Mental Health Association of Portland

By Dr. Pamela Wible, The Lund Report, May 21, 2013

A psychiatrist in Seattle had picked out the bridge. At 3 a.m. he would swerve across his lane and plunge into the water. Everyone would assume he fell asleep.

A surgeon in Oregon was lying on the floor of her office with a scalpel. Nobody would find her until it was too late.

An internal medicine resident in Atlanta heard an anesthesiologist joking about the lethal dose of sodium thiopental. Alone in the call room, she would overdose that night.

Three planned suicides. All three physicians survived. Why?

While preparing to overdose, the internist was interrupted by an endocrinologist calling to check on her. Before grabbing her scalpel, the surgeon called several physicians pleading for help—I responded immediately. Two days before he was to drive off the bridge, the psychiatrist spotted my ad for a physician retreat. He called me begging to attend.

One week later, I’m hiking through the Oregon Cascades. The scent of cedar envelops me as I approach the lodge where I’m welcoming physicians who have arrived from all over the United States and Canada, all of us on a pilgrimage for answers.

Tonight we begin a retreat for doctors who yearn to love medicine again. Studies confirm most doctors are overworked, exhausted, or depressed. The tragedy: few seek help.

I ask the group, “How many physicians have lost a colleague to suicide?” All hands are raised. “How many have considered suicide?” Except for one woman, all hands remain up—including mine.

“Physicians have the highest suicide rate of any profession,” I explain. “In the United States we lose over 400 physicians per year to suicide. That’s the equivalent of an entire medical school. Even that’s an underestimate because many physician suicides are incorrectly identified as accidents.”

I tell them, “Both men I dated in med school are dead. Brilliant physicians. Loved by their families and patients. Both died young—by ‘accidental overdose.’ Really? How many physicians accidentally overdose?”

The room is quiet.

It’s easier to say accident than suicide. Doctors can say gonorrhea and carcinoma. Why not suicide? Maybe we can’t face our own wounds.

“I’m a family doc in Eugene, Oregon, where we’ve lost three physicians in eighteen months to suicide. I was suicidal once. Assembly-line medicine was killing me. Too many patients and not enough time sets us up for failure. Rather than kill myself, I invited my patients to help me design an ‘ideal clinic.’ It is possible to love medicine again.”

The Canadian doctor to my right wipes her eyes. “I’m feeling so discouraged. I want to give up and work at Starbucks. My head is exploding from banging it against the system.”

A bright-eyed, blonde woman reveals, “I just took a leave of absence from med school because it was killing my soul. Three classmates attempted suicide.”

A newlywed couple join in. “I’m a nurse. My husband is an internist. He’s suffering, but I don’t know how to help him. Doctors don’t seek psychiatric care because mental illness is reportable to the medical board. He fears he’ll lose his license.” Her husband adds, “I was suicidal three months ago. On the edge. My wife and I are hoping to find answers here.”

Here, physicians, nurses, and medical students share their wounds and their wisdom—in community. We share new practice models, communication techniques, and strategies to care for ourselves—so we can care for our patients.

In four days, I witness more healing than in four years of med school. Once strangers, we’ve become family. Parting ways, the psychiatrist from Seattle thanks me again.

I didn’t know these doctors, but I know their despair. By speaking about my own pain, I validated their pain. By being vulnerable, I gave them the strength to be vulnerable too.

But mostly we healed each other by not being afraid to say the word suicide out loud.

Dr. Pamela Wible is a family physician, author, and expert in physician suicide prevention. She offers biannual retreats for physicians struggling with burnout and depression. Contact her at idealmedicalcare.org.

Portland Police Bureau news release, May 15, 2013

In crisis? Call 503-988-4888.

The Portland Police Bureau investigated four incidents of suicide from May 11 to May 13, 2013, and wants to remind the community that suicide is preventable and help is available.

