Kyle Phillipy will receive his Boy Scout Eagle Award this Saturday.

To earn the award, Phillipy led a team of more than 20 volunteers who constructed “emergency drop boxes” and installed them at strategic island locations, to be communication centers in an emergency. During a crisis, Phillipy says, he would coordinate use of the boxes.

“A scout has to show his leadership,” Phillipy said. “An Eagle’s job is not necessarily to do the work, but to organize other people to do it.”

Attaining scouting’s highest rank – achieved by just 3 percent of all scouts – is a mark of distinction for any boy.

For Phillipy, who lay in a drug-induced coma at Harborview Medical Center a little more than a year ago, the accomplishment may be even more remarkable.

Saturday’s ceremony will feature a slide show of Phillipy’s scouting years assembled by his mother Susan. But her presentation will not gloss over the last difficult year, the family says.

“We decided to include his drug-induced coma and his coming-back,” Susan Phillipy said, “because that’s part of the story.”

On the evening of Nov. 11, 2001, Phillipy took three morphine pills he got from a friend. The next morning, his family was unable to rouse him, and he was airlifted to Harborview, where he was put on life support, his prognosis uncertain.

Doctors told the family Kyle had sustained some brain damage. For two months he remained in a coma, and his family feared he might never wake.

Just before Christmas, Phillipy opened his eyes and turned his head, the first indications that the young man might recover. Function slowly returned, but progress was uneven.

“My husband and I never really gave up hope,” Susan Phillipy said. “But there were times when we thought, ‘we’ll be stuck right here, he won’t go further.’ I remember when he had to be strapped in his chair and he was only able to yell. I thought, ‘this is it – and can I deal with it?’ But then he would start to progress again.

“It was exhausting. As a parent, it takes everything you have in you.”

Recovery has been measured in little things, she says, like learning to tie a shoe.

Their church helped sustain the family, Bryce Phillipy notes, while the scouts often came and read to Phillipy.

After six weeks at Harborview, Phillipy was transferred to Island Health and Rehabilitation, where, during January and February 2002, he was weaned from intubation. Then he was transferred to the University of Washington’s rehabilitation center, where, through March and April, he received intensive therapy to relearn to stand and use his legs.

In late spring, Phillipy came home in a wheelchair. The rehabilitation center helped the family refit the house for his return with railings and other modifications.

“They ordered everything and worked it out with the insurance for us,” Susan Phillipy said, “They did it all.”

Phillipy began attending school a few hours a week just to socialize. When he began to go to school full-time again last fall, he was accompanied by a paraprofessional.

“The schools have been really great,” father Bryce Phillipy said. “I never got the feeling they were rushing him through.”

Kyle is still recovering physical skills and short-term memory is returning. He is still in therapy twice a week and has private tutors.

Letting go of their increasingly mobile son has not been easy for his parents.

Freedoms that were taken for granted – a trip to the library, a walk to the store – now produce anxiety in parents who know their son is still on the mend.

“I used to have all the cab drivers look out for him,” Susan Phillipy said.

Now her son has resumed rock-climbing and snowboarding, and he longs to be even more independent.

“I’m thinking about getting out of the house,” Kyle said. “I want to do what I want to do. But I know I’m going to be here a while.”

He thinks about a career in computers or counseling, but for the present he has to play catch-up; he is repeating his junior year, and the kids he started school with have already graduated.

As an Eagle Scout, Kyle Phillipy becomes a mentor for younger scouts. But he has already become an example for island youth, albeit a reluctant one.

“I don’t want to be an example,” Phillipy said, “but it’s too late now. I’m not shy about anything any more because I’ve been through a lot.”

He has made a circle of clean and sober friends, but it’s hard. Drugs are everywhere, he says, and there are “plenty of kids who just don’t want to put it down.”

Too many island activities for kids have to be scheduled, he says, and spontaneous, sober good times are hard to find. His advice for parents is to involve their children in fun activities “that they want to do.”

“Keep them active,” he said. “Don’t let your kids get bored with money in their pockets.”

Because, he says, the drugs are all-too-accessible.

“Bad things happen here late at night,” he Kyle said. “At 2 a.m., if you stay out that late, or if you’re just sitting around, you get in trouble.”