Original subtitles

- It was sort of a weird day.

The wind was lightish,

and I was just kitin' there.

I cut over to the south tower and some stuff fell

so I cut back the other way and

I just saw a mass falling towards my kite

and I thought it was the same thing,

and so I turned the kite back

and then I looked over

and, you know, before they hit,

I realized it was a person that had jumped.

So then I cut over just to see

or maybe possibly help.

The current just sucked them under

and I stayed in the tide because I knew

that the Coast Guard would come and

that's when it became more of a surreal experience to me

because I've seen that Coast Guard boat a million times

and they've helped us out and rescued us

when we have problems,

but they're all wearing the white hazmat suits

and that's when I realize that

there was definitely a person in.

- I never knew the real scale of the problem.

I don't know, the whole thing is crazy to me.

I mean, I just don't even understand it.

Really.

- When I was riding back after that time,

I was thinking about how

that person was at the lowest of the low

of their life obviously and how the whole day

all I could think about, it's gonna be a good day

to go out and kite and pack my passions for it

and here at the same time, you know,

I'm reaching for what I love to do

and this person's ending their life

so that was unreal.

- Yeah, exactly, kiting is, to me,

a real celebration of life.

It's exhilarating, it's thrilling,

it's just awesome.

So it's a real juxtaposition of

celebration of life and ending of life.

# Quiet

# It's neither heaven nor space

# It's just high

# And the ring around the moon

# Looks like light and love #

- It was one of those epic days in San Francisco

driving across the Golden Gate Bridge.

It was crystal clear.

The day was calm.

There were tourists walking across the bridge

and usually on those types of days

I always soak in the beauty of the bay

and look over to Alcatraz,

and on that particular day

I looked over, I was probably a little bit more

than mid-span when I saw

this gentleman on the railings,

and at first glance, I thought,

wow, this guy looks like he's gonna bungee jump

because of the way that

he was standing on the railing and then

common sense kicked in and said you can't.

My thoughts were you couldn't jump off the bridge,

bungee jump off the bridge,

and then he just kind of held his arms out

and disappeared and I wasn't sure if

I was imagining this and so I drove for a few seconds

and looked in my review mirror

and my heart rate went up and I almost

felt like I wanted to start crying because

I thought to myself, wow, I might be one of the last people

that have ever seen this person alive.

When I went into the tower

and I talked to the highway patrolmen,

you know, I asked him blatantly, I said,

"Is this a rare occurrence

"or does this happen often?"

And he looked at me and kinda smiled

and just said, "It happens it all the time."

- It's hard to define Gene as a person.

He was

just not of this world,

I think is really the truth of it.

Not of this world as we know it.

His mother was woman who said,

"Oh, I never want children,"

and then a few years later, she found herself pregnant

and decided

to have the child

rather than leave the country for an alternative

and she was looking forward to it

and so came my friend Gene,

who was always referred to as my little brother, Thump.

He was born an old man.

And all their lives it was just the two of them,

pretty much.

People came and went in their lives

in relationships of various sorts, but

it was mostly just always the two of them,

dependent on each other for

that stability that

one thinks of as tomorrow is coming

and we will do this and we will do that.

- Growing up with Lisa in Marin,

she was just, like, completely normal

until she was like 14.

- 14.

- Yeah, and I'm four years older

and I moved away, I lived in Alaska,

and my mom would write me and say,

"Hey, Lisa's acting strange

"and doing this things,"

and I kept telling her it was

typical teenage stuff and I came back, like,

10 months later.

There was a big change.

- Our upbringing

was fabulous, I would say, until my father

suddenly died when I was 14.

- Well, that was a shock.

That threw all three of us,

but it didn't make Jeff and I mentally ill,

but Lisa had different personality.

She wasn't as outgoing as my brother or I,

and she was just--

- She was more angelic.

We went through all the counselors

and finally got her to go to a psychiatrist,

and he said that Lisa is a paranoid schizophrenic

and she will never recover.

That was a terrible thing to tell a mother.

He says, "You have to take her right now

"to the crisis center at Marin General."

She immediately, when we got there,

got on the payphone and started calling her friends

and telling 'em how terrible I was

to bring her to this place.

Well, they brought her into the crisis unit

and do you know, for all the bad things

she did when she was home,

she straightened up, acted as if

she was perfectly normal

and they discharged her.

We went through that several times.

She had her own style.

She liked to wear headbands.

She liked to wear black.

- Black leather headbands with rhinestones

and matching gloves

with no fingers - And she always wore

bicycle gloves.

- No, Harley Rider gloves.

You know, leather.

- Leather, leather.

- Leather gloves. - She was

a leather queen. - Yes, yes.

- I met Gene at a comic book convention

in Oakland.

We just hit it off immediately.

By looking at us, you wouldn't think

that we'd become such tight friends,

but we did.

You know, he looked like the

cool rocker type, you know,

long hair, you know, everything about him is

just cool and the ladies like it

and I was Mr. Hiphop, you know,

other side of the spectrum and stuff.

- Everything was black.

His clothes were black.

His hair was black.

The curtains were black.

The walls were black.

The sheets were black.

He just wanted...

It's as though he wanted no,

no contrasts.

He mostly just wanted to be in his room with his computer.

- Me and Gene had long talks about

love and where he's trying to find it,

and I told him he's not gonna find it on the internet.

A lot of times, he didn't want to hear it.

He just wanted what he saw.

He would send me pictures of these girls

and I'm like,

"Dude, what are you doing?"

You know, that's not,

that ain't it, you know.

I'm like, "Take time, get to know this person."

You don't know this person from nothing

just because you read a bio about this person

and this person wants to

turn around and have sex with you.

That's not love, you know.

- I noticed early on

that Lisa was very interested in romance,

and I saw her go through some very painful rejections.

- She met a guy.

This was just before Christmas.

She took off with him on a bus.

She was gone for a week.

We have no idea where she was.

She was off her medication,

and I was wrapping gifts.

All of a sudden, I looked up and there was Lisa outside

just really in a bad state.

