The Final Leap (29 page)

“This is what keeps me going,” John Brooks says of the fight for a suicide barrier. It's too late for his daughter, Casey, but it's not too late for the daughters, sons, spouses, siblings, parents, and friends of other potential victims.

Brooks and thousands of others who have lost loved ones to the Golden Gate Bridge have made the ultimate sacrifice. When the deaths end and the bridge has a barrier, these sacrifices won't be known to future generations who have been spared a similar tragedy. Families and friends won't know that their loved one is alive because the world's number one suicide magnet no longer exerts a deadly pull. They won't know—except in a general way—of the losses that others have suffered, largely in anonymity, or even that their loved one would have been at risk because jumping from the bridge was so easy. There won't be any thought given to the fact that the bridge is now safe from suicide, much less any thanks to the people responsible for it.

Brooks was laid off from his job at Wells Fargo Bank several months after Casey's death. He and his wife also moved. Recently, he completed a 425-page memoir that he's trying to get published about being a father and losing his only child to suicide from the Golden Gate Bridge. “The basic arc of the story,” he says, “is how I wanted so much to be a dad in life, struggled to become a dad, then a good parent, and then lost it all. The resolution comes out of how I reconcile that and find some way to reclaim at least something of what I lost.”

One concern for bridge barrier proponents is what's going to happen to the primary source of information about Golden Gate Bridge suicides, the Marin County coroner's office. Effective January 1, 2011, it was merged with the sheriff's department and coroner Ken Holmes retired, as did Gary Tindal, the longtime assistant coroner. A sergeant has taken over, and one of the three investigators in the coroner's office has been laid off. The question is whether the new coroner, coming from the law enforcement side, will be as proactive in analyzing and publicizing Golden Gate Bridge suicide data as Holmes. If not, then that's another reason to move quickly on the barrier front, before the extent of the problem ceases to be reported. (In August 2011, just before this book went to press, I tried to get updated information from the current coroner; he didn't return my calls.)

Of final concern, work is nearing completion on the $6.3 billion project to replace a section of the nearby Bay Bridge. This bridge has two sections, one running from Oakland to Yerba Buena Island and the other from the island to San Francisco. It's the second section, from Yerba Buena Island to San Francisco, that's being rebuilt. In at least three ways, the new section is being modeled after the Golden Gate Bridge. First, at its highest point the roadway will be 220 feet above the water, the same height as the Golden Gate. Second, there will be a fifteen-foot-wide pedestrian path (to this point, pedestrians haven't been allowed on the Bay Bridge). Third, in order to provide sweeping views, the railing will be only four feet, seven inches high—just tall enough to comply with the current fifty-four-inch minimum height requirement of railings on bridges, but not tall enough to keep someone from jumping. Although mental health professionals have advocated for a taller railing, and members of the Coast Guard, among others, worry that pedestrian access is going to lead to more suicides, construction is proceeding according to the original design.

More public mobilization is needed. The toll exacted month in and month out is lost to everyone except those who are directly affected—loved ones, witnesses, police officers, and Coast Guard personnel.

In the fall of 2010, a sixteen-year-old girl jumped from the Golden Gate Bridge after she had been stopped three times previously by the Bridge Patrol. The fourth time, police officers were too late. According to her bereaved parents, the lure of the bridge was too strong. At about the same time, one of my board members at the Contra Costa Crisis Center told me the story of a friend of hers who said that she didn't know anyone who had died by suicide. Then, just a few days later, a person the friend knew well, a man whom she swam with regularly in a community pool, jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge. The woman was so shaken that it was months before she was able to return to the water. No longer does she have the luxury of being unaffected.

In March 2011, a high school student from Windsor, CA, jumped off the bridge while on a field trip with forty-five classmates and two teachers. He became the thirty-first person to survive the fall when he was rescued by a surfer, taken to shore, and transported to San Francisco General Hospital. He told the surfer that he jumped “for kicks.” The incident raises a whole new specter of alarm. Will others be foolish enough to try and test their luck and survival skills this way?

