Skyway telephone pays off in life

For the first time since being installed recently, a Skyway hotline has helped prevent a suicide.

By ANGELA MOORE

© St. Petersburg Times, published August 1, 1999

TAMPA -- The distraught Pinellas Park man parked his pickup truck on the southbound side at the crest of the Sunshine Skyway bridge Saturday morning and walked to the edge.

There are three hotline phones mounted on each side of the Skyway. Callers reach Crisis Center of Hillsborough County. [Times files, 1999: Pam Royal]

He lifted one leg up and over the railing, the only barrier between him, open air and the water of Tampa Bay almost 200 feet below.

Then he did what workers and volunteers at the Crisis Center of Hillsborough County had been hoping for. He picked up the solar-powered phone in the little red box and asked for help.

The phone is one of six installed in recent months to provide a direct line to the Crisis Center for anyone considering suicide.

Pam Smith, who has worked at the center for four years, answered the call at 11 a.m. She motioned for another counselor to alert the Highway Patrol that a jumper was on the bridge. For 20 minutes, she kept him on the phone and bought the time needed by deputies and troopers to get to the bridge and save the man's life.

Since the phones were installed, two people have committed suicide on the Skyway. Saturday marked the first time the phones have helped stop someone from jumping.

"I take suicide calls all the time," Smith said. "But this one was different. I tried to tell myself to keep calm, that this was just another, well, I don't want to say typical, but typical suicide call."

But it wasn't typical, Smith said. While the rescuers mobilized, she counseled the man and tried to keep him talking.

"He was crying off and on," Smith said. "I tried to get him to tell me what had gotten him to this point of desperation. . . . He was very volatile and highly agitated during the whole conversation."

For 20 minutes, she kept him talking and even took down the names and phone numbers of family members. Then she felt she was losing him. "Please stay with me," she pleaded over and over. The man hung up.

"At that point, I thought he was dead," Smith said. "I thought he had jumped."

But he hadn't jumped. Instead, he got back into his pickup truck and drove off. When state troopers, the Marine Patrol and deputies arrived, there was no trace of the man. Officers drove up and down the length of the bridge and had almost given up the search when one deputy spotted a man parking his pickup truck near the spot where the distress call had been made.

Lt. John Reed, a 29-year veteran of the Sheriff's Office, got there first. Reed had never counseled a suicidal person, but he has talked his way out of critical situations. Once, he said, when a man held him at gunpoint, Reed talked him into giving up. This time, he had a different sort of fear.

"I was scared for him," Reed said. "When I got there, he was perched up on that rail. He lost his balance a couple of times, but luckily he fell in toward the bridge instead of away.

"I was having trouble hearing him because of the traffic, but every time I'd move to get closer, he'd scoot farther away on the railing," he said.

Reed and the man talked for about 10 minutes about the man's failing marriage. The man said he worried that he couldn't afford counseling, but when Reed explained to him that most company health insurance policies help cover the cost of counseling, the man seemed to feel better.

"I was saying anything that came into my head that made sense," Reed said. "There's no recipe. There's no magic words for something like this."

Once the man came down from the railing, Reed took him into custody to seek psychiatric treatment. He downplayed his role in saving the man's life, and said the crisis phones on the Skyway did their job Saturday.

"The people at the hotline deserve the credit," Reed said. "They bought us the time we needed to do an intervention."

Since 1996, 26 people have jumped to their deaths from the Skyway, making it the nation's third deadliest bridge for suicides, behind the Golden Gate in San Francisco and the Coronado in San Diego.

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