She thought our dogs were devils.

She broke a clock because she thought it was a time bomb.

I had to have the police come out,

but before they would admit her,

she had to have a court order to get in

because she'd been in and out

of the crisis so many times.

- Being a schizophrenic is like

watching TV and having 44 channels on at the same time,

and that's her environment 24/7.

You know, there's just like little noises here,

something there, and I'm trying to talk here,

but that's distracting me, that's distracting me,

and it's all equal.

That would freak anybody out.

- She graduated from house to house

to a home where there was constant care

and finally to independent living

for about 15 years.

- That place was great. - And she had

her own room and she had

a very nice situation there, she liked it there.

- But one of her roommates there, right,

jumped off the bridge too?

- Well, no, this was a friend that--

- A friend.

- A friend of hers.

- Two years ago?

- Oh, no, it's longer

than that. - Longer than that.

- Much longer.

- As far as pills and other forms of suicide,

I haven't personally experienced that in my houses.

It's like the last three people, I think,

who I was kind of close to in Buckaloo

were all bridge jumpers.

- After she settled in in Marin--

- She did well there. - She was pretty

stable, then all of a sudden this past year,

she just felt she needed more support for some reason.

Do you think that was the medication change?

- No, I think it was because she was ill.

- Okay, she wasn't feeling good.

- Her teeth were just so rotted

and they felt it was from medication

and from drinking a lot of Coke.

So she had to have all her teeth removed.

So that was-- - She looked kinda

funny walking around with no teeth.

- That was a problem, too.

It was just from then on downhill.

- Okay, everyone, let's stay together.

The Golden Gate Bridge was designed by Joseph Strauss.

It opened in 1937.

Each year, about nine million tourists

come to visit and they enjoy--

- Well, we went for Easter vacation

to take out the kids to San Francisco,

and before going to the Alcatraz,

before going to the Golden Bridge,

we went to Alcatraz and we went to

the Pier 39 and from there we took a walk

to the Golden Gate.

- We had a big dinner on--

- The week before Easter.

- The week before, yep, Palm Sunday.

So I said, "Lisa, I'm not gonna fix

"a big dinner on Easter Sunday."

The kids weren't going to be around.

So a few--

- Except that was a tradition in our family

to get together.

- Well, she didn't seem to mind.

She never objected.

So I called her about 1 o'clock on,

she didn't feel good that week,

she still didn't go to work,

and so I said, "Well, I guess I could come down,

"but I don't know what I can do."

- Lisa was so quiet and, oftentimes, had this,

I don't know how you'd say it, poker face?

Where she kept her feelings to herself.

She wasn't one to, you know,

get all emotional and which surprised me

'cause I look back now at Mira Woods.

We were walking down the little trail

and there was this huge redwood tree

lying in the middle of the path

and she looked at it and she goes,

"Wow, look at that!"

And sounds like no big deal

but for Lisa that was like,

that was different.

- And then she came home,

and I guess she was hungry

and she asked a girl there,

"Did you fix dinner?"

And they said, "No."

And so then they said she was very quiet

and she got in the freezer and took something out

and fixed it herself and after she had then eaten,

they said she was very quiet when she was eating,

she got up and took her purse and her jacket

and off she went

and that's the last they saw her.

- We were taking pictures of each other,

and I was taking pictures to them,

and Paulo was taking pictures to us,

and they were playing and--

- And I got scared. - He was holding

the baby and we were walking and--

- And we saw that lady.

- The lady, yes, put the--

- The bag on the ground

and she jumped off.

- But I said, "She jumped, she jumped!"

And I was like--

- And she told my brother

to go call the cops.

- Well, Paulo went running down to get some help

because I wanted somebody to help her

because for us it was the first time

to see somebody jump off the bridge.

And before she jump,

she look at me and Vidarlan.

She was laughing.

She laugh like a smile like

you don't know what I do, but she smile and jump.

- Like she was acting like,

like a gorilla or something.

- Ay, Sebastian.

No, that's not it.

He likes to make things up.

- I'm not 100% convinced that she did commit suicide.

I don't know if someone had accompanied her

to the Golden Gate Bridge

and had encouraged her to jump.

I don't know if someone had been pressuring her

to go to the Golden Gate Bridge and jump

and, certainly, it is a highly risky

rather glorious way

to draw attention to oneself.

- My brother's very religious.

He doesn't believe she committed suicide.

He thinks it's something else.

I don't know what he thinks.

- I didn't know that.

- Well, he won't call it that because

it's a sin to commit suicide in his mind

and that's not what she did.

She fell or something, I don't know what he,

he's coming up with different justifications so

he can look at it-- - He doesn't talk

to me like that, so.

- Thing is, if you go stand on that bridge and look down,

the amount of guts that you have to have

to stick anything over that rail,

it must have been incredible, the pressure on her,

it had to be worse than the thought of doing that,

and I've always thought of myself

as a stronger person than her

and there's no way I would have the guts to do that

even with, you know, a parachute or something,

and for her to just do it just like that,

it was like, I still can't believe it.

My family, my husband, my kids,

we're like, how did she even think about doing that?

- I think it was a relief, a relief for her,

because she knew she probably never would be

physically well again and she knew

she had the mental illness

and she was just at the end of her rope.

There were too many things, so.

- Yeah, I agree with that but it's--

- She's in a better place, that's all I can say.

- You have to look at it that way.

You know.

# In this darkest hour

# A brave face will break soon

# The world waits for you

# The world waits #

- Yeah, I try and relive, you know,

when doing some things, say this is

something Philip likes or my son would like this or,

he still lives with me, you know.

I go somewhere, a ballgame or something,

he's there.

And then

I think I'm getting more of an understanding

what he went through toward the end

'cause you feel the same way, it's just,

you know, what makes any of us go over that line?

It's just

some days you think like that yourself.

It's just he thought about it every day.

- What makes a person be able to do that?

I don't know, I don't have the answer to that.

- Well, it's like any pain.

