PORT ANGELES — When the Port Angeles High School Leadership Class heard of Kevin Jones’ plight after he suffered a brain aneurysm, they immediately adopted him as the beneficiary of the second annual talent show this Friday.
Jones, a longtime Port Angeles resident, was at a pastor’s conference in Leavenworth in November when he suffered the aneurysm, his wife Donna said.
He has been at Harborview Medical Center in Seattle ever since, she said.
The student Leadership Class saw an item in the Peninsula Daily News about the Jones family needing financial assistance, so it decided that he would be the beneficiary of this year’s talent show, said Dillan Witherow, student body president.
The show, which features 23 performances of students and community members, begins at 7 p.m. Friday. Doors at the high school auditorium, 304 E. Park Ave., will open at 6 p.m. to view and bid on silent-auction items.
Cost of admission is $8 for adults, $5 for students or $20 for a family of four.
Last year’s event, which benefitted Tammy Goodwin, who suffered from cancer, raised about $10,000, said Rachael Ward, adviser for the Leadership Class.
“We are hoping to raise something in the same neighborhood this year,” she said.
Donna and Kevin Jones never knew that he suffered from a lifelong genetic problem in which there are no capillaries between arteries and veins in a small portion of the right side of his brain, she said.
When he suffered a headache at the pastor’s conference last Nov. 17, he went to lie down in his hotel room.
“After about an hour, I went to check on him and he was on the floor between the two beds in the hotel room,” Donna Jones said.
“He was talking, but his words were slurred and it was hard to understand him.”
She called for an ambulance and he was rushed by plane to Harborview Medical Center, where he eventually went into a coma and remained so for about a month, she said.
Donna temporarily moved herself and their three children — Benjamin, 15, Christopher, 13, and Abigail, 10 — to Kevin’s parents’ house in Marysville, where she has continued to home-school them.
Meanwhile, his left leg has regained some slight movement, Donna Jones said, but his left arm remains paralyzed.
“Since he woke up, he has gone from hardly moving at all to here he is up and moving,” she said, “and they are teaching him how to move himself around and move himself from the wheelchair to bed and other things.”
But doctors do not know if or when he might regain movement in the rest of his body, if he will ever work again or what kind of improvement he will make.
“They have him on the parallel bars and with some help they are getting him moving,” his wife said.
Doctors have hinted that Kevin could be released as early as Saturday, Donna Jones said.
“They’ll all have a meeting and then decide,” she said.
At first it seemed as if he would have to be moved to a more long-term facility — but he has improved more quickly than expected, so his team of doctors have now told Donna that he should be able to go home with her when he is released.
“I feel that the Lord has been with us and has helped us through this,” Donna said.
“Kevin’s family are also wonderful people — they have opened up their house to me and three kids invading their privacy. . . . They are extremely supportive.”
At first they will move Kevin into his parents’ Marysville house, she said.
“He’ll have a lot of appointments and people will be coming to work with him,” she said.
“Our house in Port Angeles isn’t set up for [a wheelchair].”
So she hopes to use some money she has already saved plus donations from the talent show to purchase a new minivan so that it will provide safer transportation once Kevin can come home.
“Another thing is that even if he isn’t in a chair, our home in Port Angeles will need modifications,” she said.
When she first heard of the talent show benefit, she said she was surprised.
“My undying gratitude goes out to everyone who set up this benefit,” she said.
“It will help our family so much.”
Because it is possible that Kevin will be released on Saturday, the family will not be able to attend the Friday event, Donna said, but added that they would be there in spirit.
For those not attending the event, donations may be sent to Port Angeles High School, 304 E. Park Ave., Port Angeles, WA 98362.
A donation account has also been set up at the North Olympic Peninsula branches of Sound Community Bank.
Donations of silent-auction items also are being accepted, Ward said.
For more information, contact Ward at 360-565-1529 or rward@portangelesschools.org.
________
Reporter Paige Dickerson can be reached at 360-417-3535 or at paige.dickerson@peninsuladailynews.com.
