'2 Moms United by 1 Heart': A story of resiliency and coming together in a time of sorrow

Reporter/Weekend Anchor

LANE COUNTY, Ore. - Two moms have come together to raise awareness about a topic that lies close to them.

Kim Scadlock has lived in the Veneta area with her four children and husband for about four years. She’s taught gymnastics, raised her little ones, spent time with her family, and lived life to the fullest.

But something you might not know about Kim, or her family?

“Beckham was born in August 2007. And Beckham was, you know, healthy, he looked like a healthy, normal baby,” she said. “And about an hour after he was born, a nurse was listening to his heartbeat, and she kind of had a funny look…she goes, ‘Did you have an ultrasound?’ And I said, ‘Yeah, I had a few of them.’ And she goes, ‘And what did it show’ and I go, ‘Healthy baby.' And she goes, ‘Well, your son has a heart murmur.’"

Kim said this wasn’t too worrisome at first, as her first child also had a heart murmur. But what she heard next was surprising.

“The doctor came in and he, he kind of came in… He was like, 'I have bad news…' He called it mitral valve stenosis. And, and he's like, and I don't know if he'll make it through the night,” Kim said.

After trying something called a ‘balloon procedure’, which was unsuccessful for Beckham, there was only one option. Doctors told the Scadlocks a heart transplant was the best option for him.

“And so they sent us up to the University of Iowa hospital, because we lived in Des Moines at the time. And they immediately put him on the transplant list,” Kim said.

But even then, the odds weren’t good. The doctor told Kim and her husband they could wait up to six months for a donor heart.

So what more could they do, than wait, pray and do what any parents would do in their position: worry.

They waited 10 days, as Beckham was hooked up to machines, waiting for a heart. Then, they got the call.

“I remember that when I had gone to stay with our other daughter who was only a year old at the time, I had gone to stay with her. We were switching off nights and I had gone to stay with her that night. And my husband called me and he's like, ‘they have a heart.’ He's like, ‘you need to come to the hospital,’” Kim said. “I remember jumping up and screaming, and I ran, and my parents were staying with us at the time, and I you know, was crying and screaming."

But with good news for one family, comes sorrow for another.

A few states over in New York, the Campbell family was experiencing a parent’s worst nightmare.

“So my son was two and a half months old when he unexpectedly stopped breathing,” Holly Campbell, Jake’s mom, said. “We were able to get him to the hospital, and they got him on life support, but there was no sign that he would ever recover.”

Holly and her husband asked doctors what options they had. They were told organ donation was something they could do. The couple jumped at the chance to help another family.

“They said that he could donate his heart or heart valves, and that he could donate his corneas,” Campbell said. “They found a match. And it was something that when they walked in and said, ‘There's a little boy in Iowa, who's two weeks old, and is a perfect match for Jake's heart.’”

After a successful transplant surgery, the Campbells didn’t hear much. But one day, a few months after the tragedy, the found something that caught their eye.

“A few months later, probably about five or so months later, my husband was having a hard day. And he went into Google. And he put in just what we knew the date of a heart transplant boy, Iowa. And very shortly, he found a news article, which then led him to a blog that a family I was keeping,” she said.

Everything was there. Kim had spent the last several months documenting her son’s Journey, and the family's ups and downs.

But the Campbells weren’t quite ready to reach out, and even more time went by. And the ups and downs didn't stop.

“When Beckham was 14 months old, he got really sick and he had a stroke,” Kim said. “He was not doing well.”

That’s when a worker with the Iowa Donor Network paid the Scadlocks a visit.

“They're like, ‘do you know that your donor family knows who you are?’ And I was like, ‘Well, I wrote them.” And they're like, ‘no, they're like, they found your blog a long time ago, and they've been following along, you know, like, silently,’” Kim said.

Then the Scadlocks found out about Jake Campbell, the baby who saved Beckham.

“They talked about how much they loved Beckham, you know, and they, you know, had never met him, but they had watched him and it had, you know, meant so much to them and, and so we felt this instant connection and, and then we continued to be in contact with them for year,” Kim said.

When Beckham was three years old, the families decided to meet for the first time.

“We walked into the room. And he was there. And I started to get emotional. And I knelt down, and I put my arms out. He walked right over and hugged me. And it was amazing,” Holly said.

Since then, the two families have grown closer than ever. And this past April, Kim and Holly had the experience of a lifetime.

The pair auditioned for ‘America’s Got Talent’ in Pasadena, California.

The song they chose? It’s called ‘For Good’ from the musical ‘Wicked’. But this song wasn’t a random choice for the two moms. For Holly, it was the last song she sang to Jake; for Kim, it was the first song she sang to Beckham after his transplant surgery.

“I found the message, the idea of a person or a situation changing you for good to be really important,” Holly said. “And with Jake. It fit the situation so perfectly in particular, that idea that he'll be with me like a handprint on my heart.”

“I went up and I was struck, stroking his head and the first thing I did is I sang this song WAS pregnant with Beckham. I went and saw the play wicked for the first time so he, you know, he was with me, you know in my stomach,” Kim said.

And after a performance that brought tears to the eyes of even the toughest of judges, the pair got all ‘yeses.'

Even with the new-found fame, their message has stayed the same.

“The big thing is that not everybody thinks about organ donation,” Holly said. “It's obvious that it's going to have a positive impact on the recipient family…But it also really helps the donor family more, more than I think anybody necessarily realizes unless they've experienced it for themselves.”

“We didn't go on for the million dollars, we went on to tell our story. And to us that's worth it,” Kim said.

For a full clip of the performance, you can visit Holly and Kim’s Instagram page, here.

And this summer, the Scadlocks are making a big move to New York, so the two families will be even closer than ever.

Reporter/Weekend Anchor