For over 23 years, California Highway Patrol Officer Kevin Briggs patroled the world-famous Golden Gate Bridge day in, and day out.
While Brigs was trained to deal with traffic accidents on the bridge, as soon as he began his assignment, he realized that there was much more to the job than he imagined. What he didn’t know at the time was that the Golden Gate Bridge was also one of the most popular suicide destinations in the world.
Towering 746 feet above the freezing waters of San Francisco Bay, the bridge seems to attract troubled and clinically depressed people who have made the decision to end their lives. With numerous fatalities each year, it was only a matter of time before the rookie officer was called to the scene of someone attempting to jump.
There were four to six cases of suicidal folks on the bridge each and every month. And I had no idea about this, and I grew up in Marin County, which connects to San Francisco via that Golden Gate Bridge… I had no training to handle these types of situations,” Briggs explained.
Officer Briggs’ first case involved a woman who ventured to the wrong side of the bridge’s rail back in 1994. And he admits that with no suicide prevention training, he “did about everything wrong that you could.”
“In the back of my mind, I was thinking, ‘Am I responsible if she does jump? What happens here? I had no training in this. This is a really bad scene.’… I was afraid.”
The officer quickly learned what to do and not do when trying to talk down a suicidal person. He says that he discovered that when people reach the end of their rope, they really just need someone to listen and empathize with what they’re going through.
“I think my approach right from the start was wrong. Just to walk up right to those folks and start talking with them. Now what I do is I stand back and I’ll just introduce myself. I’ll say ‘Hi I’m Kevin’ or ‘I’m Kevin with the Highway Patrol, is it okay, is it alright if I come up and speak with you for a bit?’ I want to get their permission and empower them.”
“I try to explain to them, wow that sounds really tough. And normalize their situation. That’s a real big one, is to try to normalize their situation. You know, ‘Wow, what you’re going through is a whole lot of stuff and that’d be tough on anybody. I think anyone going through all that might be thinking about suicide.’”
Over the next two decades, Briggs would go on to save over 200 lives, earning him the title “Guardian of the Golden Gate Bridge.” Incredibly, he says the secret to his success wasn’t in “talking” anyone down, but rather listening to people. One of the people he helped is Kevin Berthia, who credits the officer and God for helping him make the right decision not to end his life that fateful day on the bridge.
Kevin had climbed over the rail that day intending to plunge himself into oblivion. His daughter had been born prematurely, and the family took on the cost of up to $250,000 in hospital bills. Profoundly depressed and filled with despair, Kevin stood with his head down an threatened to jump every time Officer Briggs came too close to him.
“He was very, very, very angry,” Briggs explained, “And he wanted nothing to do with me. And he kept yelling at me ‘Stay back! Stay back, if you come one step further I’m jumping!’ And he was very serious about this. In my mind, if I took one step further then he was gone.”
The two would go on to spend 90 minutes discussing Kevin’s problems, with Officer Briggs contributing only a few words of kindness or encouragement throughout their conversation. Kevin did most of the talking, and by the end of the discussion, he made the courageous and life-changing decision to climb back over the rail and face his depression head-on.
Thanks to Officer Briggs Kevin was able to hold his little girl again and watch her grow up.
“It takes a lot of courage to be over that rail. It takes a lot of courage. But it also takes a lot of courage to come back and face the reality that is with them right now. But there is a brighter side to this, and it can happen, and it might take a long time and a lot of work. But life is beautiful and, you know, it is worth living.”
Both Kevin and Officer Briggs are now friends, and Kevin found his calling as a suicide prevention specialist and a motivation speaker. He also wrote the Afterword in Briggs’ new book, “Guardian of the Golden Gate: Protecting the Line Between Hope and Despair.”
Since his retirement from the force in 2013, Officer Brigs has also focused his career around suicide prevention. Using the experiences and tools he learned working on the Golden Gate Bridge, Briggs now tours the country to help people understand how and why someone would turn to suicide as a last resort, and the things we can do to change their minds.
Please share this story to remind people out there that there’s always hope if we make the brave decision to live and that there is always someone, like Officer Briggs willing to listen and help us through our darkest moments.