The Final Leap (22 page)

All are vocal about their likes and dislikes. This makes the issue of a suicide barrier on the Golden Gate Bridge a no-win situation according to Mary Currie, the public relations director. Whatever the district does or doesn't do, people will be upset.

Michael Martini was one of the board members who opposed a suicide barrier. He manages a winery in Sonoma County, fifty miles from the bridge. In a January 27, 2005, Bridge District meeting, the subject of bridge jumps came up and Martini asked whether there had been any suicides in the past few years. The question was notable for two reasons. First, it indicated that board members weren't receiving information on bridge suicides from staff. Second, Martini didn't seem to have a clue that there had been
any
suicides since December 2001 when Marissa Imrie—one of the few victims who lived in his district—jumped. More than seventy-five people had died in the interim and he didn't know it.

Martini and other Bridge District board members from the northern counties have been the strongest opponents of a barrier. In March 2006, when the board voted 14 to 2 in favor of proceeding with studies for a barrier, the two dissenting votes were from Sonoma County—Martini and Maureen Middlebrook. Martini called the issue a “distraction” from more pressing concerns while Middlebrook blamed barrier supporters for not having raised more money—as if it was the responsibility of others to make the bridge safe. In October 2008, when the board voted 14 to 1 to in favor of a safety net, the only “no” vote was cast by James Eddie, the family rancher representing Mendocino County. Martini and Middlebrook were no longer on the board, but Eddie said that the people in his district didn't think a barrier was needed. He may have been right, but only because the bridge is a good two hours' drive away—too far to have much relevance to his constituents. They don't see or use it regularly, and few of the victims live that far north.

At the same board meeting where Martini asked if there had been any suicides, he asked about the costs incurred by the Bridge District, Coast Guard, and local police dealing with bridge suicides. CEO Celia Kupersmith replied that the district had never tracked these costs and she didn't know if it was done by other agencies. No one on the board seemed to think it was an important point because there was no follow-up. The irony is that while several people on the board were quick to question the cost of erecting a suicide barrier of any kind, they didn't express any interest in knowing how much money it was costing the district or other entities
not
to have a barrier.

Calculating at least an estimate of the costs of suicide response and rescue at the bridge is likely possible, if the board really was interested. In response to my inquiry, the Coast Guard was able to provide some information. There's a “reimbursable standard rate,” according to Lt. Commander Leanne Lusk, that is used to calculate costs. For the forty-seven-foot motor life boats used to retrieve the bodies of Golden Gate Bridge jumpers, it's $4,189 per hour. Even if a person's body is found immediately, by the time it's delivered to the coroner's office and the boat returns to the station, the cost is $4,000. If the search takes two to three hours, the cost can be more than $12,000. Multiply that by thirty searches and it totals $120,000 to $360,000 annually. And that's just for the Coast Guard.

The California Highway Patrol doesn't track its costs this way, or at least doesn't share the information publicly. Ken Holmes, the Marin County coroner, said that his office doesn't track the cost of conducting autopsies on Golden Gate Bridge jumpers, either, but probably could. When I ask Bridge District staff if a suicide deterrent will save the district money, Bridge Manager Kary Witt is quick to say that it won't because the same number of patrol officers and same amount of surveillance equipment will be needed to maintain bridge security anyway. His comment underscores the fact that Bridge District officials are far more interested in monitoring potential terrorist activities than worrying about people who end their lives on the bridge.

On average, more than 100,000 vehicles cross the Golden Gate Bridge every day. That's about 4,500 per hour or 350 every five minutes. If a section of the bridge collapsed suddenly, hundreds of people probably would be killed. Within seconds, blockades would be set up at both ends, and all traffic to the bridge would be diverted. Announcements would be issued across a variety of airwaves telling people to stay away. Large, can't-miss, Amber Alert-type warnings would be posted leading up to the bridge. Before the last body was pulled from the water, plans would be underway to replace the section with cost only a minor consideration. Meanwhile, the entity responsible for managing and maintaining the bridge would be attacked from all sides. Lawsuits would tie up local courts for years.

