Cindy Locke, of Lynnwood, is a foster mother to medically fragile children

If it hadn't been for Cindy Locke and her family, Mykal Cochran might be dead.

Instead, the 17-year-old foster child who "doesn't have a mean bone in his body" is bouncing around Seattle Children's hospital these days. He jokes with doctors and races down to the lab to look with curiosity and wonder at his old heart.

"I used to wake up wondering if I was going to die," said Mykal, who underwent transplant surgery last month. "My heart was really messed up."

So was the course of his life.

Mykal's problems began before he was 2 years old, when he was diagnosed with a heart tumor and given his first transplant.

From there, things got worse. His father died when he was 5. By age 10, he and his siblings had been removed from their mother's care. After that he was shuffled from foster home to foster home, with 15 placements in all.

Then, late last year, the exuberant and extroverted Eastern Washington teen suffered a catastrophic heart attack and was told that he needed another transplant.

But because he was one of the approximately 10,000 children in Washington's foster-care system with no permanent home, Sacred Heart Children's Hospital in Spokane refused to accept him for its transplant program.

Hospital officials said Mykal's family life and social network were so unstable they made him a transplant risk.

"They turned him down because he was a poor risk and hearts are rare," said his social worker, Shauna Campbell, an adoption specialist with the state Department of Social and Health Services' (DSHS) Children's Administration.

"I was pretty ticked off, frankly," she said. "Just because he's in foster care doesn't mean he doesn't deserve a heart."

Campbell began searching for a foster family near Seattle Children's hospital who would be able to provide the specialized, intensive care needed by a transplant recipient both before and after the operation.

When Cindy Locke, a former nurse who's cared for medically fragile foster children for 23 years, contacted her, Campbell said she knew it was the right match.

"I just knew from talking to her on the phone she had a really big heart."

Locke is one of the rare licensed foster-care providers in the state with the knowledge and equipment to care for children with intensive medical needs.

"I wish we had 100 more foster families like the Lockes, but they are — even among an elite group of foster parents — one in a million," said DSHS spokeswoman Deborah Schow.

"She's amazing," said Jason Cruz, transplant coordinator for Children's Hospital. "We literally have to restrain ourselves from asking her to take on other kids."

She found her calling

Cindy Locke, 46, can't explain exactly why she became a foster mother other than to say she felt called to the job.

She can remember watching a movie when she was a little girl about a skier who became a quadriplegic in an accident.

She thought to herself, "I hope one day I can take care of a quadriplegic."

Her chance came after she became a registered nurse at Children's more than 25 years ago. While working in the rehabilitation unit, she found herself wanting to take home children who had been abused, neglected or abandoned by their families because of the intensity of their medical needs.

One of the children she took care of was a 15-year-old boy, Dwain, who had been paralyzed by a bullet.

After a lengthy stay at the hospital, he was ready to be released but had no home to go to, so Locke offered to care for him in her home.

But the hospital said no.

"They told me that blurred the line between personal and professional ethics and said, 'You can't just take these kids home with you.' "

Around the same time, Locke had another patient, a young woman named Bertha, who had been burned over 60 percent of her body. Like Dwain, her family was unable to care for her, and she was institutionalized. Her health went downhill fast.

But Bertha was 18, not a ward of the state and able to say for herself where she wanted to live.

Locke asked Bertha if she would rather live with her. Bertha said yes.

So Locke took money she had saved to go on a nursing mission to Uganda and instead bought a house near Martha Lake in Snohomish County. She transformed it, widening the doorways, buying wheelchairs, ventilators and hospital beds — and brought Bertha home.

Where, Locke said, "She did great."

Locke, who is deeply religious, said she began to realize that "everything society said is important is not important — your profession, your education, your looks."

"But loving people, having a deep connection to people, taking care of people, that's what's important."

She felt she had found her calling and became a licensed foster-care provider.

She then asked again for Dwain to be placed in her home. He was, and he lived with her for four years, graduating from high school and then marrying before his death at age 33.