On Saturday May 11, 2013, at approximately 11:30 a.m., Central Precinct officers responded to Northwest Broadway, between Hoyt and Irving Streets, on the report of a male that jumped from the eighth floor of the Bud Clark Commons, located at 655 Northwest Hoyt Street.

Portland Police and Portland Fire & Rescue personnel arrived and determined that the 42-year-old man was deceased. Witnesses confirmed that he man jumped from the eighth floor of the Bud Clark Commons.

Officers learned that the man was from Aberdeen, Washington and had recently left a long-term drug treatment program.

On Sunday May 12, 2013, at approximately 9:00 a.m., East Precinct officers responded to a residence in the 4700 block of Southeast 71st Avenue on the report of a suicide by hanging.

Portland Police and Portland Fire & Rescue personnel arrived and determined that the 39-year-old man was deceased.

Officers learned that the man and his partner both lived at the home with their six-year-old son. The deceased’s partner told police that they had an argument the night before so she went to bed and he went to the basement. She told police that she discovered him deceased this morning in the basement. Officers also learned that the man struggled with mental health issues throughout his life.

Also on Sunday May 12, 2013, at approximately 9:00 a.m., East Precinct officers responded to a residence in the 1500 block of Southeast 150th Avenue on the report of a suicide by hanging.

Portland Police and Portland Fire & Rescue personnel responded and determined that the 24-year-old male was deceased.

Officers learned that the man was out with his mother the night before but both returned home and nothing seemed to be bothering the deceased. Officers located a suicide note in the man’s bedroom, which was turned over to the Oregon State Medical Examiner.

On Monday May 13, 2013, at approximately 2:30 a.m., Central Precinct officers responded to the report of a deceased male on Southwest Jefferson Street below the Vista Bridge.

Portland Police and Portland Fire & Rescue personnel arrived and determined that the 40-year-old man was deceased and that his injuries were consistent with a jump from the Vista Bridge.

Officers located personal effects belonging to the man on a bench near the Vista Bridge on Southwest Vista Avenue.

Suicide is preventable.

Help is available for community members struggling from a mental health crisis and/or suicidal thoughts.

Cascadia Behavioral Healthcare has an urgent walk-in clinic, open from 7:00 a.m. to 10:30 p.m.
7 days a week. Payment is not necessary.  Walk in or call 503-963-2575.

 The Multnomah County Crisis Line is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week.  Call 503-988-4888.

By Kim Tobin, KTVZ.com (Central Oregon), May 2, 2013

Suicide rates are on the rise across the U.S.. and Oregon has seen an even bigger spike, up nearly 50 percent among middle-aged men. Central Oregon mental health experts say they are not surprised by the numbers, but they want to turn them around.

“To me, its like we go to more and more of them all the time,” Deschutes County Sheriff Larry Blanton said Thursday.

Blanton says every day, his deputies are swamped with calls from troubled people threatening to kill themselves.

A new report from the Centers for Disease Control show he’s not the only one seeing the trend.

In Oregon, the number of middle-aged (39 to 64 years old) people committing suicide has jumped 49.3 percent in 10 years.

“Men and women who work at the sheriff’s office see more in one shift than you would care to see in a lifetime,” Blanton said. “These are things that we respond to that are pretty hard to forget about.”

Deputies train to handle crisis intervention with county health officials. And for loved ones and community members, it’s important to spot the changes that can lead to tragedy.

“Significant changes in behavior, like not being able to work any more, isolation, signs of depression, sadness, no longer engaging in activities they used to engage in,” Deschutes County health crisis coordinator Terry Schroder said.

The report shows prescription drug addiction, depression and a tough economy have been the major factors prompting people to take their own lives. The age group seeing the biggest increase is middle-aged people in their 40s and 50s.

“Losing their jobs, losing their ability to provide for their family, losing their homes,” said Molly Wells, manager at Sage View Psychiatric Center. “And because they really lived a life where they were able to provide, that’s very drastic for them.”

Health experts say it’s crucial that people ask their loved ones direct questions — even if it feels uncomfortable.