Despite more than fifteen hundred suicides from the bridge, there are no blockades, no announcements, no warning signs posted to stop them. There are only a few phones on the bridge that may or may not be working, which suicidal people tend to ignore anyway. Meanwhile, the entity that's solely responsible for managing and maintaining the bridge—the Golden Gate Bridge District—neither assumes nor is assigned by the courts, the media, or the public any responsibility for the deaths occurring on its structure.

In 2004, the Psychiatric Foundation of Northern California, comprised of 1,200 psychiatrists, established a Golden Gate Bridge suicide barrier task force to educate people about suicide and win support for a barrier. The organization, led by Dr. Mel Blaustein, launched a speakers' bureau, and members met individually with many Bridge District board members to make their case face-to-face. They also placed opinion pieces in northern California newspapers and brought together victims' families.

When Dave Hull learned of the Psychiatric Foundation in 2005, it was fifteen months after his daughter had jumped from the bridge. The timing also coincided with an event that raised his ire: the management of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area—part of the National Park Service (NPS) and Hull's longtime employer—criticized filmmaker Eric Steel for bringing unwanted attention to the bridge. Up to that point Hull had been silent about his daughter's death, believing that there was a “sacred circle of grief” around it that would have profaned her memory if mentioned to others. When GGNRA officials tried to cover up the problem, however, Hull decided that he couldn't be mute any longer. Not only was Kathy Hull dead because the bridge lacked a suicide barrier, he believed, but a year earlier a female park ranger had driven a GGNRA vehicle to the bridge and jumped.

Hull wrote letters to NPS officials relating his personal tragedy and expressing dismay over their tacit acceptance of bridge suicides. He said that the issue of a suicide barrier should be of primary interest to the NPS because the agency was responsible for the land on both sides of the bridge. “No one dies on the Golden Gate Bridge without crossing Park Service property,” Hull stated. To their credit, NPS staff took Hull's letters to heart, and started having conversations with Bridge District board members and staff.

Meanwhile, Hull began attending meetings of survivors' families organized by the Psychiatric Foundation of Northern California. Half the people were mental health professionals and half were victims' families—“people in a lot of pain, driven to this table in hopes of finding something that could be done,” according to Hull. The meetings were the first time that Hull talked publicly about his daughter's death. He couldn't maintain his composure doing it—he still chokes up today when the subject turns to her—but he forced himself to speak.

Hull found that the meetings weren't designed to support people in their grief, however, which was what he was most interested in. Instead, their purpose was to promote a suicide barrier on the bridge. To that end, Hull believed that educating people, particularly mental health professionals, wasn't enough. A broader approach was needed.

Two other Psychiatric Foundation supporters, Patrick Hines and Paul Muller, agreed. Hines was a corporate banker whose son, Kevin, was one of the few people to jump from the bridge and live. Muller, owner of a small San Francisco marketing firm, had been doing consulting work on the suicide barrier for the foundation, and he pushed to expand the task force's role. “If we don't broaden our constituency,” Muller told Blaustein and other board members, “we'll repeat mistakes of the past.” (Foundation leaders disagreed, and Muller was let go.)

For years, Jerry Motto and other psychiatrists had believed that they could convince Bridge District officials of the need for a suicide deterrent by the power of their arguments and their standing as physicians. Instead, their exhortations failed, largely because they constituted only one segment of the population. The majority of the public opposed a barrier, and until public opinion changed it didn't matter that the medical community was in favor. Collectively, it represented a single voice.

Muller, Hines, and Hull believed that the issue of a suicide deterrent on the bridge, like most issues, came down to politics and financing. They thought that success depended on wide-scale support, not intellectually reasoned arguments.

Through fortuitous circumstances, the three had a chance to pitch a San Francisco philanthropist who was interested in mental health issues. They explained the problem to her, as well as their general strategy, and she provided seed funding to launch a new nonprofit organization—the Bridge Rail Foundation. It had one mission: to see that the existing railing was raised or a net was installed so that suicides from the Golden Gate Bridge ended.

