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IKALUKTUTIAK/CAMBRIDGE BAY - Navalik Helen Tologanak desperately wants to cling to the faint hope that her son, Julian, survived after free-falling 23,000 feet from an airplane to the snowy tundra below.

Navalik Helen Tologanak and her son Julian on March 11, 2009 at the Kugluktuk airport. Navalik says she doesn't know what possessed her son to commit suicide April 15. - photo courtesy of Navalik Tologanak

"I just hope that he walked to a cabin, but it's been a week now," she said on April 21. "I'm hoping, but I don't think so."

His father, Mark Labrie, is a member of the search and rescue party.

They're looking for Julian Tologanak-Labrie, 20, who opened a door on a King Air 200 and, in an apparent suicide, stepped out of the plane at high altitude on April 15.

Navalik said Paul Laserich – the owner of Adlair Air who agreed to fly Julian home to Cambridge Bay from Yellowknife at Navalik's request – called to inform her of the tragedy.

"Paul said, 'You better get to the airport. Your son opened the door,'" she recalled.

So she rushed to the airport before 5 p.m. to meet the incoming aircraft. Cambridge Bay RCMP reported that Julian jumped to his death around 4:30 p.m. The flight had taken off around 3 p.m.

"The plane taxied in and the police were out there. They went to the plane. (The other passenger) was getting off the plane really crying and really upset, so I waited for my son to walk off the plane. He didn't get off," she said, pausing. "He didn't get off. So the cops came back inside and they told me and I just went into shock. I couldn't believe it ... my whole world ended."

Julian's final night alive was spent at the Nova Court hotel in Yellowknife on April 14. A friend with whom he was rooming called police after Julian "went berserk," Navalik said.

The RCMP brought him to Stanton Territorial Hospital under the Mental Health Act.

Navalik spoke to him at the hospital at 2 a.m. while he was in the emergency room waiting to see a doctor. She said he was taken to the hospital around 1 a.m. He sounded calm and "really quiet," on the phone, she said.

"He just wanted to hear my voice," she said, recalling that her last words spoken to him were, "Are you OK? Are you OK? You want to come home? Come be with your baby. Come home to your son."

Julian is survived by his 18-month-old son, Felix.

Navalik said a social worker called her and said Julian was fine, so Navalik wanted him to come home. She contacted Laserich and arranged to get Julian on a flight returning to Cambridge Bay from a Yellowknife medevac.

Julian had arrived in Yellowknife from Kugluktuk April 9 to participate in the First Air hockey tournament, playing for the Kugluktuk team. There have been media reports that Julian had been involved in a tussle and that he had been suffering from depression, but Navalik said neither is true. She can only speculate as to the cause of his unusual behaviour.

"He wasn't beaten up but I know he was upset. I think somebody was picking on him," she said. "I was thinking maybe he had hurt his head at a hockey game, banged his head or something, I don't know ... Something terrible happened between Sunday and him boarding the plane. It wasn't him, it wasn't normal. He's not a drug taker. He's against drugs."

She wanted the hospital to examine Julian for any drug or foreign substance.

"I wanted them to check him to see if something was put inside his body," she said, at one point suggesting someone may have slipped something in his drink.

Navalik had heard from Julian first on Monday. There were several subsequent phone calls and Internet chats over the next day, but Julian remained relaxed, she said. During one phone call he wanted to see photos of his son and asked her to put him on the webcam so he could see Felix from Cambridge Bay, she recalled.

Navalik hasn't spoken to Laserich or the other passenger on the plane about the details of what happened during the flight.

"I'm scared to even ask. I don't really want to know. It's too scary and too shocking," she said.

Julian, who stood six feet tall and weighed more than 200 pounds, was training to become a mechanic, according to Navalik.

"He knew everything about machines," she said. "He loved Ski-Doos. He loved racing. He loved four-wheelers, motorbikes."

He was nicknamed Spock since grade school, at least in part because he had had a hairstyle with bangs straight across his forehead that resembled the Star Trek character, she said, laughing.

He was also a talented hockey player and minor hockey coach, she said. "He just loved kids. Everybody loved him. He was such a good person, really kind-hearted, always joking, always teasing."