When it becomes unbearable,

you'll do anything and it's like physical cancer,

I mean, if you have cancer of the mind,

you know, nobody knows what you're going through.

- I mean, it was like our hands being tied.

I mean, no matter how much we talk to him,

I mean, he was in and out of the hospital,

the doctors talked to him and

it was like nothing would change his mind.

In fact, I think the medicines made him worse.

- We thought if we can get him through his episodes,

but that's the crazy thing is

as soon as you get somebody strong enough,

that's when they have the courage.

So do you make 'em well or do you keep 'em sick?

He tried it a few times

but the second attempt he said,

"My third attempt, it's not gonna fail."

He said, "I'll make sure of it."

He researched it and found the Golden Gate Bridge

on the internet.

He said to him it was the best way.

I mean, it was planned out for months

and the final two weeks

he was making his last preparations, so.

He said whether some people believe

suicide's a sin or not.

He asked that a lot.

I said, "It's something man made up."

And at least he thanked me for telling him the truth.

You know, I don't know.

It's just I don't think God's gonna hold you responsible

for something you can't handle,

and he said, "Well, whether I come back or not,"

he says, "If I do, I'll see ya again, Dad.

"If not, just know that I'm at peace."

What I'm trying to say is that

I didn't want him to feel like

he was in a cage inside of himself.

Some people say the body's a temple.

Well, he thought his body was prison in his mind.

He knew he was loved.

He knew he had everything,

could do anything, and yet

he felt trapped.

That was the only way he could get free.

- Gene was very overly dramatic.

- Even the simplest things were very long and drawn out

and very hard and he would always say things like,

"Kill me now."

You'd be talking about something and ask him,,

"What do you want for breakfast?"

"Oh, I don't care, just kill me."

"Okay, well, you know,

"where do you wanna go to look for a job today?"

"I don't care, it's not gonna matter, just kill me."

- Yeah, "Might be easier for you to just kill me."

- You didn't take him serious if he said certain things

because he would almost say it in a joking manner.

He wouldn't say it with, like, this intensity of,

you know, like, "I'm gonna do it this time,"

and he wasn't that person.

He would make light of it and he was like,

"Man, I'm gonna just commit suicide.

"I'm gonna just shoot myself.

"I'm gonna do it with a bow and arrow."

And when he would say this stuff,

we were just like, "Yeah, whatever,"

and years and years and years would go by

as he's crying wolf.

- But he was still fun to be around.

When I hear myself saying it,

it sounds like he wasn't fun.

I mean, he was fun to be around.

He was fun to go out with

and go to the clubs with and stuff.

He would just get in those little funks

and pretty soon it was

just like I didn't even pay it any attention.

It was just something he said.

All the time in every conversation.

- If everyone onboard

could take their seats as we go under the bridge.

The swells and tides are very unpredictable.

The Golden Gate Bridge is 1.2 miles long

and the towers are 746 feet tall.

The roadway is suspended 220 feet

above the water at center span.

The Golden Gate Bridge is the most photographed

manmade structure in North America

and it is also considered

one of the Seven Wonders of the Modern World.

- We had gone to Montana, Glacier National Park,

the year before and Philip had a blast there.

We told him if he got outta the army in time,

which he did, that we were going back there

and they had those forest fires and so

we couldn't get in so I had been to San Francisco before

and I said, "You'll love it there,"

and the bridge fascinated him.

- For some reason, yeah,

when we were driving across the bridge,

he just kept looking around and

I just thought it was kind of odd,

you know, that he would just be,

and he wanted to get out.

He says, "Can we walk along the bridge?"

And I says, "I guess there are people who could

"walk along the bridge."

- Yeah, we were on a tour bus.

- Yeah, I said, "But, you know, we can't get out now"

and he just kept looking out the window

like he wanted to get out and just look around and

you know, he thought it was just so beautiful and

when we did get out of the bus

and he wanted his picture taken a few times

with the bridge in the background and...

- He'd ask questions.

"How deep do you think it is?

"How high do you think it is?"

- I mean, I like the bridge too,

but he just seemed so fascinated by it

and I just thought that was kinda odd

to have such a fascination with it.

I don't know, it was like

almost calling him, you know, type thing.

It was like magnetic to him.

- Yeah.

- I don't know.

- We thought he might go and live out there.

Even if he's homeless, at least it's a city he loves.

'Cause he was homeless in Texas,

lived out of his car.

Met two girls online, went down twice.

Those didn't work.

- He always fell in love with the wrong person.

I think everything just disillusioned him.

He had this idealistic view of things

and this perception of how everything should be

and then when it didn't meet up to his expectations,

after awhile, it was like, what's the point then?

- But he still had to make a choice.

- Gene's choice, his preference had been made years before.

He became increasingly alienated

and he had told his mother that

he wanted to kill himself

and she, in essence, had told him,

"I didn't invest a lifetime in you to have you

"die on me, kill yourself, and walk away.

"You don't have a right to do that while I'm alive."

And I think it was very hard for him

to watch his mother's non-participation

in a battle with cancer that she might have won.

It was a choice on her part.

- When I talked to him,

he was acting as if life goes on,

you know, type situation

and I would always tell him I'm here for you,

you still got family no matter what.

I'm a brother from another mother.

- He said to me after she was gone

and there was a lot of stuff to clean up,

and he said, "Well, now I can finally,

"now I can finally end it all."

And I looked at him and I said,

"Well, you will promise me

"that you will not go without saying goodbye."

- I remember coming home,

because Thursday night's garbage day

and Friday's recycling day,

and Philip even did that before he left.

He took the recycling things out to the curb

and I came home that Friday

and they were empty and I said,

"Oh, that's unusual for him not to bring

"the buckets back in."

And when I came in the house

and as soon as she said, "Where's Philip?

"Isn't he with you?"

and I was like, he did it, I knew.

And here's the hard part for me.

I had a feeling it was going to be in San Francisco

but I said, if he's in San Francisco

and I call the police to stop him,

if I have time yet,

that he's gonna just hang himself

or have the policemen shoot him,

and I said if he's that determined,

I have to let him go,

but when she asked me, I said, "No,

"he's not coming home" and

from the death certificate, he was already done.