Marin County coroner Ken Holmes joined the all-volunteer organization, as did many survivor families. In district hearings and community forums, they told emotional, first-person stories of tragic deaths, all preventable if the bridge had had a barrier. They also created a poignant, traveling exhibit honoring everyone who jumped. In addition, the organization launched an active Web site, implemented a calendar of regular press activities to keep the issue alive and maintain pressure on the district, and met with federal legislators to identify potential funding sources. Most importantly, Bridge Rail Foundation members forged a partnership with Tom Ammiano, the Bridge District board member who was the strongest supporter of a barrier.

Ammiano had been on the Bridge District board for twelve years. He had read Tad Friend's article in the
New Yorker
, been moved by public comments of victims' families, and grown frustrated with what he calls all of the “sham studies” in which the results were “nitpicked to death.” He told me that when he started on the board, “Opposition to the barrier was a class-level thing, an elitist thing. People on the board weren't educated about the issue and didn't want to be educated.” Fortunately, things do change. “A lot of politics is fate,” he said. “Some of the more resistant board members left. Once the complexion of the board changed, there was definite traction for the barrier.”

In an interview with me, Denis Mulligan agreed that the Bridge District board “has evolved over time.” Mulligan was hired as chief engineer in 2001 after working at Caltrans. He said that a combination of factors in 2005, all having to do with “changing societal values and changing perceptions of suicide,” set in motion a series of events that culminated in the vote for a barrier three years later. There was $2 million to study the issue again, nearly all of it granted by the Metropolitan Transportation Commission at the request of Tom Ammiano. There was an agreement to revisit the criteria and the subsequent decision to accept a deterrent that couldn't promise to be 100 percent effective. There was the advocacy of the Psychiatric Foundation of Northern California, culminating in an event that featured bridge barrier designs of engineering students at U.C. Berkeley. There also was new and increasing press coverage.

“The
San Francisco Chronicle
ran a seven-part, page one, top-of-the-fold series on bridge suicides,” Mulligan told me. “When has the
Chronicle
ever done that—for anything?” Indeed, the paper devoted more than 30,000 words to the subject, featuring bylines of eight reporters. It was a major commitment of time, space, and resources, and it ended with an editorial titled “Humanity over Vanity” that said, “It is time to confront the dark side of our glamorous attraction and build an effective suicide barrier.”

I mentioned to him that I thought
The Bridge
, which also came out in 2005, put a face on Golden Gate Bridge suicides, a face that couldn't be ignored, and asked him how much impact he thought it had. “It didn't hurt,” Mulligan said, adding that Jenni Olson's film was released around the same time. “A lot of things came together at once, including Tom Ammiano taking charge. You need champions for public service projects.”

I asked Ammiano what he thinks of Eric Steel's movie now, reminding him that when it came out he called it a snuff film. He said, “I was ambivalent about it, but it did a lot of good. I was initially wary because something like this could be exploitative. In the end, though, the press coverage helped.… We broke the insular bubble of the Bridge District board.”

In 2008, Ammiano was elected to the California Legislature, which meant that his tenure on the Bridge District board was ending. As one of his last acts, he moved that the district once again consider a suicide deterrent on the bridge. He sensed that the sympathies of the board had shifted, and knew that this would be his last chance to exert influence. Momentum was on his side, and board members who weren't fully committed to the idea nevertheless could see the writing on the wall.

On October 10, 2008, the board voted 14 to 1 to erect a suicide deterrent on the bridge. It was the first time in history that board members approved a physical deterrent. Specifically, they authorized the addition of a steel net underneath. Local suicide prevention advocates, predictably, were thrilled. Some of them, like Jerry Motto, Ron Tauber, Margaret Hallett, and Eve Meyer, had been lobbying for a barrier for decades. As early as 1960, ad hoc committees of mental health professionals, crisis center directors, interfaith leaders, and others met regularly to develop strategies to try and convince Bridge District board members that a suicide deterrent was needed.