Timberlake grad hopes to one day help families just like hers

Kari Harmon found a note from Santa last winter, tucked in a box among the Christmas decorations, as she and her mom pulled them out for the season.

The note was addressed to her younger brother, Brian, who’d been diagnosed at 2 with acute myeloid leukemia and was undergoing treatment at a hospital in California, where their family lived. Don’t worry, the note read, Santa would find him at the hospital. He wouldn’t be forgotten.

The note – written by a child-life specialist at the hospital – brought them to tears all these years later, Kari Harmon said. And it was a reminder of how big a small gesture can feel to a child or family trying to cope with the stress of serious illness – the kind of help Harmon intends to provide as a child-life specialist herself.

“It’s a world of difference, having someone there,” she said.

Brian Harmon, now 17, has been in remission for close to 14 years. And Kari Harmon, 18, a senior at Timberlake High School in Spirit Lake, is headed to North Idaho College to study child development before transferring to Eastern Washington University to finish a degree in children’s studies, with an emphasis on families in crisis.

As a child-life specialist, she’ll join a group of professionals who provide emotional support and education to children and families, usually in medical settings to help them cope with illness and treatment.

At barely 4 when her brother was diagnosed with leukemia, Harmon didn’t understand that he could have died. But she knew he was sick. She remembers that hospital child-life specialists became like family members during Brian’s treatment.

Kari’s mother, Kathy Harmon, said the specialists ran playrooms, helping Brian maneuver his IV pole. They blew bubbles with him as doctors used needles to pull marrow from his bones. They set up craft activities for patients and their siblings.

“They were just angels,” Kathy Harmon said. “They were wonderful.”

And when Kari also became a patient, they were at her side as well, too. After chemo, Brian needed a bone marrow transplant. Among all their family members, Kari was the only match.

“I was able to save my younger brother, so that was awesome,” she said. “Somebody asked me a little while ago what I was most proud of. … I was like, ‘Oh, my extensive Beanie Baby collection. Just kidding. Saving my brother’s life.’ ”

These days, Kari Harmon is a “child magnet,” her mother said.

Kari Harmon spends part of every school day working as an assistant in a third-grade class at Spirit Lake Elementary School, where she helps kids get better at reading.

And after competing locally and at the state level, she’ll travel to Washington, D.C., in July to make a presentation about child-life specialists as part of a national competition run by the Family, Career and Community Leaders of America.

“I’ve always had a niche,” Kari Harmon said. “I just love working with kids. They brighten my day.”