It's just waiting for the policemen

to show up at the door.

- We just came around the corner

after snapping a shot of San Francisco in the backdrop

and he was right there.

- Yeah, sorta surprised him.

- Yeah, we startled him.

- Came up upon him.

- He was taking off his backpack.

In hindsight, he was probably getting ready to jump,

then put back his backpack on really quickly

and acted nervous and we interrupted him.

We interrupted him from jumping

and you spoke with him

'cause you noticed something odd.

- Yeah, just his whole body language,

his whole energy was just a bit off.

He was definitely nervous

and he had a, was shuffling his shoulder

and I initially picked up on that

and said, "Are you okay?

"What's going on?"

And at that point,

he made brief eye contact.

- Well-dressed guy.

- Yeah.

- Brief eye contact, too, he was very nervous.

He wouldn't look you in the eye for very long

and just kept darting away, looking away.

And his biggest concern when he ask him,

"Are you all right?"

He said, "It's a long way down to the water."

- No, he said, "It's a long way down."

- "Long way down," right.

- And I didn't know how to quite take that

when I heard him say that,

and I didn't know if I heard him correctly.

I thought maybe he had meant

it's a long way back to the other side of the bridge

and here I am thinking, well, you're three quarters

of the way, you're close,

and, of course, that wasn't the case.

- And we didn't see him jump.

Did not see him jump.

- For me, he said he was just gonna

go down so deep that even if he changed his mind,

he couldn't swim to the top,

but the coroner said it was over instantly.

- Boy, imagine what this looks like to people.

They probably look at us and say,

"What kind of mother and father were they?"

- Yeah.

- I wasn't perfect.

But, I mean, I don't think it was such a terrible mother.

And then I remember Sharon said to me,

"You know, it's not all about you.

"It has nothing to do with you."

- Yeah, I mean, I was raised in a family, dysfunctional--

- I mean, yeah, so was I.

- My father was alcoholic, hers was alcoholic.

They fought like cats and dogs, you know,

and the abuse and I should be an alcoholic.

I should be a serial killer, you know.

You think you are raising your family to be

religious or whatever and you try and do the best

but you wind up doing more things that are harmful

and then when you try and fix 'em,

it might be too late.

And it's like, well, no matter what you do good or bad,

things are gonna happen.

And he said, "If you and Mom, who I love,

"are having problems,

"what hope is there for me?"

He says, "I think you love me the most

"and tried your best," and he said,

"If you're having problems,

"there's no way I can make it."

- Yeah.

Took a lot of pictures while he was on the bridge.

- Yeah.

- He wanted to show what he was seeing.

What he was feeling.

- I was taking pictures of Alcatraz at the time,

and while I was taking the picture,

I saw like out of the corner of my eye

a girl walking by and she climbed over the rail,

and she did it so smoothly.

It was almost like she was going to a little,

like she had her own little clubhouse.

I don't know, like she was going to

sit on the ledge to like eat lunch.

So I got a couple pictures of her climbing over,

and then I started taking pictures

of her standing on a ledge and I realized that

this girl's about to jump,

but when I was behind the camera,

it was almost like it wasn't real

'cause I was looking through the lens.

I was actually like, I guess I was waiting for her to jump

'cause I thought there's nothing I can do.

It was too late.

Earlier, I was actually staring down

at the ledge at a couple different points on the bridge

and I was just trying to think to myself

what goes through people's minds

whenever they're standing on that ledge

and they're about to jump off,

like what's the last thing that they're thinking of?

Or, like, are they thinking anything at all?

They just had enough and they just go

and that's it, they're gone.

I started yelling out to the girl,

asking her what was wrong.

She seemed to be speaking in a different language,

and basically like tuning me out,

like really not thinking about what I was saying.

So I got up on the rail and I reached out

and I really didn't know I was gonna be able

to grab the back of her jacket,

but once I grabbed it, I just lifted her over the rail

and got her down on the ground.

She started to fight me a little bit,

so I just sat on her chest and just called 911

and they were probably there within a couple minutes.

As crazy as it sounds, I think of myself like

a National Geographic photographer must feel

and he's behind the camera filming

and there's like a big tiger that's running at him

and he's like, you know, "This footage is so great."

He forgets that in a couple seconds

that tiger's gonna be on top of him,

but it's like you're in that camera, you're just behind

and you don't really think about what's going on

and that's where I had to separate

or I had to actually get out of that mode of thinking

and actually act on it and do something to help her.

After I left the bridge patrol,

I was going back to my vehicle

and I happened to look over

and it kinda looked like she turned back

and she looked right at me

and it freaked me out for a second.

I just didn't expect her to look back now.

I don't know if she actually saw me and

was thinking, like, this son of a bitch,

you know, I wanted to jump or whatever it was that

that she was thinking.

I'm sure that in some way

that she did want to be rescued

because if she really wanted to commit suicide

and just take that basically ultimate shortcut

to the next level, then she would've just

climbed over and just jumped right off.

So I think that she was sort of

crying out for help there a little bit.

The police did tell me that she was involved

in another incident on the bridge and

they talked her out of it,

and I just hope that she's doing okay.

- Gene had a lot riding on this relationship

and he wanted to get out of California

and he felt that it was gonna be like

a new beginning and I think he had

it planned out in his head how it was gonna happen

and then when he got there,

the reality wasn't quite the same

as what was in his head.

- Yeah, I think he was chasing

a certain magical wonderland

that would make all his problems go away

and making excuses as to why he couldn't find it here,

expecting to find it somewhere else.

He just wanted to make it happen so bad

so that's why he went in St. Louis.

- Only love, really love,

feeling like he was loved and in love

was gonna save him.

And who's to say that this is not a genetic thing?

Who's to say that that wasn't the reason

his mother chose to have this child

because she, too, was depressed

and knew that she could keep herself here

and functional if she had a commitment?

