Five days after her son slipped or jumped into Miles Canyon, Dianne Groening still had firm hope that he was alive.

Maybe Michael managed to get out of the water.

Maybe he was in the woods, cold but unhurt, waiting for someone to find him.

“It looks pretty grim, but I’m trying to remain positive,” she told the Star from Surrey, B.C., on Friday afternoon.

“I know he is a survivor.”

But, after speaking to the RCMP again over the weekend, she said she knows her 19-year-old son is presumed dead. The officer told her all signs pointed to his death.

“Whatever those indications are, I don’t know because I was too scared to ask,” Groening said.

“It’s a very hard time. He’d been struggling. This is not what he deserved.”

A single mother and student, she’s trying to raise money to fly up to Whitehorse with her younger son to search for Michael.

She can’t afford the flights herself.

“That’s why I’m basically pleading with people,” she said. “It’s just driving me crazy, the not knowing.”

She still doesn’t know what happened last Monday afternoon, when Michael either slipped or jumped into the Yukon River from the cliffs alongside Miles Canyon, according to Whitehorse RCMP.

Michael had a scheduled court appearance earlier that day.

He showed up early at the courthouse and told his lawyer, David Christie, he wasn’t feeling well.

Christie gave him a card with the next court date on it, and Michael left. That was at about 1:30 p.m.

At 3:45 p.m., RCMP were called to Miles Canyon. Witnesses attempted to save Michael, but he slipped under the water.

Crews have been searching the area by boat, helicopter and on foot since.

When Groening found out that night, her first thought was that he jumped.

Exactly eight years prior, she was brutally attacked, and it traumatized Michael. He never received counselling, she said.

Maybe that event continued to haunt him and he decided to take his own life, she thought.

He struggled with mental health issues.

“He had this impression that nobody cared for him and he was a loner and whatnot, and I kept telling him, ‘Michael, people do care for you. You just have to see that,’” Groening said.

But from what she knew of his life in Whitehorse, he was doing well: he seemed to be happy, he had a girlfriend and he’d set goals for himself. His girlfriend told Groening he wasn’t suicidal.

Perhaps he slipped and fell. Michael was a poor swimmer – in Prince George, B.C., he once went out too far into the river and was swept away.

His younger brother swam out and saved him.

Michael moved to Whitehorse about three years ago, and moved in with Groening’s sister.

With what Groening describes as his special needs, he was too much to handle, and her sister obtained a restraining order against him, she said.

“He got in trouble with the law because he became desperate, and he was in jail for a while,” Groening said.

“He’s been struggling ever since. He had agreed to come home, and I was just trying to get together enough funds to bring him home. We couldn’t get the money.”

Her plan was to get him back to Surrey and help him, sign him up for disability benefits so he didn’t have to resort to crime to earn money and ensure he had treatment for his mental health issues.

When Michael had a phone, he would call his mother regularly. The calls eventually stopped – Groening assumes he could no longer pay the bill.

She last heard from him on June 3. He messaged her on Facebook, wishing her a happy belated birthday and telling her he was going gold mining and wouldn’t be in touch for a while.

RCMP have told her they can’t send divers into Schwatka Lake and Miles Canyon to search for Michael’s body because it’s too dangerous. The waters are deep, dark and fast-moving.

“There’s a possibility they may never find him,” she said. “And that’s something I have to face.”

Being so far away is hard, she said. She’s been researching the river, watching Youtube videos that show its quick current, and reading stories about past deaths along the waterway through Whitehorse.

She wants to be here, to help find her son.

Her community is rallying to help her raise money for flights.

Lifeguards at a local pool are sharing her story, and a girl in the neighbourhood wrote to the Ellen DeGeneres Show, desperately seeking help.

“I’m just overwhelmed by the amount of people that do care for him,” Groening said.

She refuses to turn his Facebook page into a memorial yet.

“I don’t want to do that until he’s actually been found, because that’s cementing something... and I’m not prepared to deal with that until that time comes.”

Groening’s fundraiser, “Send Michael Home,” is online at www.gofundme.com/xb78mc