Grandmother Selling Suicide Kits To Help People 'Die With Dignity'

MIAMI (CBS4) -- She is a 91-year-old grandmother, who is not known for knitting afghans and scarves, but she does lovingly fashion hoods that kill.

Like a lot of grandmothers, she likes to keep busy. But this granny makes suicide masks. Sharlotte started making and selling these suicide kits out of her cozy Southern California home after watching her husband die a slow and painful death from colon cancer. She blames doctors for keeping him alive.

"It was terrible to treat people that way, to make them suffer to the bitter end," Sharlotte said.

Sharlotte, who sells her controversial kits for $60, demonstrated how they work.

"To die with this helium just takes you a couple of minutes and [you] die peacefully," said Sharlotte, who only wants to be identified by her first name. She also didn't want her face to appear on camera.

Sharlotte insists she is no Kervorkian-in-the-making. She said she just wants the terminally ill to be able to end it on their terms when they are ready.

She wants to make sure no one has to suffer like her late husband or the people he left behind.

Sharlotte sells the helium hood kits to people all over the world. She insists she is also not doing it for the money. "I do it because I care for people."

What Sharlotte does is not illegal because she's not actually there when someone takes their own life.

Three states have enacted a "Death with Dignity" law which legalizes physician assisted suicide, but only in terminally ill cases. In California assisted suicide is still illegal, but proponents of the suicide mask are trying to change all that.

"We call it the ultimate civil liberty," said Fay Girsh, founding member of the Final Exit Network.

"We don't consider what we work with as suicide. The people we work with don't have temporary problems, they have permanent problems," said Girsh who believes people should not be forced to live when they're suffering. "We believe people should have a choice of a peaceful, dignified quick and certain death if they're suffering from a chronic or terminal illness."

Opponents to changing the law point to one of Sharlotte's clients, a 29-year-old Oregon native. He wasn't suffering from a terminal illness. He opted out because he was tired of dealing with his chronic depression. His suicide touched off a major controversy over the accessibility of the helium suicide kits.

"It preys on vulnerable people," said Tim Rosales, spokesperson for Californians against Assisted Suicide. Rosales says suicide kits hurt, not help, ailing patients.

"What they're doing is to try to legitimize suicide as a medical treatment in some way to deal with a medical problem," said Rosales. "People who may have difficulty with depression or may have a serious disability or illness that they're trying to deal with."

Opponents like Rosales say death shouldn't be an option and helium hood hits shouldn't be the answer. They're spearheading legislation to stop people, like Sharlotte, from introducing such methods.

"As a society, we have a responsibility to deal with it in a different way rather than giving somebody a plastic bag and here you go, you can put it over your head," said Rosales.

While the death debate rages on, it's has not deterred Sharlotte.

"Whatever a person wants to do with their life," she says, "is their right. They need the right to make that decision. It's just wrong for medical people and religious people to make that decision for you," said Sharlotte.