And how do we know that it wasn't at some

inner level that he perceived this very young

and that it colored his needs

to have someone depend on him?

I don't know.

- The ideas of suicide,

if I'm completely honest with myself,

have been there for a long, long time.

Years, way before I was diagnosed,

but it was just touching on it,

like, you know, oh, I'll just kill myself.

But the real thought process of actually going to do it

and commit the act started

I'd say about '99

and that's when I cut my wrist.

- At the end of his junior year in high school,

he had huge mood swings,

and during his senior year,

they were just compelling.

I mean, he was constantly

either very high or very low.

That was really the fight.

That's when Kevin was at his worst.

There were times where he couldn't even speak

and there were times where he wouldn't stop speaking.

- I was hallucinating

and I had made the assumption that

there were bugs in my bed and stuff

and they were like stuff that were giving me AIDS

and stuff like that

and I was just completely off the wall.

I hadn't been sexually active for years,

yet I thought I had AIDS and it was like

it was all in my head and

I sprayed my bed sheets with a disinfectant,

like a deodorizer or something like that

but I sprayed my bed sheets, you know,

I sleep in that, I inhaled in all night long,

which caused the hallucinations

to become greater and greater

and so I got up out of bed, sat at my desk,

and I must have written five versions of my suicide letter

until I realized these are mean,

I can't write them like this, so I wrote a real nice one

or so my thought was nice, I mean,

it's a suicide letter, you know,

and I guess it said something like,

"Mom, you're not always right.

"Don't think you are, but I love you.

"Dad, stop being so mean.

"You're hurting people."

- He had a terrible episode and

there was no comment with regard to suicide.

It was a commentary with regard to

hearing voices and difficulty

remaining under control,

and I called his psychiatrist

the Sunday night prior and had a conversation with him

and the psychiatrist told me,

"No, don't worry about it.

"Everything's gonna be fine."

And then Kevin and I stayed up

and we chatted about it and he seemed to be

fine, almost completely calmed.

- Our conversations go like this when he's mad at me.

He tells me to sit down in my chair

and he basically yells at me.

I told him that I don't wanna, I said,

"I don't wanna hurt anybody anymore.

"I have to go away."

Or something like that, and he said,

"You have an obligation

"to stay here for your family.

"You have an obligation to me

"who raised you, given you everything you want.

"You have an obligation

"to live for your brother, your sister,"

but he was mad the whole time.

So I said, "All right, all right, all right,

"I'm not gonna do anything, Dad.

"Don't worry, don't worry."

And he was like, "Do I have to take you to the hospital?"

You know, or something like that.

I was like, "No, no, no, no,

"it's all right, it's all right."

I said, "Let me just sleep on it

"and we'll talk about it in the morning, okay?

"I'm really tired, Dad, I'm really tired."

So he woke me up the next morning

about 7 o'clock 'cause I got maybe like two hours of sleep,

and he woke me up and he said,

"Hey, you're coming to work with me."

I was like, "No."

He's like, "No, come on, I'm worried about you.

"I'm really worried about you."

I was like, "Dad, I'm fine,"

the entire time lying through my teeth

because I knew I was gonna go to the bridge and jump.

- So, listen, why don't I take the day off?

And we'll go do something and he said, "Nope.

"I'd rather go to school."

- I kiss him goodbye on the cheek

and I was like, all right, this is the last time

I'm ever gonna kiss my daddy goodbye, you know.

I'll never see him again.

And he'll never see me.

And I went to my English class,

dropped all my other classes.

I took the K out to the 28 to the 29th out to the bridge,

and the whole time I was just bawling my eyes out,

just crying,

talking to myself on the bus.

I had stopped, before I got on the 28,

I had stopped at Walgreens

and I bought my last meal,

Starburst and Skittles.

And

went out to the bridge.

Found a place that I thought, all right,

it's not too close to the pillar, I won't hit the pillar,

I'll just hit the water.

I'll either drown or die on impact

or I'll have a heart attack.

So I got there,

stood there for like 40 minutes at that spot,

just crying my eyes out.

Joggers, bikers, runners, tourists, whatever

running by and walking by

looking at me, didn't say anything.

It's not their part, it's not their problem, but anyway,

and this woman, she came up to me.

She said in a German accent,

I think it was a German accent,

she said, "Will you take my picture?"

I was like, your picture?

I mean, I'm gonna kill myself,

what is wrong with you?

Can't you see the tears pouring out of my face?

But she couldn't.

She was on her own hype.

So I took the camera, I took her picture,

said, "Miss, have a nice day,"

turned back to the traffic,

turned to the bay, said, "Fuck it, nobody cares."

Pardon my French.

And I hurled over the bridge.

See, what most people do, apparently,

is they get on the ledge outside of the bridge

and they stand there.

People can talk them out of it

or pull them up or whatever.

I didn't want anybody to talk me out of it.

I just wanted to die.

So I hurtled over the railing with my hands

and I was falling headfirst

and the second my hands left the bar or the railing,

I said, "I don't wanna die."

I said, "What am I gonna do?

"This is like, this is it.

"I'm dead."

So I said, "Well, maybe if I get feet first,

"maybe, maybe I'll live."

So I thought,

"All right, it's worth a shot."

So my head was falling like this,

and I pushed myself back somehow

and I landed literally like I was sitting down,

kinda maybe a little more elevated with the legs,

and I hit with my feet,

and I guess the water treaded through my boots a little bit,

so maybe helped the impact,

and the boots are pretty tough so,

and I went down about I'd say 40, 50 feet.

Didn't know which way was up or down.

I thought, "Am I still alive?"

'Cause it's like a four to seven second fall.

It's like 120 miles per hour.

I think that's like seven seconds below terminal velocity

or like the velocity downslope skiers get.

I was awake.

I was alive.

I was swimming my butt off to get somewhere

where there was air.

So I reached the surface, I guess,

because I saw some sort of light,

and I was screaming for help

and I couldn't really scream.

My voice was gone.

I couldn't yell.

I was like, "Help.