“Unfortunately, there is such a stigma related to suicide, that people then feel concerned about asking,” Wells said.

In crisis? Call 503-988-4888.

More Portland-area crisis hotline numbers are listed under the “Get Help Now” tab.  Scroll down to “Suicide” for practical, real-world tips on how to help when a person is suicidal.

They look intently at the camera, some impassively, some with smiles, all of them aware that they’ve just shared with an online audience a most personal story: Why they tried to kill themselves.

By the dozens, survivors of attempted suicide across the United States are volunteering to be part of a project by a Brooklyn-based photographer, Dese’Rae Stage, called “Live Through This” — a collection of photographic portraits and personal accounts.

It’s one of several new initiatives transforming the nation’s suicide-prevention community as more survivors find the courage to speak out and more experts make efforts to learn from them. There’s a new survivors task force, an array of blogs, some riveting YouTube clips, all with the common goal of stripping away anonymity, stigma and shame.

“Everyone feels like they have to walk on egg shells,” says Stage, who once tried to kill herself with self-inflicted cuts. “We’re not that fragile. We have to figure out how to talk about it, rather than avoiding it.”

Such conversations are proliferating.

In January, the American Association of Suicidology launched a website called “What Happens Now?” — described as the first sustained effort by a national prevention organization to engage survivors in a public forum. It features a blog, updated weekly, with contributions from survivors sharing their experiences and often using their real names.

In one of the latest posts, the founder of a respite home for suicidal people writes powerfully about her own suicide attempt eight years ago, involving both pills and a kitchen knife, and about the contributions that survivors can bring to prevention efforts.

“Survivors have a unique perspective on what life’s like down in the deep, dark hole,” writes Sabrina Strong, executive director of Waking Up Alive in Albuquerque, N.M. “We found our way out… We’re not afraid to crawl down in the dark hole with someone else.”

Seeking to encourage those types of contributions, the National Action Alliance for Suicide Prevention — a federally funded public-private partnership — has formed a first-of-its-kind task force comprised of prevention experts and survivors. It plans to issue recommendations this fall for how practitioners and organizations in the prevention field can “engage and empower suicide attempt survivors.”

One of the task force co-chairs is psychologist John Draper, project director of the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, a network of centers that field calls from emotionally distressed and potentially suicidal people.

According to studies cited by Draper, about 7 percent of survivors later kill themselves, a far higher rate than for other groups.

“Yet that means 93 percent go on to live out their lives,” he said. “We’ve got to talk to them, engage then, find out what is bringing them hope and keeping them alive.”

The other co-chair is Eduardo Vega, the survivor of a suicide attempt who is now executive director of the Mental Health Association of San Francisco.

“Nobody can speak to the issues, the sort of agony, even the decision-making that goes on when you’re actively suicidal so much as somebody who’s been there, and can relate to all that’s going on in a nonjudgmental way,” Vega says in a recent video. “That’s the sort of magic that will make a difference.”

In past decades, the stigma surrounding suicide was intense, and most people who tried to kill themselves avoided any public disclosures about their experiences. There was far more involvement in the prevention movement by bereaved relatives of people who completed a suicide.

Among them was Michelle Linn-Gust, whose sister killed herself at 17 and who, in her current role as president of the American Association of Suicidology, helped launch the “What Happens Now?” website.

“The bereaved, the people who’ve lost someone, like me, that movement has taken off,” Linn-Gust said. “But the attempt survivors have not had a voice. Nobody has given them a home.”

Over the years, individuals who had attempted suicide would surface occasionally, writing books or going on the public-speaking circuit to share their experiences. One such communicator is Kevin Hines, who became a prolific writer and speaker after surviving a jump from the Golden Gate Bridge in 2000. A survivor in Canada, David Granirer, has carved out a specialty as a stand-up comedian whose monologues address depression and mental illness.

