‘Cherish this day’
Kevin Hines didn’t accomplish what he set out to do the day he jumped from the Golden Gate Bridge, but he’s used this second chance to not only live his life to the fullest, but to shine a light on suicide and mental illness
WOONSOCKET — When Kevin Hines rode a bus into the parking lot near the Golden Gate Bridge with a group of about 100 tourists in September of 2000, he wasn’t there to take scenic photographs like the rest of the group.
Hines, caught up in an episode of severe depression, had gone to the San Francisco Bay bridge for one purpose.
“They got off the bus to take beautiful pictures to show the people back home,” Hines told a gathering of healthcare professionals and local residents in Landmark Medical Center’s Christensen Auditorium.
“I got off that bus to delete myself,” Hines said while relating his intent that day to commit suicide.
Hines was at Landmark Medical Center with Dr. Barbara Van Dahlen on Friday to help kickoff the hospital’s participation in the national “Campaign to Change Direction,” promoting mental health and wellness, and had plenty to share about his own close brush with death.
As part of the Change Direction program the participants pledged to know the five signs of a person in distress and to take action to help someone when they see those indicators in someone they know or meet.
The signs, given out on a business card to participants are evaluated through the questions “not feeling like you?, feeling agitated?, are you withdrawn?, caring for yourself?,” and “feeling hopeless?”
The day he rode out to the bridge,
Hines, 19 at the time, said he had been sitting in the back seat of the bus “crying with tears dripping from my eyes like a baby.”
Hines had been coping with bipolar disorder and had fallen into a depression where he was experiencing intense pain.
Even with what he was going through at that moment, Hines said he was also hoping and wishing “that someone would see my pain and say ‘what’s wrong.’”
But as is the case all too often, people see another person in distress and they feel nothing but apathy and choose not to get involved, Hines explained.
Once out on the bridge, Hines said he stood at the rail and “believed I had to die.”
People went by him, including a police officer, but at that time they weren’t trained to see what might be a person’s intent on the span, a beautiful, sweeping structure. The bridge not only draws tourists to its walkway, but since it was built in 1937, it has also drawn about 2,000 people who have chosen to end their lives by jumping from the railings at 220 feet, some 25 stories above the frigid San Francisco Bay waters.
As Hines contemplated his own fate, a woman tourist stopped to ask him to take her photograph.
He agreed and took about five photographs of her. Although she didn’t ask the question he was waiting to hear, Hines today thinks that she might have been trying to help “in her own way.” When she departed, Hines did it. “The voice in my head said ‘jump now,’” and then he was over the rail and falling.
At that instant, Hines knew should not have taken the leap. He recalls thinking clearly “I just made the greatest mistake of my life,” but also knew there wasn’t anything he could do about it.
Hines fell toward the water and moved himself in the best position he could to survive.
His body reached a falling speed of about 75 miles an hour and when he hit the water it was like “hitting a brick wall,” he said. Of the 36 people known to have survived the fall, only 5 of that number ever regained full mobility, he said.
In his own case, the fall shattered his T-12, L-1, and L-2 vertebrae and caused other internal injuries.
After hitting the water, Hines said he struggled to make it back to the surface using just his arms since his legs were immobilized.
Hines recalls thinking to himself, “God, I don’t want to die.”
Although he could not know it at the time, a woman in a car on the bridge saw his jump and immediately called a friend she had in the Coast Guard. That connection put a Coast Guard on its way to help him, but Hines would face a desperate battle to surviving the chilling Bay waters.
“In the water, I flailed to stay afloat,” he said. He would slip under the surface and then come back up again. As time went on he began to lose his strength and didn’t think he could go on.
Then something that he thought might be a shark began swimming below him and occasionally bumping him upward. Hines would later learn from the reports of people watching from above that it wasn’t a shark in the water but a seal, and it seemed to being keeping him at the surface.
And then the Coast Guard arrived and placed him on a backboard and pulled them into their boat.
A member of the crew asked him directly, “Kid, do you know what you just did?” and then asked him the elusive question, “Why?”
Hines responded that he didn’t know why and offered “I thought I had to die today.”
The Coast Guard member informed him that the boat crew had responded to the bridge to pull 57 dead bodies from the waters and added that Hines was the first person they had pulled from the water alive.
Hines came within millimeters of severing his spinal cord in the jump, but thanks to special surgical procedures, recovered from his injuries and resumed his life.
After the jump, Hines still struggled with his bipolar illness and continued to receive care, and over time made the decision that he wanted to live his life to fullest. “I worked so hard in that physical way to change my life,” he said.
He still deals with thoughts of suicide from time to time, but knows what he does in treatment will keep them from being acted upon.
“I realize if I work hard, I get to have a beautiful tomorrow,” he said.
Today he puts his energies into speaking about his life-changing experiences before groups of young people and at colleges and other forums. Hines is usually approached by a number of people after a talk who related going through similar episodes of pain and feelings of wanting to commit suicide and he talks to them all and finds out what they need.
He is also working with a foundation established by his father to stop the deadly attraction of the Golden Gate Bridge by installed a life-saving net system below it. The group final won government approval in June to fund the project, a $100 million project cost, and have the net completed by 2021.
His many projects, including books and a new film, are his family’s way of giving back.
Yesterday is history, after all, he noted, and tomorrow a mystery.
“Today is a gift and I ask you always and forever to cherish this day, every waking moment of this present, this gift we call life,” Hines said.