"Help me."

And I felt something brush by my leg.

I was like, "Oh, great.

"I didn't die jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge.

"A shark is going to eat me."

I was like, "This is ridiculous."

Years later, I found out,

as a matter of fact, last year I found out

it wasn't a shark.

It was a seal circling me

and apparently it was the only thing keeping me afloat.

And you cannot tell me that wasn't God

'cause that's what I believe

and that's what I'll believe till the day I die.

- I was sitting my office

and a secretary

said that, "There's someone on the line for you

"from Marin General Hospital."

So I picked up the phone and a woman said,

"Is this Pat Hines?"

I said, "Yes."

She said, "Your son has just jumped

"from the Golden Gate Bridge."

I lived here all my life.

I know what that means,

and I said, "Is he alive?"

And she said, "Oh, he is."

And I thought

that they probably told me that just to keep me calm

so that I wouldn't wreck my car

driving over to see his mangled body.

- I shattered my T12 and my L1,

which is my lower lumbar region

into very, very tiny little pieces

and the pieces went into my organs,

but they missed my heart.

- At this point in time, I still thought he would be dead.

So I went up to this gurney and I looked down

and he was wide awake and he looked up at me

and he said, "I'm sorry."

And then he just closed his eyes and

I just stood there staring at him

and he was, by that point in time, in a coma.

- It was just super scary, you know?

I mean, I can't explain it.

To feel it would be like...

like feeling an alien jumping out of your body

or something, you know,

like your soul or whatever.

It was ridiculous, scary, just really wild.

- 2004 was a tough year for Kevin.

It hasn't been a cakewalk.

Kevin's been visited by

extreme mental illness three times subsequent

to his jump off the bridge.

The most recent, he was confined

for almost three months

while he struggled and his doctors struggled

to get his bipolar bracketed in,

and it's a matter of diet,

it's a matter of consistency,

and it's a matter of proper drug therapy.

Kevin will begin to

make headway.

His life will gain traction,

and then he begins to get outside of the brackets

into which he can function,

and unfortunately, it has taken three times now

outside, in those outside areas to convince him,

prove to him more importantly,

that he can't go there,

and unfortunately for Kevin,

it's get up at 8 o'clock in the morning,

take your pills at eight, have lunch at noon,

if you will, dinner at six,

pills at nine, bed at 10,

and that's a very, very difficult existence

for a 24 year old male in this society.

But I've told him,

"It's a wonderful disease to have, Kev,

"because you can control it.

"If you had cancer,

"you wouldn't have the same opportunity.

"Unlike cancer, Kevin, as long as you stay

"within these bands, you've got it.

"It doesn't have you."

- It's funny, my family members

still think I haven't learned my lesson,

but the lesson was learned a long time ago,

and, you know,

it's hard when

you keep messing up,

and no one in your family believes in you anymore

or trusts you,

whether they're scared you're gonna go attempt again

and they're always worried, walking on eggshells

when they talk to you.

It sucks.

So I'm tired of that.

I just want them to say,

"Hey, Kev, what's cracking, man?"

Just be real about it.

Don't walk on eggshells around me.

I'm the same guy,

just different soul, you know,

different ideals.

I just wanna be normal again,

but I never will be.

- We started using crystal meth,

and, you know, using crystal just,

everything starting going down the toilet.

She lost her job, I lost my job.

We ended up becoming homeless.

She has a little easier time letting go of drugs than I do.

I have a very addictive personality,

and

just found out last week

that she's been cheating on me again.

So I picked up my son.

I gave him a hug and kiss and said goodbye,

and told her to F off.

And then I found myself just walking

toward the Golden Gate Bridge.

I was crying the whole way, you know.

Only thing I kept saying was, you know,

"As I walk in the valley of the shadow of death,

"I shall not fear a thing 'cause God's with me."

So when I got to the halfway point on the bridge,

I set my book down and I jumped over onto the railing.

And I just sat there, crying and thinking for a little bit,

and the cops showed up.

I made the mistake of letting them

get to know me too well

'cause they completely used my son against me.

- Actually, I came to the bridge last year

at this time to do the same thing

and so it's not a new idea,

but kind of one that became a little obsessive, I suppose.

How I literally got here today was on an airplane

from Houston, Texas.

What drew me to it in spite of

having to do so much preparations is that

it is so accessible.

You just kinda hop over.

But, yeah, letting go, that's the tough part.

I don't know if people think about that a lot,

like the process that a person goes through

in trying to decide how to end their life.

It's like a search, it's like looking for

a college to attend or something,

you know, the pros and cons and

it's a destructive act, but there's

a lot of rational thought that goes into an act

that a lot of people just consider irrational.

In my bag, I had my parents' phone number

and I wanted them to know what happened

and not just be agonizing over what happened

to their daughter for a week or two.

So I wanted people just see me actually do it,

and I think I really did want somebody to say, "No,

"don't do it."

- When Gene called me

from St. Louis in despair

and was gonna jump off the bridge there,

he said, "I'm just calling to say goodbye.

"It's time."

What could I say to him?

You know, I had tried

on occasion to find something

that would encourage him to live,

something,

and I asked him again for a favor.

I said, "Put my name and phone number

"in a plastic bag in your pocket

"so that when you are found,

"I can be told.

"I need to know."

- He had called me from a bridge back there

and he was--

- But he called me first from the train tracks

saying he was gonna lay his neck

across the train tracks and because he said

things like that all the time,

I didn't call him back

because I just didn't want to hear it.

You can only hear the same thing so many times

and give the same answer so many times.

You know, "Stop being stupid.

"Don't be ridiculous."

It gets tiring after awhile.

You wanna hear something different,

so I guess when I didn't call him back,

he went to the bridge.

- Yeah, he had made his way to a bridge.

He called me on my cell phone,

told me this relationship that he was pursuing

is all falling apart, so I kept him on the phone.

I was talking to him.

At one point in our conversation,

he said, "Oh, a cop's driving by."

And I actually heard the cop stop and ask him,

"Hey, you're not gonna jump, are ya?"