Among Granirer’s routines is a feigned phone conversation in which he unsettles a smarmy telemarketer. “I’m so depressed,” he says. “If you hang up, I’ll kill myself.”

What’s new in the past couple of years is a broader phenomenon — a surge of collective projects by survivors, corresponding with a keener and more systematic interest by prevention experts in their potential contributions.

“The voices of people who have thought about suicide and possibly attempted suicide have been largely absent from public conversations about suicide and what should be done about it,” says Karen Butler Easter, president of National Association of Crisis Center Directors. “They know what hurts, and they know what helps.”

One asset that survivors say they can supply is candor.

“We are willing to speak truthfully, even if others are afraid to,” writes Sabrina Strong in her recent blog post. “We understand that we do others a disservice by providing generic and whitewashed advice from the school of magical thinking — ‘Things will get better.’ ‘Everything’s all right.’

“Sometimes things don’t get better, at least not right away.”

Historically, prevention specialists made relatively little effort to seek input from people who tried to kill themselves. Experts say treatment often was — and in some cases still is — condescending, and at times harsh and punitive.

“The attitude was that if a person tried to kill themselves, they were irresponsible, they were not people we could trust, and we knew what’s better for them,” said John Draper. “There also was some concern that they might kill themselves if we engaged them.”

Those attitudes have evolved in recent years, with more interest in collaborative treatment. Yet prevention experts say many therapists lack specialized training in how to deal with survivors and balk at treating them because their above-average rate of eventually killing themselves prompts fear of malpractice suits by their families.

Among those serving with Draper and Vega on the new task force is Heidi Bryan of Neenah, Wis., who survived a suicide attempt in the 1980s and whose brother did kill himself.

Bryan, 55, has been active for more than a decade in suicide-prevention initiatives, and has observed notable changes in how experts view survivors.

“I remember sitting at a conference when speakers were talking about survivors — it was like we were lab rats,” she said. “Now they’re finally realizing maybe we should be brought in on this. We need to erase the misperceptions that people have about us, so we’re treated with the respect we deserve.”

Even amid the excitement over changing attitudes, prevention experts caution that many survivors are likely to remain wary of sharing their stories in public, notably for fear it might affect their employment prospects.

“There are still clear consequences for talking about your mental health history,” said Jane Pearson, a suicide prevention expert with the National Institute of Mental Health. “It’s getting better, but there are still challenges as to what that means for your life.”

To help survivors think through the consequences of sharing their story, major prevention organizations recently teamed up to offer guidelines and suggestions. Their document urges survivors to be sure they and their families are emotionally prepared for such disclosures, and to be braced for the likely widespread dissemination of any personal accounts via social media.

In the two years she’s been working on “Live Through This,” Dese’Rae Stage says only one of her subjects has had a change of heart and asked not to be publicly identified. Meanwhile, she says she now has a waiting list of 200 suicide attempt survivors who want to participate.

Stage, 29, said she periodically tried to injure herself as a teenager, was diagnosed with bipolar disorder in 2004, and attempted suicide — through multiple cuts of her veins — in 2006 while struggling with an abusive relationship. The attempt occurred not long after she graduated from East Tennessee State University, where her psychology studies included research about suicide.

Stage began taking photographs for “Live Through This” in 2011. She’s ready to spend another year or more on the project, with the hope of visiting subjects across the country and eventually crafting the material into a book.

“The survivors who share their stories here are real people who have been through hell,” Stage writes in a summary of the project. “They are also engaging, fascinating people whose voices deserve to be heard.”

Stage notes that suicide, according to federal data, is the 10th leading cause of death in the U.S.

“I’m convinced that the simple act of getting people to talk about it will save lives,” she writes. “It’s a serious public health issue, and one we can do something about if we can just set our fears aside.”

Among Stage’s subjects is Caitlin Coleman, 30, who tried to kill herself with an overdose of pills 10 years ago while battling depression as a college sophomore in Columbus, Ohio.

