Golden Gate jump survivor tells educators to share their pain
ASTON >> All he wanted for someone to ask if he was OK. Instead, Kevin Hines found himself jumping off San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge – and immediately regretting it the second his hands and feet were free.
“I thought I was worthless,” he said. “I felt I had no value. I believed myself to be a burden to everyone that loved me ... Back then, I couldn’t see the forest for the trees. All I felt and all I saw was pain.”
According to his website, he is only one of 36 people to survive that fall.
More than 500 heard Hines’ story at Neumann University Tuesday as part of the 20th Safe Schools Summit that was founded by the Delaware County District Attorney’s office in response to the Columbine massacre as a way for the education and law enforcement community to come together, network and share information in how to keep schools in Delaware County as safe as possible.
“At the District Attorney’s office, we have an opportunity to serve our community and it’s not just about violence,” county District Attorney Katayoun Copeland said, adding that the initial impetus of the summit was to ensure that schools remain a safe, nourishing environment to educate children.
As part of that, she explained this year, they wanted to take a deeper look into students’ lives, especially for those exhibiting signs of mental health issues from trauma, anxiety, drug use or suicide to offer coping skills for them and response techniques for educators.
“We know there is a strong correlation between mental health and academic success,” said Copeland, a Republican facing a tough election race next month with Democrat Jack Stollsteimer.
Over the two decades, she said, “We here in Delaware County have a deeper understanding of how to deal with trauma.”
Hines began his tale by taking of his childhood. He said his biological parents loved him and his brother unconditionally but did not have the means to care for them. The two were left unattended for periods of time in a motel in an unsafe neighborhood in San Francisco.
One day, the police were called and Hines said, “The court documents said the children were lying in their own filth, screaming and crying, barely clothed, not even a diaper.”
Placed into the foster care system, he and his brother went from home to home. During that time, his brother died of bronchitis, an event Hines said impacted his ability to connect to people.
At 9 months old, he was adopted and it was in fourth grade that he began to hear voices in his head.
“I didn’t know what to do or who to tell or what was going on,” Hines said. “Fourth grade is also the same time the eighth-graders decided to torment me because of the color of my skin ... They would pick me up, turn me upside down and place me in the garbage can – and tell me that’s what I was.
“I began to self-loathe at a very young age,” he said. “I got really, really good at silencing my pain ... Every single day, I would keep it inside.”
That intensified as Hines got older.
“From 17 to 19 years of age, it was a rocky road,” he said. “At 19 years of age, my brain was tired ... At 19 years of age, I could not bear the brunt and the weight of my pain any longer.”
On a night in September 2000, Hines wrote suicide notes to family and friends as his father slept in a room nearby. He went to tell his dad he loved him and his dad said, “I’m very worried about you.
Why don’t you come to work with me?”
Hines said that was his opportunity to tell him the truth, but he didn’t.
“If you guys are going to learn one thing from me today and one thing alone, I don’t care if you are the toughest person in every room, when you leave these doors, do me a solid and never again silence your pain,” he said. “Your pain is valid. Your pain is worthy of my time and others ... When we share our pain, a pain shared is a pain halved.”
And, he said, he learned “that my thoughts do not have to become my actions ... I thought I had to die and I was wrong.”
On Sept. 25, 2000, he got on a bus and sat in the back row and cried softly before he started yelling at the voices in his head, “Leave me alone. I don’t want to die ... Why do you hate me so much? What did I ever do to you?”
“All I wanted is for one person to see my pain and say something about it,” he said. Instead, a man next to him looked at another person and asked, “What’s wrong with that kid?”
He got off the bus, walked up the walkway, hoping one person would express concern.
A woman approached him and asked him to take her picture. He did and she left.
“At that point, I said to myself, ‘Absolutely nobody cares,’” he said. “She walked away. I sprinted forward and I catapulted myself into free fall. The second my hands left that rail and my legs cleared, (I thought) I made the greatest mistake of my life. All I wanted to do was reach back.”
Falling 25 stories at 75 mph, he said, “Hitting that water at that speed is like hitting a solid brick wall.”
It created a vacuum in the water and he was 70 feet beneath the surface.
“I opened my eyes,” Hines said. “I was alive and I was drowning ... I never once thought for a minute that by jumping into a giant body of water I might drown. There I was freaking out that I couldn’t breathe.”
As he was running out of air, he said he thought, “If you die here today, no one will ever know that you didn’t want to.”
So, then Hines said he did something he hadn’t done since kindergarten - he prayed. “God,” he said, “please save me, I don’t want to die, I made a mistake ... and he heard me.”
A woman in her car on the bridge had seen him and called the U.S. Coast Guard on her car phone. As they were arriving a large animal he believes was a sea lion was circling him.
“But, it doesn’t bite me, it doesn’t bite me at all, it just keeps me afloat until the Coast Guard boat arrives,” Hines said.
At the emergency room, a surgeon worked on his back as he had lost all feeling in his legs. To this day, Hines said he continues to have chronic back pain. Two years ago, he had excruciating pain 24 hours a day, seven days a week for 30 weeks due to a toxic medication reaction through Stevens-Johnson syndrome. Then, there is the brain pain that he says he will fight.
“I will always survive it,” Hines said. “I fought the pain in spite of the pain to thrive with you today.”
He said when thoughts of suicide arise, the most powerful words to say are, “I need help now.”
“Suicide never is the solution to our problems,” Hines said. “It is the problem ... We’re supposed to be here until our natural death.”
Stollsteimer offered his comment on the Safe Schools Summit: “As the father of two teenagers, I know keeping our children safe in school takes more than summits. It takes a willingness to stand up to the NRA and President Trump and advocate for tough, comprehensive background checks and a ban on assault-style weapons. As D.A., I’ll fight to keep guns out of our schools and off our streets to give our children the safety and security they need and deserve.”
In line with his presentation, Hines offered resources for crisis support, including texting “CNQR” to 741-741 (the Crisis Text Line) or calling Lifeline at 800273-8255 for help.
“Be here tomorrow and every single day after that,” Hines told the audience. “You are worthy, you are valued, you are important, you matter and if nobody else says it today, I love you, I want you to stay.”