Her third foster child was a ventilator-dependent 4-year-old girl whose neck had been broken in a highly publicized child-abuse incident at the time. She is an adult now and still visits Locke.

In 1989, she married Lenny Locke, 53, the man who had been delivering oxygen to her home.

A distant relative of former Washington Gov. Gary Locke, he knew all of her foster kids and understood the work she was doing.

"Lenny knew that I came as a package deal. He knew what he was getting into," she said.

On their second date, he asked her if she liked dating. She said no, and they agreed to marry.

They both sold their houses and together bought a seven-bedroom, 4,000-square-foot house in Lynnwood that they extensively renovated to be completely disabled-accessible, with a roll-in shower and other amenities.

Locke had continued to work with assistance from her mother, and others, who helped with the children at home. But with her husband and his stable salary, she was able to leave her job and stay home as a full-time caretaker.

Together, the Lockes fostered dozens of children, most of whom lived with them until they were ready to go out into the world.

"We don't go through them fast," she said. "We stick with them until they return to their families, grow up or are well enough to move out on their own."

They had three biological children: Jordan, 19; Sarah, 14; and Kailey, 12. And they adopted three others: Emily, now 19, who has a form of dwarfism, Josiah, now 9, who had been abused and starved by his biological parents, and Ivan, who was 15 when he came to live with them and 17 when he died two years ago.

Ivan had been removed from his family because of abuse and neglect. He was living in a group home when he was diagnosed with Ewing's sarcoma, a kind of bone cancer.

"When Ivan came to us, he was withdrawn and quiet, but then he came alive. He was the funniest kid, a wonderful kid. I could not understand why his family gave up on him."

The Lockes had begun the process to adopt him when his cancer returned.

"Seeing him come to life, loving him, and then watching him die was so painful, so intense," Cindy Locke said. "But I got to hold his face in my hands, I got to take care of him. I know he felt completely loved when he died. I was able to give him that."

During the course of Ivan's illness, his beloved older brother, Seneca, also moved into the Locke home. He remains there still.

"We have an incredible, deep bond because of the way we both loved Ivan," Locke said.

"A forever family"

When Mykal first moved in with the Lockes he was planning to stay just until he had the transplant and was stabilized.

The teen, whom Campbell describes as "incredibly sweet, a little bit rascally and never bitter," has a younger brother. They were together through their placements in most of their foster homes and Mykal felt responsible for his brother's well-being. He thought it was his job to teach the 12-year-old how to be a man.

But now his younger brother is set to be adopted by a family that Mykal trusts in the Tri-Cities area and Mykal is no longer worried about him.

So Mykal is thinking about staying in Lynnwood with the Lockes and going back to high school. Foster brother Jordan, a University of Washington computer-science major, has offered to tutor him in math, his weakest subject.

Mykal's starting to think now that maybe he will go to college. He dreams of studying pyrotechnics, going cliff diving and achieving things he never thought possible.

Cindy and the rest of the Locke family, which also includes Cindy's grandmother, Rose, have been surrounding his hospital bed every day, playing board games, chatting, styling his hair.

Recovery from a transplant can take a long time, and no one can predict right now how long Mykal will remain hospitalized. But the Lockes are determined to be with him no matter how long it takes.

"We want to give him a forever family if that's what he wants," Cindy Locke said.

She said that taking care of foster children can be painful and hard, but it's also "incredibly fun and exciting. My life is so rich."

"It's not for everybody, but it is for some. If one person reads this and says, 'I can do this,' then that makes it worthwhile. Children, especially, are resilient. They can heal. There is hope. I know there is suffering in life, but I don't think we have to go through it alone."

Mykal, for his part, is thrilled to find himself so wanted. He's never known a family quite like the Lockes, and he feels happy and loved.

Nevertheless, he's pretty sure they're getting a good deal as well.

"They're a great family, but I really am one of the best teenagers around, too."

Christine Clarridge: 206-464-8983 or cclarridge@seattletimes.com