“I didn’t have a lot of friends, and felt increasingly isolated,” she recalled. “It got to the point where it was a good day if I could get out of bed and go to Starbucks.”

Her suicide attempt left Coleman hospitalized in a coma, and during a lengthy recovery she became frustrated at the lack of resources that included input from other survivors.

“I wanted to talk to people who went through the same thing I did and I couldn’t find anyone,” she said

She heard about “Live Through This” through a friend, and was exhilarated when she checked out the website, thinking, “This is exactly what I’ve been looking for.”

She is at peace with the fact that the project means her name, photo and personal story are now displayed on the Internet.

“I’m pretty open about my past,” she said. “It’s not something I’d say on a first date, but if the topic comes up I don’t shy away from it. I don’t believe it’s anything to be ashamed of.”

In college, Coleman was aspiring to a career in musical theater. For now, she’s content with a job as a waitress in New York City, but she misses performing enough to be taking lessons in comedy improvisation.

“Now I feel like I’m at a really good, functional point in my life,” she says. “Are there things that I’m still fearful of? Yes. But I want to speak to people.”

___

Before sharing your story, read this – http://bit.ly/10Bv8Db
American Association of Suicidology – http://www.suicidology.org/home
“What Happens Now?” blog - http://attemptsurvivors.com/
Live Through This - http://livethroughthis.org/

Vista Bridge

The Oregonian, Feb. 5, 2013

Most people who kill themselves choose ordinary places: garages, bedrooms, bathrooms. But in Portland, some end their lives at the Vista Bridge, a bridge built in 1926 in the West Hills that spans MAX tracks and a busy street. Tourists and TV shows love the bridge, but a suicide there can haunt hundreds of people, beginning with family and friends and radiating out to commuters, drivers, children, nearby businesses and neighbors.

Tuesday February 5, 2013

10:50

The Oregonian: Hello and welcome to our Vista Bridge live chat. David Stabler and Kenneth Kahn will join us at 11 a.m. Until then, please feel free to submit questions and comments. Expect a short delay between the time you submit and the time you see your comment in the chat.

10:53

David Stabler: Good morning, my name is David Stabler and I’m a reporter at The Oregonian. We’re going to talk about Portland’s Vista Bridge and the issue of suicides there. Thanks for joining us.

10:53

The Oregonian: For anyone who might have missed it, here’s Beth Nakamura’s video about Vista Bridge.

10:58

Kenneth Kahn II: Hi. I’m Kenneth Kahn, Attorney at Law. IAs a criminal defense lawyer, ‘ve been protecting our constitution and standing up for the rights of the accused for over 23 years. My office is located directly below the Vista Bridge.

10:58

The Oregonian: Thank you both for joining us today. David, why don’t you start. What prompted you to write this story now?

10:59

The Oregonian: Ken, how long have you been in the office below the bridge?

10:59

Kenneth Kahn II: About 8 years.

11:00

David Stabler: Newspapers tend to dance around the issue of suicide, but we had been hearing about Vista Bridge as a suicide location for some time. When I met Ken Kahn, I realized the issue affected many people and warrented looking into.

11:00

The Oregonian: Ken, what response have you heard from friends, colleagues, neighbors since David’s story was published this weekend?

11:00

Kenneth Kahn II: Several friends and colleagues have praised the Oregonian for finally addressing this issue.

11:01

David Stabler: Ken, do you think it’s the city’s responsibility to impede people from jumping from Vista Bridge?

11:02

The Oregonian: And David, I know you’ve received lots of response in comments and emails. Tell us a little about that experience. What’s been the range of reaction?

11:02

Kenneth Kahn II: Yes, although with this caveat. Had the bridge been privately owned, I would still be raising the same red flag.

11:03

David Stabler: Comments have been all over the place, from compassionate responses to civil rights issues, to people upset about intrusions into their lives.

11:03

The Oregonian: So Ken, how are you raising the red flag?

