Kristine Kevorkian of Gig Harbor has an unusual — and very recognizable — last name, especially for someone involved with end-of-life issues.

The most famous Kevorkian is Dr. Jack, the famed pathologist and advocate for physician-assisted suicide. Kristine shares Armenian heritage but has no family connection to the so-called “Dr. Death.”

“Everybody and their brother would always ask if we were related,” she said.

And because she considers herself a kindred spirit, she refers to the late doctor, with his permission, as “Uncle Jack.”

Kristine has confronted end-of-life issues since 1993, when, as a student at Humboldt State University in northern California, she began an internship in a hospice. She went to the school to study marine biology and made the transition into social work, and she was assigned the internship without any say in the matter.

“At the time, I didn’t even know what a hospice was,” Kristine said. “But I took to it like a fish to water.”

She knew right away it was what she wanted to do with the rest of her life.

“Working with the dying was fascinating to me,” she said. “To be given that honor, to be with somebody when they’re dying – they are the most courageous people in the world.”

Naturally, her name attracted attention for its connection to the famous, and often infamous, doctor. Their relationship began in the mid-1990s, after Kristine had been working in hospice for a few years, including some time at a hospice in Everett, when she sent Jack a letter of support at the height of the controversy over his assistance in voluntary euthanasia procedures.

Jack was arrested in Michigan a few years later on charges of second-degree murder for administering a lethal injection to a patient, on camera, in a video broadcast on 60 Minutes.

Kristine reached out to the doctor’s assistant while he was in prison, and she slowly built a friendship with other members of Jack’s inner circle.

“We all really connected,” Kristine said, adding that she grew close with his staff members.

After she watched a news report critical of the doctor, Kristine wrote an angry – and non-proofread — letter to Jennifer Granholm, the governor of Michigan at the time. The letter found its way to Mike Wallace of 60 Minutes, who had become closely acquainted with Jack.

Kristine soon found herself answering the phone to hear Wallace’s voice on the other end.
“It was really surreal,” she said.

Kristine told Wallace she was embarrassed that she hadn’t taken more time to craft a thoughtful defense of the doctor in her letter, but he told her not to worry.

“He said, ‘Don’t ever apologize. You have so much passion,’ ” Kristine recalled.

Jack heard about the letter, and a few years after he was released on parole, Kristine finally got to meet him in person, at a 2011 lecture at UCLA.

Kristine said the doctor told her to “take over where I left off” – a mandate, she said, to spread the word about end-of-life care.

“People thought he was a kook, and he wasn’t,” Kristine said. “He saw a need. And, from my experience in hospice, there certainly is a need.”

The connection between hospice care and assisted suicide may not be immediately apparent, and it can even seem contradictory – much of Kristine’s work involves helping patients with a natural death, while euthanasia induces death sooner.

But, Kristine said, her goal is to provide the dying with a level of control over their experience, to manage their pain and the pain of their families. She said that was Jack’s goal as well.

“In hospice, there is some control that people can have in dying,” Kristine said. “It doesn’t have to be all about the pain and tubes and everything.”

She said she’s seen medical professionals handle grief well, and she’s seen many examples of grief handled poorly.

“If you end up with a physician who isn’t trained well (in grief and loss), particularly in communication, you have someone who will have a huge impact on the family,” Kristine said. “I remember the people that took care of my mother. That’s never going to go away. If you have someone who does a poor job, the family will end up thinking, ‘What could we have done differently?’”

Kristine believes better education is the solution to the problems she identifies in end-of-life care. It’s been the mission of her career since she first became involved in hospice work.

After she studied at both Humboldt State and Delaware State, she received her doctorate in thanatology, the scientific study of death.

No traditional accredited American universities offered a thanatology program at the time, Kristine said, so she studied through Union Institute and University, a nontraditional distance-learning school where her doctoral committee consisted of experts from her wide field, including the famed spiritualist Ram Dass.

During the past decade, Kristine has taught classes on grief and loss, bereavement and aging issues at Antioch University in Los Angeles, the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire and the University of Hull in England, where she helped to create continuing-education modules for the National Health Service’s end-of-life care program.

She moved to Gig Harbor this past May, for family reasons, and she wants to bring her educational training to Tacoma Community College. She has submitted a continuing education course proposal, for a six-session class entitled “Dying and Death with Dr. Kevorkian,” that would serve as an introduction to thanatology and a discussion of the grieving process, communicating death to children and other end-of-life issues.

Tacoma Community College already offers classes in estate planning, aging, caregiving and other related issues, Kristine said.

TCC has not yet responded to her proposal.

“I’m excited that they have all that stuff,” Kristine said. “But let’s delve a little deeper.”

Shawn Jennison, TCC’s director of marketing and communications, said the continuing education review board is still in the process of looking over hundreds of submissions for classes.

“They haven’t said no to anyone,” Jennison said.

Kristine hopes that, if her class is approved, both medical professionals and those outside the field will enroll. She believes greater exposure to her teachings – part of the legacy she upholds from “Uncle Jack,” to harness some command over death – would benefit everyone.

“It’s offering somebody control (over the dying process),” she said of her life’s work. “And if people are taught this, they’ll understand the control they can have.”