They asked him, "Is everything okay?

"Any problems?"

And he's like, "No, not really,"

and they decided to leave him alone,

and that's when I said, "Look,

"I'm gonna get a ticket for you for the bus,

"and you're gonna come back to California,"

and I convinced him to do that.

- David is very dramatic, boisterous,

a life of the party type,

playing the piano, singing,

you know, really Mr. Party,

which is very interesting because

I'm not that way at all,

and I think part of the reason he liked me

was that I didn't ask him to do that

or he didn't feel he had to do that around me.

- He was a handsome guy.

He was a good dresser,

and he just exuded this,

which is another reason why I guess it's so

shocking to me is that he just exuded this joy for life.

- Ruby was someone that I was always proud to pull in.

So when there's somebody new in my life

or I was dating somebody for awhile,

I wanna bring 'em over, you know.

- One of Jim's favorite things was when he'd see me, said,

"Oh, I met a new friend.

"You've got to meet this person.

"You've just gotta meant this person."

He had great delight in bringing people together.

He really loved people and

just very warm personality.

At least that's how he was in the beginning.

- Before six months ago, I would

never have said that I thought Ruby

had a significant depression problem.

I know that he was alone without a source of income.

I know his sister had killed herself.

I know he had all those variables.

Nothing before this last few months of his life

indicated to me that he was out of the range

of the normal ups and downs

that we just don't share all the time.

- David came over to Charlie's

to have dinner with us

and that's when he told us for the first time

he was seriously on medication,

but up until that point

apparently he had been self-medicating with alcohol

and although I knew him for nine years,

I could count on maybe,

maybe two times that I see him really drunk.

- David would, every so often, determine

that he had to get his life back together

or he would be confronted by me or other friends

and start treatment.

He took antidepressants for a month and a half or so

and made a big show of it,

but then in the end I arranged a label

so that I could see if he'd been picking the bottles up

and he hadn't touched them.

Didn't touch them for weeks.

- So a couple of months before he died,

Ruby started talking about

he couldn't get over his feelings of losses

and he thought that he might be depressed,

but he didn't have any health insurance.

So he said, "I want some meds.

"Got any ideas how I can get some?"

And I had tried some antidepressant meds

that didn't seem to help and I couldn't sleep on them.

So I said, "Okay, listen.

"Here.

"You can have mine.

"But you've gotta call a physician

"for information on how to take them.

"I cannot be responsible for how you take them.

"But you can have them."

I was gonna give him the whole bottle of them

in the original bottle and I thought,

what if one day somebody goes into his apartment

and is looking through his stuff

and finds my name on a bottle of meds?

I took them out and I put them in an envelope.

Just a plain envelope.

- It was around November or the fall

when Jim lost an enormous amount of money

and he actually made the statement,

"Well, if I don't sell these pots,"

which were these Japanese ceramics,

"I'm just gonna have to commit hara-kiri."

- When I called him, I said, "David,

"I know you're in trouble,

"I know you've lost your job,

"and I wanna help you."

He stopped because I'd never really said that before

because I didn't view him as really in trouble,

and he said,

"I can't talk about this right now

"because I don't wanna cry in the middle of the street,"

and I thought, oh my God, this is serious.

He's really emotionally on the verge of tears.

- Five months before he jumped,

he had written a note, an email

to a couple dozen of his friends

saying that he had been contemplating suicide

and a lot of them wrote back to him and called him.

However, he never mentioned suicide to me ever,

and I just can't fathom the idea of committing suicide

and I just think I thought he was one of those people

who for him it just wasn't an option,

but apparently it was.

- My daughter was leaving for camp,

and I said, "You know what, let's go to the movies."

We went into the theater.

He just put his head in his hands

and he just wept.

He just wept in the movie.

And I was tearing up a little too,

but he was just crying and crying and crying.

And he put his hand on my leg,

and I said,

"Ruby, I don't need to be comforted,"

and he looked at me.

I thought, oh my God.

Oh no.

It was then that I remembered

that I put the meds in a plain white envelope

a couple months earlier.

We got out of the movie theater

and we were walking to his car,

and I thought,

he's not just depressed, he wants to kill himself.

And he said, "The meds,

"I think I can't sleep because of the meds,"

and I said,

"I know, I wish I hadn't given them to you

"because I feel like I made it worse.

"They had the same effect on me."

He said, "That's it, actually.

"I can't sleep,

"and I'm just up.

"I can't stop worrying.

"I just can't turn it off and not sleeping

"is what is making me crazy.

"I'm thinking about I'm killing myself."

And I said, "I know."

I felt it when we were walking to the car.

Something was gone.

And he said, "I'm so ashamed

"to tell you that I'm thinking about doing this.

"What would you think of me if I did?"

And I said, "Ruby, I have understood

"that there are people who have incessant pain,

"but ...

"I don't think you're one of 'em.

"Do you have plan?"

And he said, "Well, I'm thinking about different things.

"I'd overdose except I'm not sure how much to take

"and I might wake up in an ER,

"and that would be horrible.

"And

"I thought about the bridge,"

and I said, "You can't do the bridge.

"Too dramatic."

He said, "What about people who shoot themselves?"

And I said, "It's too messy.

"It's not fair to your landlord.

"And, anyway,

"you are not in the category

"of people who get to kill themselves."

And then he wanted to come over

and spend some time and just didn't want to go home yet,

but I actually just wanted to be by myself.

I said, "No.

"Can't.

"But if you feel really desperate,

"you call me, I'll drop anything."

I did say that.

So then I got him out of my car and went home,

and I didn't hear from him

actually ever again.

# Since I lost you

# I can't get through the day

# Without at least

# One big boo-hoo

# The pain won't go away

# What am I gonna do #

- We all know how much

all of us had been close to Jim,

how his passing has affected us, whether it's

fear that,

you know, you might get to that same place

and do the same thing or

just guilt because you felt you weren't a good enough friend

or whatever it is, there is a lot different reactions.