11:04

Kenneth Kahn II: By increasing the public’s awareness of the problem with the bridge, and encouraging people to join in a movement to convince government to install safety fences.

11:04

The Oregonian: What are some possible barriers that have been used to impede suicides from bridges? Fences? What else?

11:05

Kenneth Kahn II: There’s no shortage of design strategies from which to draw. The Dalles has erected a beautiful and effective fence across I-84.

11:05

David Stabler: Possible barriers are nets or fences, but a man this morning suggested glass panels. A Spanish bridge uses them and they don’t appear to obscure the view. Here’s the link. http://esphoto980x880.mnstatic.com/viaducto-de-segovia_17739.jpg

11:06

Comment From Adam B. Is it just me, or does the whole fence idea sound a lot like the nets at Apple’s factories? It seems like putting a bandaid on a much bigger problem–and worse, perhaps, it allows us to ignore the much larger mental health problems and move the suicides to a less public space. I like the idea of a crisis phone (or a few of them) to start. To follow would be more attention and support for those with depression and other severe mental illnesses that often lead to suicide.

11:06

Kenneth Kahn II: This is an opportunity for designers, artists and architects to participate in creating a beautiful design in keeping with the historic ethos of the bridge.

11:07

David Stabler: Adam, it might sound like a bandaid, but other bridges that have put up barriers saw suicides all but stop.

11:07

Comment From Allan Classen I understand The Oregonian used to, as a matter of policy, not cover suicides or suicides from Vista Bridge in fear that it would encourage others to do the same. Was that true, and if so, why has the policy changed?

11:08

Kenneth Kahn II: Adam, the story and the problem addresses the Vista Bridge. I have a problem that needs solving. Imagine if you will, that exploded bodies just showed up in your front yard. Would you want to try and stop that from happening, or would you try and address all death everywhere? For me the answer is narrow and focused.

11:08

David Stabler: Here’s some information that shows what happened at Seattle’s Aurora St. Bridge: http://abcn.ws/14Pvf3d

11:09

The Oregonian: Allan, generally The Oregonian does not cover suicides unless it happens in a very public way or if the suicide involves a public figure. When we do report on suicide in the newspaper, it’s after very careful deliberation and consideration. Do you think the paper should cover suicide more?

11:10

David Stabler: Ken, what would like to see happen now?

11:10

The Oregonian: Readers, what do you think? Should the city of Portland erect barriers on the Vista Bridge? Why or why not?

11:10

Kenneth Kahn II: First I would like to see more people involved.

11:11

Kenneth Kahn II: Next I would like to involve government leaders and the Goose Hollow Neighborhood association.

11:12

Kenneth Kahn II: Finally, I would like to be able to present good, workable designs to the National Register for Historic Places and the State Historic Preservation Office.

11:12

The Oregonian: How has the Goose Hollow Neighborhood Association reacted to the idea so far?

11:13

Kenneth Kahn II: So far, very little.

11:13

Kenneth Kahn II: I encourage them to contact me. I think they should be involved.

11:13

Comment From Allan Classen I don’t know if suicides should be covered routinely, and I respect evidence that it may trigger copy cats. I believe a comprehensive report like the one in The Oregonian is appropriate because it may prompt public action to reduce suicides.

11:14

Comment From Allan Classen Anyway, that’s what newspapers do–tell the truth and let the chips fall where they may.

11:15

The Oregonian: Thanks, Allan. We appreciate that. And please know that we do carefully consider the effects of our news coverage.

11:15

Comment From Allan Classen Bad choice of words. Sorry.

11:15

Comment From JoLene Krawczak, The Oregonian Like Ken’s desire to take action on the suicides at Vista Bridge, we saw a ongoing and escalating problem of people dying in a very public place, and we saw nothing really being done about it. It’s not a new problem or even a new story, but we thought it should be brought to light again.

11:15

David Stabler: One issue that commenters raised several times is Oh, they’ll just go somewhere else. But research shows that jumping is an impulsive act and if a person can be impeded, he or she will not find another bridge. In fact, most people change their minds about killing themselves.

