TACOMA — All that former Port Angeles residents Luke and Katie Thacker wanted to do was go upstairs and have their baby.
They didn’t make it that far.
Well before dawn Wednesday, Katie went into labor, so she and her husband started driving the icy highway from their Spanaway home to St. Joseph Medical Center in Tacoma.
Katie also had her mom, Jessica Burns, call Luke’s mom, Olympic Medical Center Assistant Administrator Rhonda Curry.
It was 5:03 a.m., and Curry was in Port Angeles, where her hospital was in storm-response mode during this week’s blizzard.
She’d had every intention of driving to Tacoma for this birth, but with the weather, she could only stay put, phone in hand.
Knowing how bad road conditions were — and working in a hospital — Curry could imagine something terrible happening on that drive to Tacoma.
The phone didn’t ring. Time crawled.
At about 5:35 a.m., Curry called St. Joseph and, to her great relief, learned that Katie had been admitted.
“Great. She’s there. There’s nothing to worry about,” was her thought.
At 7:45 a.m., Luke called with the news of Blake Michael Thacker, born about two hours earlier — and a summary that went like this:
“Katie and I have had the most insane morning of our lives.”
Trapped
When Luke, Katie and her mother and sister, a midwife and two nurses boarded an elevator bound for the 14th-floor birthing center, its doors refused to close.
So Katie, the midwife and nurses slipped into another elevator, which then got stuck between the 12th and 14th floors.
Like many hotels and hospitals, St. Joseph has no floor marked 13, “so, how ironic,” Curry said.
Neither the hospital security workers nor the fire department could make the elevator move, she added.
An elevator technician was called — but couldn’t come in because of bad road conditions.
Luke got upstairs, though — where he could only listen to his wife, who was in the final minutes of labor.
“He could hear her through the wall. I can only imagine his sense of helplessness, as a husband and father,” Curry said.
“To be honest with you, I was just praying,” Luke later told the Tacoma News Tribune.
“I was really scared.”
Prepared as possible
Luke and Katie, both 27, sought to be fully prepared for this baby.
The couple, married four years now, welcomed their first son, Noah, 21 months ago.
When they found out they were to have another baby boy, they brought Noah to see the St. Joseph birthing center so he would feel comfortable there when his brother arrived.
But really, you can’t plan everything, this family has realized.
Blake Michael born
Just below the 14th floor, inside the stuck elevator, nurse-midwife Emalee Danforth and two other nurses helped bring Blake Michael into the world.
Some time later, another mechanic arrived and forced the elevator door open far enough for Luke to climb down and cut his newborn son’s umbilical cord.
He then handed the baby up to a nurse, and Katie was lifted out on a backboard.
When Luke at last called his mother in Port Angeles, he could report that her grandson weighed 7 pounds 15 ounces — but not what time he was born exactly.
It was probably close to 5:45 a.m., Curry estimated, judging from when Katie was admitted to the hospital.
Curry heard more about Luke, Katie and Blake Michael on television Wednesday evening. National Public Radio also mentioned it during “Morning Edition” on Thursday.
Meeting grandson over the news
“I am literally meeting my new grandson over the news,” Curry said.
She was at work at OMC on Thursday, while her heart is with her family — and the midwife and nurses who were with Katie in the elevator. “I just cannot express the gratitude I feel,” she said.
“They stepped on that elevator thinking they were taking that woman up [to the birthing center], and all of a sudden, they are it.”
Luke and Katie grew up here and met in Port Angeles while they were students at Peninsula College.
Luke is now studying for a bachelor’s degree in ministry leadership Northwest University in Kirkland while Katie, a teacher by training, works at Safeway in Frederickson.
Her paternal grandparents, Carolyn and Phil Langston, live in Sequim and her uncle, Shawn Langston, is principal of Sequim High School.
Luke’s paternal grandmother, Sharon Pierce, and his sisters, Maria and Natalie Thacker, live in Port Angeles — where Maria is a second-year nursing student who quipped, “Yay, nurses!” upon hearing the news of the birth.
Curry talked with Luke again Thursday afternoon and learned that he, Katie and Blake Michael were on their way home from the hospital.
Curry plans to head for Spanaway this afternoon or Saturday morning, “whichever one weather permits first.”
As for Katie, “she is very strong,” Curry added.
“She is totally our hero.”
________
Features Editor Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-417-3550 or at diane.urbani@peninsuladailynews.com.
