Tragedy results in chance for gold

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SALT LAKE CITY -- She was giving away nearly all she had and was asking for little in return.

Just let me stay here, she asked. Let me be near. When told that was not possible, she pleaded for something less. Just let me know when it's over, she asked. Let me know when you take my son's life.

Maybe the folks at the hospital did not understand what Leisa Flood wanted. Maybe she didn't understand it fully herself. She just knew it was important for her to be alert when Billy died.

Not engaged in some meaningless activity. Certainly not sleeping. When life left her 13-year-old son's body, Leisa wanted to be nearby. Just in case, she said, he was looking for her.

She went home with her estranged husband after the hospital asked her to leave. She held a Bible in one hand and one of her daughters in the other and waited for the call. She sat through the night as doctors at the hospital in Denver harvested organs from Billy's body.

Later, they told one of the recipients Billy Flood's organs had given a better life to 13 people.

"I was so pissed when they first asked," Leisa Flood said. "I thought, 'How could they be asking me this.' It was like, 'Your son is going to die, but do you mind if we cut him up and take his organs?'

"I was alone with him in that room for 21/2 days and watched the blood pour out of his body. The smell of that room and the sounds of the machines. My whole world was right there, drifting away from me. I was sitting there watching the machines, and I started thinking that somebody else's mom is sitting there with their child watching machines. Their son or daughter or husband was there because some organ was failing.

"That's when I decided to do it because that's what Billy would have wanted. He was such a giving, loving child."

It was not the diagnosis that got Chris Klug's attention. It was not the occasional pain. It was the news report on the radio.

He was driving through mountain roads heading for the slopes of Park City, Utah, when the voice on the radio said Walter Payton died.

Klug, who finished sixth in the Nagano Olympics in the snowboard giant slalom, pulled his car to the side of the road. And then he cried.

"That was the first time I was really scared," Klug said.

Seven years earlier, he had been diagnosed with primary sclerosing cholangitis (PSC), a degenerative liver disease. Doctors warned him the disease could be a killer, but Klug had a hard time believing.

He was 6 feet 3, a former all-state quarterback in high school. He lived life at full speed, including those moments spent sliding down a mountain.

PSC, a disease that affects the bile ducts, strikes about 1 in 10,000, mostly young men. Klug, who grew up with a Payton poster on his bedroom wall, knew the NFL's all-time leading rusher was fighting the disease. Klug just never accepted it was possible to lose the fight.

Months after Payton's death, in the spring of 2000, Klug was on a surfing trip in California. He awoke in the middle of the night with a searing pain in his side. And he knew instinctively he was running out of time.

Billy Flood was not a perfect child. And he did not come from a perfect home. His parents split up, and he bounced between California, Idaho and Colorado. Money was scarce, and trouble was an occasional companion. He was gullible, his mother says, and followed others directly into mischief's way.

And yet, it was never possible to stay angry at him. His heart was too pure, his conscience too strong, Leisa said.

Billy would do yard work to earn money in the trailer park outside of Denver where they lived. He did one yard on the left and another on the right. In the middle was an elderly woman -- Miss Emma -- who could not afford to pay. Billy did her yard anyway.

He was the rare boy in the area who had no interest in guns. Leisa once bought him a BB gun, and when he took it outside, some of the neighborhood kids used it to shoot rabbits. Billy gave the gun back to Leisa. He told his friends his mother had taken it away from him.

Before leaving for a store one July day in 2000, Leisa poured Billy a glass of Kool-Aid and set it on a table near the television where he was playing a Nintendo video game.

When she returned, her first thought was he had fallen asleep on the couch with the TV still on. She noticed a stain on his shirt and wondered if he had spilled the Kool-Aid.

As seconds passed and her eyes adjusted to the light, she could see a bullet hole in her son's head. Billy Flood was still breathing, but his life was gone. The bullet had essentially destroyed his brain.

Later, a teenaged acquaintance admitted he had brought a gun to the trailer and Billy was shot when it accidentally discharged. He was sentenced to two years in a juvenile detention center.

Leisa Flood does not believe it. She does not doubt it was an accident, but she believes the other teenager was trying to frighten Billy after an altercation involving a girl.

"The death of a child is the most awful pain you can imagine," Leisa said. "I've had grandparents and friends die, and that was painful. But it's not like losing your only son. Billy was a loving kid, a good kid. I know something like this shouldn't happen to anybody's kid. But it surely shouldn't have happened to Billy."

Billy was shot in his home with Nintendo controls in his hand. The game he was playing was snowboarding.

For nearly 80 days, the beeper had been a constant, silent companion.

Chris Klug's condition was worsening, and University Hospital in Denver had added him to the national list of high-priority transplant applicants.

The doctors had once controlled the build-up of bile in his liver by inserting a tube down his throat and flushing it out. This was done once a year. Then twice a year. Then every few months. Eventually, the treatment no longer could prevent the deterioration of his liver.

It was late July 2000 when the beeper beckoned Klug to the hospital. A donor had been found, and after the necessary tests, it was determined the match was nearly perfect. Surgery would be the next day, and Klug was not permitted to eat after midnight. So he headed to the Cheesecake Factory and ate all he could stand in anticipation.

Surgery was a success, and Klug was out of the hospital in five days. Five months later, he won a medal in a World Cup slalom event in Canada.

Transplant patients are not customarily given the name of their donors. All Klug knew was a 13-year-old had died from a bullet wound.

Late last year, on the night before a race in Italy, Klug wrote a letter to the donor's family:

"I thank you every day for your gift of life. ... "

"We all cried when we got Chris' letter," Leisa Flood said.

At the time it arrived, she had no idea Klug was a world class athlete. His was just one of the many letters she received from transplant recipients.

The mail had found her in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, where Leisa had moved to be near Billy's grave. He is buried in Mullan, Idaho, his father's hometown.

"My healing process is to be at the cemetery every weekend," Leisa said. "All the books and people say it gets easier in time. Those are really a poor choice of words. It doesn't get easier.

"You just learn that it's going to be a constant part of your life. Every time you see a blond kid, you think of Billy. You see a 17-year-old and you think, 'What would Billy be like?"'

A few weeks ago, Leisa learned Klug would be competing in the Olympics. She couldn't afford to come to Salt Lake City, but her mother-in-law is there and has met with Klug's family.

Tonight, Leisa Flood will turn on her television to watch Klug compete in the preliminaries of the parallel slalom.

And she will look for something no one else can see.

"Billy will be at the Olympics. I truly feel that," Leisa said.

"Billy is part of the light in Chris' eyes."

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