Talking to everybody, there's a lot of different reactions.

And I think everyone's trying to make sense of it.

In Jim's particular passing, which

as a friend of mine said,

he was warning you but he was not asking for help.

- I thought

that he was probably feeling so ashamed

'cause the theme of that night was

I'm so ashamed I'm telling you this

that I

made the mistake of giving him some space to recover,

and that was a bad call, I think.

You know, I could have 51-50'd him.

But, also,

I didn't wanna humiliate him

and have him be in a psych facility

'cause I wasn't sure they were really gonna help him

and I didn't wanna cross my boundaries.

But I will never again not intrude.

I won't respect their privacy

and I will not ever again

not do something 'cause I'm afraid

that they might be embarrassed.

- There's obviously a fuzzy line between

doing nothing and doing what would have prevented it

and who knows where that line is?

He was a grownup.

I couldn't tell him what to do with his life,

and I suppose if we had had him locked up

or something, then he might still be alive,

but I don't

blame myself like that.

Initially, several of his other friends

went out there as a group

because they knew the light pole number

where he had jumped.

I couldn't go,

but a couple of months later, I did go

and it was very difficult,

and I'll never be able to drive across the bridge again

without some kind of

emotional reaction.

Something else I'm pissed off at him about.

It's such a great bridge.

- I think the bridge has a romance,

a false romantic promise to it

because he's dead.

And

he doesn't get to benefit

from the romanticism of it.

He doesn't have any benefit from it.

It romanticizes him a bit in the legend,

but he doesn't benefit for it.

So what if his story has that at the end?

He's gone.

And so I think there's an empty promise.

It's almost like, you know what alcoholics talk about

the romance of the bottle, you know?

Like maybe the first sip is really good

and everything else is hell.

So maybe walking out there,

he had a romantic moment or two or an hour,

but hitting the water can't be fun.

So I think he felt like a failure

and this was some sort of redemption.

I think that it just drew him with this idea of

being famous.

- The last time I saw him, I was leaving for work

and I gave him five bucks so he could get a pack of smokes,

go grab a paper, and, you know,

go out and maybe hit a couple places

to put in some applications,

and that's when he disappeared

and I was the last one to actually talk to him,

and I remember when I was walking out the door,

the last thing I said to him, I said,

"Cheer up, Gene."

I said, "Everything will work out."

And just jokingly, I said,

"See you when I get home, love you,"

and that was it, that was the last thing I ever said to him.

- The last thing I ever said to him was a fight.

- Yeah.

- Because...

I didn't think he was trying

to find a job as hard as he could,

and it was making me angry

because I knew that he was very smart

and he was very capable

and the only thing holding him back was him

just not caring,

and he found one of the kid's sidewalk chalk

and he was sittin' behind Matt's truck

and he wrote "End me" on the ground

like he scratched it in over and over and over,

and my son came in and got me

and said, "Why would Gene write that?"

- Knowing Gene and the way his personality works and stuff,

the Golden Gate Bridge is perfect for him

because it's just one easy step

and there's no turning back.

In hindsight, I almost feel like

it was meant to happen.

Maybe he's happy now.

You know, who knows?

I don't, but

he couldn't have lasted much longer,

not the way he was going.

- But if he would have waited,

there was a message on our answering machine

from one of the places in Oakland

that had offered him a management position

which is what he wanted.

They were opening a new GameStop, I think it was.

- Whatever,

one of the game places. - One of game

stores and they were gonna put him

straight into management,

and he had an interview the day that he jumped

at 10 o'clock in the morning.

- Yep.

- And I don't know if he got the message

or if he missed it 'cause I don't know what time he left.

He was gone before I got home.

If he would've either just checked the message or waited.

- I couldn't fully cry, and I couldn't

fully whatever, but the overwhelming emotion was anger.

I was extremely pissed.

I wanted to drive out to the Bay Area and

go to the coroner and

you know, get, clear!

Wake up.

Why did you do that?

I don't see any reason

for people to do that,

and Gene had people in this world that loved him,

and he hurt 'em.

If I see him again, that's what I wanna tell him.

He hurt me,

and I didn't think he would ever do that.

- Disturbed is a interesting word

'cause... that's all I can define it as

is I was disturbed.

Now I miss him.

Now I'm sad.

But at the moment, there was almost,

that I got the news, there was almost a sense of relief,

that he wasn't going to be

disappointed or unhappy anymore.

I miss him.

But I don't have any answers,

just a bunch of observations and a bunch of

experience of feeling disturbed

about that situation.

I don't know why people kill themselves,

and yet it's a small step

to emphasize, to say...

because I think we all experience moments of despair

that it would be so much easier not to do this anymore.

But for most of us,

the sun comes out and then,

oh well.

Tomorrow is another day.

Why he chose the bridge, I don't know.

Maybe there's a certain amount of

release from

pain by pain.

Maybe he just wanted to fly one time.

# Here, where they can't find us

# Dare them to call

# Me out

# Or tell you

# We met here on purpose

# I bet they can't wait

# To wake us up

# It's all

# A little bit strange

# I know

# It's a little bit strange

# Make

# A point and ignore them

# Come on, let's wait

# This out

# They'll find out

# We never stopped turning

# And sometimes it's tough

# To change direction

# I know

# It's a little bit strange

# It's all

# A little bit strange

# At the end of the day

# Well, I

# Gonna say what I mean

# Well, I

# It's slipping all away

# Away

# At the end

# Of our days

# We'll escape

# We'll escape

# I know

# Oh, oo, oh

# Oh, oo, oh

# I know

# It's a little bit strange

# It's all

# A little bit strange

# At the end of the day

# Well, I

# Gonna say what I mean

# Well, I

# At the end of the day

# I

# Gonna say what I mean

# Well, I

# Slipping all away

# Slipping all away

# Slipping all away

# Now

# At the end of

# Our day

# We'll escape

# We'll escape

# Oh, there's no escape

# We'll escape

# Oh, yeah

# Right now

# Oh, oo, oh

# Oh, oo, oh #