A pair of strangers who frequent the same hallway could become so connected, their lives could be changed forever, together.
Barry Dehler, a Battle Ground High School teacher, has stepped forward as a possible kidney donor to Jackota Salmi, a Battle Ground High School senior who needs a kidney transplant to avoid dialysis due to chronic kidney disease that has been progressing since he was just 10 years old.
Janette Chumley, Salmi’s mother, is not new to navigating the process to have one of her sons receive a kidney. Salmi’s older brother, Justin Carey, had a kidney transplant in 2020 on Salmi’s birthday. Now it is Salmi’s turn.
“In 2023, my daughter was pregnant and her baby was born without kidneys or a bladder,” Chumley said. “And so that kind of put us into, ‘What’s going on here with boys in our family and kidneys and bladder?’ To back up, Jackota was born very early. I was on bed rest for quite a bit of my pregnancy with him because I had no amniotic fluid. … So having more information and having the death of my grandson, we decided to do genetic testing.”
Chumley found out that she is a carrier for the PAX-2 gene variant. That means she has passed a mutated gene to her kids, which ends up more prevalent in males. That’s why her two sons and a grandson were affected, Chumley said.
While being on medication for the last nine years,, Salmi was placed on a transplant list just this year.
“It’s obviously better to get a living donor so there’s no, what they call, ‘cold time,’” Salmi said. “So an organ isn’t sitting or flying from another country or another state. The chances of it lasting longer are greater.”
Chumley embarked on a social media campaign in hopes to find a donor. From those efforts, Dehler recognized Salmi as someone who frequents the hallway, but isn’t a student of his at Battle Ground High School. Dehler added that he was inspired by his niece donating a kidney to a friend of hers.
“I figured I would give a kidney sooner or later to somebody,” Dehler said.
Dehler added that the two had a 30-second conversation after he had seen Salmi in a video earlier in the day, marking the first time they had formally met.
While the process to be a kidney donor is long and strict in order to ensure there will likely be no sudden complications due to health issues, Dehler has his hopes up and is committed.
For Chumley, she said just the fact that a stranger, especially a teacher from the same school, is willing to help Salmi in that way, means the world.
“It just restores my faith in humanity, really,” she said. “Just to have a stranger come and say, ‘I want to help,’ is just amazing. I couldn’t ask for a nicer, kinder man to come into our lives. We both have faith in the Lord and I feel like, even if it doesn’t work out, I feel like him coming into our lives was for a reason.”