While the jumper was being treated for broken bones, many of his classmates were in shock and needing mental health services. Undoubtedly, it will be a long time before they're able to forget the horror they witnessed—if they're ever able to forget it. In all likelihood, from this point forward they'll associate the bridge with their classmate's leap. So, one imagines, will school administrators, who probably won't plan future field trips to the bridge. And what of the jumper himself? Will he be idolized or ostracized? Encouraged to get help or motivated to test fate again?

A month later, in April 2011, another teenager jumped. She, too, survived, in large part due to an extraordinary series of events.

Four or five times a year, Eric Hall, his two teenage sons, and his father rent a boat for the weekend and go sailing in and around San Francisco Bay. Usually they rent a vessel that's built for rough seas given that the bay is characterized by strong tides, major swells, and heavy winds. This particular weekend, however, none of the boats they normally rent was available. To their dismay, they ended up with a Beneteau 373, which has a high profile in the water, high sides, a small rudder, and isn't designed for inclement weather. Instead, it's designed for staying in one place, and has a dive platform off the rear.

Normally the Halls drop anchor Saturday night in Paradise Cove, on the eastern side of the Tiburon peninsula. They sleep on the boat, have a leisurely breakfast Sunday morning, then sail across the bay to San Francisco where they follow the waterfront under the Golden Gate Bridge and out into the open sea. This time, for reasons Hall can't explain, they dropped anchor in Richardson Bay, on the western side of the peninsula, got up early Sunday morning, and sailed from Sausalito across the shipping lanes. This put them in closer proximity to the Golden Gate Bridge for a longer period of time.

Around 10:30
A.M.
on Sunday, near the bridge, Eric Hall noticed a smoke flare in the water. He also noticed an ambulance on shore racing to Fort Point, on the San Francisco side of the bay. In addition, there were people on the bridge pointing down to something. Hall's boat was the only boat in the area, and his youngest son thought people were pointing to a whale. As their boat drew close, however, the Halls could see, through heavy fog, that it was a partially submerged body. The person's face was covered with blood, which was wiped away as ocean water swept over it. Eric Hall assumed that whoever it was was dead. Then he heard a faint moan and saw the person vomit saltwater. That's when he became excited. It meant the person was still alive.

Hall did a quick stall, dropping the sails, putting the boat's motor in neutral, and heading into the wind. He tossed several devices into the water—a rescue horseshoe and a life sling—but the person was unconscious and couldn't take them. He then jumped from the helm to the back of the boat, lay down on the dive platform, snagged the body with a boat hook, and held onto it by the scruff of the neck, his own body half in the water. He didn't want to lift the person onto the boat because he or she might have broken bones so he just held on, trying to keep water from washing over the person's face. He told his younger son to be the spotter, to keep his eye on the person in case Eric lost his grip. Meanwhile, his older son took the helm while Hall's father radioed the Coast Guard.

Fortunately, the Coast Guard had been alerted and already was en route. After several minutes—time that “seemed like an eternity,” Hall says, “like forever”—a boat pulled up alongside the Hall's boat. Two Coast Guard crew members, near the waterline, snatched the body with boat hooks and hauled it on board. It was only at that time that Hall realized the person he saved was a girl, Asian, with short black hair. He didn't know her age— sixteen—until it was reported in newspapers the following day. It also was reported later that the girl, from southern California, had been vacationing on the bridge with her family when she handed her diary to sister, then jumped. The diary contained a suicide note.

The girl was taken to Marin General Hospital. At last report, she was the thirty-second person known to survive a fall from the Golden Gate Bridge.

“It was a very odd day for all of us,” Hall tells me. “So many unique things came together. We were in a boat we didn't like, but it turned out to be perfect for grabbing someone in the water. We spent the night in a place we don't normally go to, left earlier in the morning than usual, took a different route than usual, happened to be in the exact spot to find someone—in heavy fog— whose body was mostly submerged, and we were capable of dealing with it. Also, the Coast Guard was already in the area, and she was alive. It all happened exactly perfect.”

