His family is hoping for the best.
A Western Pennsylvania native who suffered a severe spinal injury chasing a monkey that had stolen his favorite Steelers cap is now in Malaysia awaiting surgery, his family said.
Jeff "Swede" Swedenhjelm, 40, fell about 33 feet from a rooftop on the Indonesian island of Bali last Monday, suffering a spinal injury that left him paralyzed from the chest down, his family told the Northwest Florida Daily News .
Lyric Swedenhjelm, his daughter, wrote on Facebook early Tuesday that her father was being moved to Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia and expected to be in surgery within the next two days. She shared a video of Jeff, confined to a stretcher but awake and smiling for the camera, being transferred from an ambulance to an airplane for the trip.
Lyric told Tribune-Review news partner WPXI-TV that her father was an Erie native who moved to Destin, Florida 17 years ago, then moved to Bali several years ago for work, but he didn't have much money or health insurance. She and her mother remained in Florida.
"MERRY CHRISTMAS! I'm so blessed to have gotten the gift I asked for," she wrote at about 2:20 a.m., not long after the scheduled end of the "Official Black & Yellow Swede Pub Crawl" across the Destin area, where proceeds from drink specials were going toward his cause.
In an earlier video from a hospital bed, Jeff Swedenhjelm thanked everyone who had donated or sent support, especially fellow Steelers fans.
"I was chasing that damn hat because I know it's the greatest club on Earth," he said, a Terrible Towel hanging behind his head. "I'm representing you guys and I hope you're representing me."
"I'm going to come back stronger, bigger and badder," he said. "Once I get back on my feet, I'm going to do something major... we'll have a huge party."
Lyric wrote that her father would have two of his vertebrae replaced in the planned surgery.
A GoFundMe page set up to " Help Swede Walk Again " had raised almost $73,000 of its $100,000 goal as of Tuesday. The page description said the cheapest medevac flight to surgery was $67,000.
(h/t Tribune-Review and Associated Press)