11:15

Kenneth Kahn II: Allan, while I can’t speak for the Oregonian, the article did more that merely report the story. David Stabler, the reporter, did an excellent job of exposing the wrip left behind by the sudden loss of a friend or family member. That story needs telling too.

11:15

The Oregonian: By the way, Jolene is David’s editor at The Oregonian.

11:16

Comment From Tim Stout I grew up a few blocks up Vista from the bridge in the 80s. We called it Suicide Bridge. Am I wrong or has the bridge always been a favorite spot for those taking their life? What makes this a new issue?

11:17

David Stabler: Tim, this isn’t a new issue. In fact, the Ford Bridge, which Vista replaces, was also called “Suicide Bridge.”

11:19

Kenneth Kahn II: Tim: When a body hits the pavement, it stops trains and traffic. Everyone stuck on that train is forced to look at an exploded body until the police come, and finish their investigation. We have ratings in the movie industry for what violence children and others should and should not see. I think people should not be supposed to this kind of graphic violence in the streets of Portland.

11:19

Comment From Tim Stout I guess that begs the question then, and I apologize, I haven’t read the article in The Oregonian yet, but why are we talking about it today?

11:19

David Stabler: But we thought it was important enough to look at closely, especially because of MAX trains and Oregon’s high suicide rate.

11:20

The Oregonian: Tim, The Oregonian received tremendous response to the story and we wanted to give readers a chance to weigh in today.

11:20

Comment From Steve Novick David, Ken, this is Steve Novick … I really appreciate your shining a light on this issue. The story was very well done, and so sad. I think the City has an obligation to see if we can put an effective barrier up without ruining the beauty of the bridge. I realize that there is an argument that we need to save lives, to heck with aesthetics, but beauty is part of what makes life worth living. I’m glad to hear you saying you think there are aesthetically acceptable options – of course, we also need to see what the costs are. I should note that in a way we will be dealing with a larger aesthetics vs. safety issue in the context of the City budget as a whole, where we will be making grim choices between “bigger cuts in Parks, or bigger cuts in Fire & Rescue?” Anyway … again, thank you for the story.

11:21

David Stabler: Steve, thanks for your comment. The historic preservation folks say solutions are out there, it’s just a matter of staring the conversation. Budgets are always a consideration.

11:22

Comment From JoLene Krawczak, The Oregonian Steve: Thanks for joining us. It is certainly not an easy issue to deal with, and that may be why it has not been addressed before now.

11:23

Kenneth Kahn II: Steve, I am delighted you are involved in this conversation. With regard to expense, should the City consider the cost of dispatching several police, the cost of obstructing the Max lines waiting for the body to clear, and the emotional toll on people witnessing the carnage?

11:23

Kenneth Kahn II: Or are there savings to installing a fence that may outweigh those costs?

11:24

The Oregonian: David and Ken, any idea what the costs might be? What range could we expect?

11:25

Kenneth Kahn II: Could a temporary chain link fence be erected at the cost of $42,000 until all the design issues are solved?

11:25

David Stabler: A construction estimator told me a chain link fence would cost $42,000. The historic preservation folks might want something more in keeping with the bridge design.

11:25

The Oregonian: Folks, we have about 10 more minutes. Please don’t wait to submit your questions and comments.

11:25

Comment From Tim Stout Am I wrong, or aren’t there suicide hotline signs on the bridge currently? I suppose a suicide hotline phone would be a bare minimum effort to prevent them from happening, at least from happening on that bridge on that day. Certainly there’s a much bigger mental health problem in this country that is at issue here as well.

11:26

Comment From Alex Tropp For those concerned about the cost of erecting a safety barrier, have you considered the costs to the city associated with periodically diverting emergency response teams and other public resources in order to deal with these incisents? What about the costs to the local economy associated with disrupting traffic flow for several hours? Seems it can’t be cheap, and such costs are ongoing.