He adds that they also had exactly the right number of people on board—four. Any fewer and an important task would have gone undone, while any more and they would have run into each other.

Hall, who grew up in the Bay Area, says that although he has sailed in and out of San Francisco Bay many times, he never gave the Golden Gate Bridge much thought before this.

“It used to be,” he says, “that we'd sail under bridge and one of us—usually one of my sons—would say, ‘I hope no one jumps on the boat.' After this experience, we won't say anything like that again. After this experience, I'll never be able to think of it [the bridge] the same way.”

While one might hope that this is the last time such heroic action is needed on behalf of a bridge jumper because preventative measures have been taken, the reality is that it won't be. Indeed, only a few weeks later, in May 2011, a fifteen-year-old girl from Danville, CA searched for directions to the Golden Gate Bridge on her computer. Then she rode her white and purple mountain bike to a BART station nine miles away, boarded a train to San Francisco, got off at the Embarcadero Station, pedaled across the city to the bridge, and jumped.

Her body wasn't found after a two-day search, and it is apparent that she died.

“We have evidence that shows she walked onto the bridge around 10
A.M.,
but never walked off,” Bridge Patrol captain Lisa Locati told the press. Locati didn't say what the evidence was, but in all likelihood it was a review of surveillance tapes for that day. Shortly thereafter, one thousand people attended a candlelight vigil in the girl's memory.

It is time—past time—for action. Only through a concerted effort of study, public mobilization, and construction of a safety net can we end the sad litany—more than fifteen hundred and growing—of Golden Gate Bridge suicides.

May that day come soon.

1
. In 2009 there were fifteen train suicides on the Peninsula, and eight train suicides through the first nine months of 2010. The majority of victims have been teenagers, including four students in the span of six months from Gunn High School in Palo Alto. The crossing where each of them was killed is 1.7 miles from the school. Another crossing is closer. Meanwhile, several other high schools in the area are situated right next to the tracks yet have had no train suicides.

2
. One bridge that eventually may eclipse the Golden Gate Bridge in terms of suicides is the Nanjing Yangtze River Bridge in China. Nanjing has a population of six million people, many of whom cross the four-mile bridge every day. At least one suicide occurs per week from the bridge, which is 130 feet above the Yangtze River. The Chinese government has used guards, signage, and even butter (butter is smeared on bridge railings so that they might be too slippery to climb) to try and discourage suicide attempts. To date, nothing has worked.

 

 

About one million people around the world die by suicide annually. It's impossible to obtain precise statistics because many countries don't maintain—or at least don't make public—data about it. High rates of suicide reflect poorly on those in charge. Moreover, suicide is underreported, mainly because of stigma. As a result, one million is considered by many to be a conservative estimate. Still, it's equal to the number of people who are killed in wars around the globe every year.

In the United States, more than 35,000 people die by suicide annually. To put that number in perspective, it's equivalent to 9/11 occurring almost every month. It's also the equivalent of a fully-loaded commercial airliner crashing every two days. By comparison, there are about 18,000 homicides in the United States every year. A person wouldn't know it from reading or watching the news, where each day brings fresh stories of violence, but almost twice as many Americans die by suicide as are murdered.

If this fact seems surprising, one reason why is because of media coverage or, in the case of suicide, the lack of it. The social taboo that keeps individuals from talking about suicide—unless a celebrity is involved—also keeps media outlets from covering it. Another reason is television. It's estimated that by the time a person reaches age eighteen in this country, he or she has seen 40,000 murders portrayed on TV. Every day of the week, on network and cable stations, people are shot, stabbed, strangled, poisoned, dropped, drowned, burned, or blown up in various dramas. There are suicides, too, of course, but they're not proportionate— the same viewer will see roughly 800 suicides during that time. Audiences know at some level that what they're seeing isn't real. With the advent of so-called “reality” shows, however, the distinction becomes blurred. Thus, the mistaken belief exists that murder is common while suicide occurs less frequently. In fact, it's the reverse. Suicide is much more prevalent than most people— particularly most Americans—realize.