Suicide Prevention Advocates: A Stranger Saved Him. Now They Save Others Together

AT KEVIN BERTHIA’S LOWEST POINT, HIGHWAY PATROLMAN KEVIN BRIGGS CONVINCED HIM NOT TO LEAP FROM THE GOLDEN GATE BRIDGE. THEN THE PAIR TEAMED UP TO REACH MORE PEOPLE IN CRISIS

- JOHNNY DODD

Spreading Hope "What I try to do is help people going through a dark time," says Briggs (left, reunited with Berthia at the bridge in San Francisco in 2013).

On the worst morning of his life, on March 11, 2005, Kevin Berthia decided that he was going to drive to the Golden Gate Bridge and jump. A few hours later the 22-year-old Oakland resident—who had spent years with depression, had just lost his job and was overwhelmed by medical bills after the premature birth of his daughter—found himself balancing on a tiny metal conduit that ran along the outside of the famed landmark, looking down at the frigid waters of San Francisco Bay. “I started my countdown,” Berthia says now. “And I braced myself for impact.”

There to Listen Berthia (in white) spent 92 minutes in March 2005 perched on the edge, talking with Sergeant Briggs about his life.