Lisa Keith remembers that November day. Vividly.
After all, she almost accidentally killed her children.
The family’s furnace was broken. Technicians looked it over. The furnace needed a new motor. The technician had to wait for the part to come in. That would be in a few days.
In the interim, the family froze. The weather did not cooperate. A cold front chilled the home. Air temperatures inside the house hovered in the mid-50s.
“It was so cold in the house,” she recalled. “And it was a streak of cold day after cold day.”
So Lisa decided to take action. She opened the oven door. She turned the gas oven to 450 degrees. This, she thought, would warm the house.
“My mom and dad used to do the same thing all the time,” Lisa said.
It did just that. But the oven also puffed carbon monoxide through the house, through the nostrils and mouths of the Keiths.
Carbon monoxide, which is a deadly odorless gas, was racing through the home.
It was Nov. 28, 2008, at their home at 527 S. Evanston Ave. in Independence.
Kris, 12, Kedrick, 11, and Kaleb, 17, and Lisa were all sleeping, unaware that the gas they were breathing in might keep them sleeping permanently.
The family draped numerous blankets everywhere. On their bed. Over the windows. Under the doors.
Lisa even draped a large blanket over the doorway leading to the basement. This was an attempt to keep the cold air from wafting upstairs by having the blanket act as a door.
But it also acted as a trap, keeping the harmful odors in the main house.
“There was no place for the gas to escape,” Lisa said.
Even worse, Lisa had allowed the boys to sleep in the living room on air mattresses, mere feet away from the stove. They would be warm. Closer to the heat, she thought.
Lisa had “a raging headache” around 4:30 a.m. that morning. She was up at that time. “I didn’t think that much of it because lots of times I get headaches,” she said.
The mother went back to bed. But she heard commotion coming from the hallway.
Kaleb went to bed around 10 or 11 p.m.
He slept on the couch. Kedrick and Kris were sleeping on air mattresses.
Mitch, the father, awoke Kaleb around 6:30 a.m. That’s when Kaleb usually gets up for school.
“It was like a normal day,” Kaleb said.
Kaleb woke Kris up. Kris looked pale, Kaleb remembered.
Kaleb started realizing something was amiss. He had a headache. Kris had a headache. Mitch had a headache.
Mitch and Kaleb started talking. The dad told him the oven had been open and on all night. They both concluded that it was either carbon monoxide or natural gas that was creating their headaches.
Kris went to the restroom. As he was walking out, Kris fainted.
Kaleb grabbed Kris off the floor. “His pupils were completely dilated. They were huge. He was very pale.”
Mitch zipped around the house, opening all the windows.
Kris had little muscle control. He could barely stand.
So Kaleb carried him outside to the porch.
He rushed back inside. He needed to find Kedrick.
Kaleb saw his brother. “He (Kedrick) ran into the wall and then just kind of fainted,” Kaleb said. Mitch and Kaleb picked up Kedrick and took him out of the house.
Kaleb then grabbed several blankets and wrapped them around his brothers, keeping them warm.
“I was also trying to keep them conscious and alert,” Kaleb said.
Both his brothers were awake but groggy. “I just kept reassuring them that things were going to be fine. Take a deep breath. Keep talking to me. Stay awake.”
Meanwhile, Lisa saw what was happening to her family. She froze.
“I was in shock,” Lisa said. “I was crying. I felt terrible because I knew it was my fault. I turned that oven on.”
She said when Kedrick, who told her he couldn’t feel his legs, asked her if he was going to die, “that about sent me over. It was horrifying for me.”
Kaleb saw his mother crying. But he reassured Lisa that it wasn’t her fault.
“Here’s my 17-year-old son encouraging me and trying to keep the boys awake at the same time,” Lisa said.
Later that morning, Kaleb went to school.
He had a test that day at his school, Lincoln College Preparatory Academy in Kansas City, where he is now a senior.
Emotionally, Kaleb was rattled. But the emotions settled down once he got to school.
During the third hour of class, he suffered a pounding headache.
He came home from school.
Lisa took the boys to the Swope Health Services in Kansas City where their blood was drawn to check their monoxide levels.
Kaleb had his blood drawn first. Kedrick followed.
“I passed out,” Kaleb said.
He awoke a short time later.
Blood tests revealed his monoxide levels were higher than both is brothers.
The Kansas City Mayor’s Office and the Missouri Senate have awarded proclamations to Kaleb for his actions that morning.
Kaleb is eyeing a career in architectural engineering. But also, he’s thinking about being a firefighter. But he’s always thought about being a firefighter and working in public service.
The incident that morning merely “added to” him maybe being a firefighter.
Kaleb is an Eagle Scout.
Currently, he serves a junior assistant scout master for Troop 347, the highest position he can obtain at his age.
Troop No. 347 is based at Pleasant Heights Community of Christ church, 4341 Blue Ridge Blvd.
It was announced on Thursday that Kaleb received the Boy Scout of America heroism award, said Tim Madsen, committee chairman for Troop 347.
Kaleb will receive a medal and a patch for his uniform.
The award was for “saving a life at minor risk to his own safety,” Madsen said. “Kaleb, for all practical purposes, saved a life. We’re really proud of Kaleb.”
Madsen added:
“This is a fairly prestigious award. I’ve been in scouting for 25 years or so. I was a Scout and now I’m a leader. I’ve never met anybody personally that has earned this award.”
Madsen said Kaleb’s work in becoming an Eagle Scout, which only 2 percent of all Boy Scouts nationwide attain, “prepared him” for the actions he took that day.
“We always let the boys know that as they’re going through Scouts, they’re learning basic first aid and sometimes advanced first aid. There’s so many life lessons that you learn when becoming an Eagle Scout.
“You’re preparing yourself to be a productive member of society and a good husband and father and man in general. But you’re also preparing yourself for the unforeseen and the emergencies. Kaleb took that knowledge he gained through Scouts and applied it, and it did what we all hoped it would.”
Kaleb worked as a lifeguard at a Boy Scout camp in Osceola, Mo. He’s also a major in a local ROTC program.
“I can’t say that without the training from Boy Scouts, especially and first aid training, that I would have reacted the same way to the situation,” Kaleb said. “I’d like to say that anybody would have done the same thing. But I don’t know that I would have been able to handle the stressful situation or been able to react the way that I did.”
Lisa, whose family moved from the Independence home to a Raytown house, said: “Kaleb kinda just took over. He really pulled it together. It was amazing.”
