The Story of Captain Kangaroo

00:00:10
Speaker 1: And we return to our American stories. Our next story comes to us from Kevin Briggs. Kevin is a former sergeant in the California Highway Patrol, and most of us know that by the word CHiPs, but he’s also known as the Guardian of the Golden Gate Bridge because he’s persuaded over two hundred people from taking their lives by jumping off the two hundred and forty-five foot span across the Golden Gate Strait. Here’s Kevin describing one of his experiences trying to prevent a man from jumping off the bridge.

00:00:58
Speaker 2: I believe it was July 22nd, 2013. This gentleman was from New Jersey, had flown all the way out to the bridge. Extremely intelligent guy, and I think he was just thirty-two, and he had been suffering for a long time with bipolar, and he felt he was not getting the treatment that he should. One of the biggest things, also, was he was gay. Family was Jewish, and he did not want to tell his father that he was gay. We talked for about an hour, and then this gentleman asked us if we knew the story of Pandora’s Box. And I said yes, I didn’t remember it really all that fantastic. But apparently, Zeus created Pandora, sent her down to Earth with a box, and said, “Never, ever, ever open this box.” Well, of course she does, and out fly all sorts of plagues and sorrows and things against man. The only good thing to come out of that box—hope. Now, this individual stops for a second and looks at us and says, “When I opened the box, hope is the greatest evil.” And that was so profound. He was just a genius, not under the influence of drugs or alcohol. But I didn’t know what to say after that. I had never heard something like that. We were all struck. I didn’t know how to respond to this. And he was sitting on that cord facing northbound, and he sat up straight, he looked straight ahead, and I saw a tear come down his right eye. He just leaned to his right, and he was gone. The bridge, it’s about 1.7 miles long. From the roadway down to the water is about 220 feet, and then from the top of the towers—there are two towers, North Tower and South Tower—that is about 750 feet above the water. And then we have about a four-foot, four-and-a-half-foot rail, and on the other side of that is like an I-beam, and we call it the cord chord. That’s where most folks will go when they’re contemplating suicide and getting ready for it; they will stand over the rail on this cord. The bridge gets visited by millions of people every year. Hundreds of thousands cross it in vehicles every day, commuting to and from the city. And until just a couple of years ago, it was the number one spot in the United States for loss of life to suicide. By a cross that bridge many, many, many times. Until I was with the patrol and started working on that bridge that I saw and realized how many people came to that bridge to jump. I would average four to six cases a month. I didn’t know what to say, how to approach, what to do. Am I responsible if they jump? I mean, this was horrendous. What a disservice to those folks—I, myself, and the other officers—that would do this type of work. I went through crisis intervention team training, what we call CIT, and then went through the FBI Crisis Negotiators Course. But most of the things that I learned were, unfortunately, on the back of those folks that I spoke with. So, what we would look for is generally people who are solo, by themselves. Maybe they have a backpack on—you know, their belongings—and maybe they’re pacing up and down the bridge, and they’ll come up to the bridge and walk around for a while. Then maybe they’ll come off the bridge and they’ll go back on. These are things that we would look for, and then we would want to contact them just to see how they are doing. Sometimes they get angry; people get embarrassed, walk off the bridge. But if we can get to them, you know, before they get over that rail and stand on this I-beam. Most of the time, if we get a chance to talk to folks, then we can get them off of that bridge. I would come up and just introduce myself. I raised my right hand, I introduced myself as Kevin, and I try to get their first name, and if I can get that, try to personalize everything. A lot of times they want to talk, and that’s fantastic. The longer I can keep you here, the better, I think. It takes so much courage to go over that rail; imagine the courage that it takes to come back over. I want them to make up that mind that they want to live. So if I can come up with, you know what: “Help me understand what’s going on with you,” so they see, actually, there’s somebody here that’s listening, that’s not trying to fix anything, that just wants to be here, and that’s actually concerned for me. Sometimes, this is the first time that that has actually happened to them. So I’m there as long as it takes. You have me. You have my whole—you know—my whole essence here with you. So, we’re going through this together. This is the reason why I don’t grab people: I want them to come back over on their own. I think that takes a hell of a lot of courage, and if they do that, I think their chances of survival long-term are much, much better. A lot of times, when somebody says something like, “World’s a better place without me. I’m a burden to everybody.” They haven’t even really checked with those folks. “Have you talked with your family and friends about this?” Well, no, I haven’t. But this is how I feel a lot of times. This is years in the making, lots of different things: maybe divorce, loss of income, illness in their own, with their own selves. So, what has been going on? I want to try to figure that out: what’s the history behind this, and then what can we do to make things better for this particular time, for this particular half hour, one hour, whatever it is, to get them past this crisis, because I know if we can get them past this, a lot of times they will not attempt again. It’s just a matter of getting them the right help. So, my job is to get him past this immediate crisis. I’m a big believer in finding reason, purpose, and hope—if not all three, at least one. So, I had an elderly gentleman over the rail, small in stature. I don’t even know how he got over the rail. This guy, he had had a very, very tough life: drugs and alcohol all his life, beaten down hard to get a job. He had just had enough. He’s just tired. He was given almost, pretty much, a very small apartment shared with other people in San Francisco, in an an area called the Tenderloin, which is a very, very tough area of San Francisco. And he was talking to me. He was fine talking; he was not under the influence at the time, but he had just had enough. He says, “Life has just kicked me from day one, and of course my own bad choices,” and he, self. He’s admitting all of this, and I’m thinking, “How in the hell can I find a reason, purpose, or hope for this gentleman?” And I’m trying to come up with things to talk about. The longer we can talk, the better; try to develop that rapport. So, in speaking with him, I asked him, “I’m running out of things to talk about.” That’s why I asked him, “You know, what is your place like down in the Tenderloin?” “I’ve never been to an apartment there,” he say, telling me, “Is terrible? Is there terrible?” He goes, “It is just me. I have my own apartment. It’s very small. All I have is a bed, a set of drawers. On top of that set of drawers, I have my goldfish and a couple other things.” And it clicked in my head: “Well, your goldfish. Well, let’s talk about your goldfish.” Goldfish have a name. And he told me the goldfish’s name, which I don’t remember. But he had no friends, no family, nothing. So, he spoke about this goldfish. Now, many, many times in my experience, I have seen that when people come up to that bridge, they have not planned anything after that. So, in keeping with this, I asked him, “Sir, if you jump today—and I really don’t want you to; I’m here for you—who’s going to feed your goldfish?” He actually came back over because of this goldfish, knowing that it’s going to die because nobody’s going to feed it. We—anybody, I must say—we’re all negotiators at some point; we’re all guardians of things. We need to learn how to talk to folks and try to find that reason, purpose, and hope, if at all possible.

00:09:49
Speaker 1: And a terrific job on the production, editing, and storytelling by our own Montay Montgomery and Reagan Habib. And the book is The Guardians of the Golden Gate Bridge. Author is Kevin Briggs. You’ve just heard him tell his story, and you can go to pivotalpoints.com to book him as a speaker and learn more about his work and efforts on mental health and suicide prevention. He talked about that story of the man leaning over and jumping; and imagine being the guy tasked with trying to stop a person committing suicide and watching it happen. But for all those times that didn’t happen—well, this was his reason, his hope. Kevin’s purpose was to prevent those suicides. The story of the Guardian of the Golden Gate Bridge, Kevin Briggs’s story, and the many lives saved by his work, here on our American Stories.