly over the months with God’s grace and healing and the amazing way minds reroute stuff, he started picking up things.”
Jenny Collett, a 1992 Everett High School graduate, spent years taking her son to different therapists who worked with him on speech, vision and motor skills.
All the while, her husband kept the names in a computer file of the four Everett firefighters who came to his son’s aid.
He wanted them to know how things turned out for Kenny, the oldest of his four boys.
Falls are common among young children such as Kenny.
About a quarter of children treated at Harborview’s emergency room are brought there after a fall. Between 40 and 50 fell from windows. Such falls typically happen in spring and summer months when windows are left open.
Since 2000, there have been 100 reported window falls of 15 feet or higher involving children in Snohomish County.
“The important thing from our standpoint is to try to build safety into the environment” by child-proofing windows and reducing distance between railings, said Brian Johnston, chief of pediatrics at Harborview Medical Center.
With warmer weather promised, parents should make sure that the windows in their homes are secure, he said.
Head injuries are common among young children who fall. That’s because their heads are large compared to their overall body mass, making them top heavy.
Head injuries change everything for children, Johnston said. “This isn’t something that is over in a week. Typically, it’s a process of recovery that lasts over months and years.”
Such was the case for Kenny Collett.
Slowly, with the help of experts in speech, sight and movement, his brain regained the skills it had lost.
Kenny has no memories of the day he fell, but remains thankful to those who helped him recover.
“I just think about how my parents must have been so worried that I wasn’t going to make it,” he said.
Graduation was expected to be more than a rite of passage for Kenny Collett and his family.
For them, it offered a time to reflect on the fragile gift of life.
“You’re even more thankful for every single moment and day you have with your kids,” Jenny Collett said.
Eric Stevick: 425-339-3446, stevick@heraldnet
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