11:26

Comment From Steve Novick Ken – Of course we should. But this year we will likely be cutting police too … But I promise I will circle back, get your list of designers / historic preserverationists / etc. to talk to, and ensure that the Council gives the issue the attention it deserves.

11:26

David Stabler: Tim, the city put up crisis phone numbers last September. Golden Gate Bridge has 13 actual phones. But you’re right, the root problem of suicides comes back to mental illness.

11:27

The Oregonian: Gretchen Field was a fascinating party of Sunday’s story. How did you find her?

11:29

David Stabler: Gretchen Field’s father jumped from Vista Bridge in 1950. I saw her comment about visiting the bridge on a website and contacted her. We met just days before she was moving to Arizona and she told me her story.

11:29

The Oregonian: Readers, time is running short. What else do you want to ask Ken and David? Or what opinions do you have to share?

11:29

Kenneth Kahn II: Steve — that sounds like a good start. I know Bud Clark also would like to be involved in this too.

11:30

Kenneth Kahn II: Bud Clark, who grew up in Goose Hollow, is the former Mayor of Portland. He lives in Goose Hollow and has witnessed suicides from the bridge.

11:31

The Oregonian: David, a lot of readers wondered why suicide appears to be a larger problem in Oregon than in other states. Can you tell us more about that?

11:32

David Stabler: Oregon’s rate of suicide is high — 9th in the country — but reasons are elusive. I plan to look into the issue and try to find out.

11:33

The Oregonian: Is it our weather? Is SADD the issue?

11:34

Comment From Alex Tropp David and Ken, I would like to hear your thoughts on potential design issues for the new Sellwood Bridge. The new bridge will be designed to accomodate significan numbers of pedestrians. Any thoughts about whether those building the bridge should consider altering the design if necessary to incorporate a safety barrier as it is built, and whether the authorities might look into covering any such additional costs?

11:34

David Stabler: People don’t kill themselves because of weather, I’ve learned. May is actually the most popular month for suicides.

11:35

Kenneth Kahn II: Strangely, and unexpectedly, all of the suicides I’ve witnessed are on beautiful, sunny days.

11:35

Comment From Tim Stout I suspect our gloomy weather plays a part in the high suicide rate in Oregon, it would be interesting to see if suicides increase in the winter here.

11:36

Comment From Tim Stout That comment was sent before both of David and Kenneth’s recent comments negating the weather issue.

11:36

Kenneth Kahn II: Thanks to the Oregonian and everyone for participating in this.

11:37

Comment From JoLene Krawczak, The Oregonian David’s story cites experts who say phones and signs don’t stop suicides. Maybe people working together can take the message on the signs at Vista Bridge –”We can help you cross this bridge” — and extend it to other effective ways to help people safely across Vista Bridge.

11:37

David Stabler: That’s a good question, Alex. I think the designers should address the issue on the Sellwood Bridge, if it’s not too late.

11:37

The Oregonian: Before we sign off, any closing thoughts?

11:38

David Stabler: I think this could be the beginning of a conversation about Vista and other bridges.

11:39

Comment From JoLene Krawczak, The Oregonian Thank you, Ken

11:39

David Stabler: Thank you for your questions and comments. If you have more ideas or questions, please email me: dstabler@oregonian.com

11:40

Kenneth Kahn II: If you would like to stand with me in support of preventive fences on the Vista Bridge, please email at kennethkahn@me.com. Thanks

11:40

The Oregonian: Thanks Ken and David for taking part in today’s chat. And thanks to all of you for your great questions and insights. If you have other topics you’d like to cover in a Living live chat, please email me at kgabrielson@oregonian.com

By David Stabler, The Oregonian, Feb. 2, 2013

From two blocks away, Bonnie Kahn sees the flashing lights of police cars under the Vista Bridge.

No, not again.

Kahn jerks her car to a stop in front of her office, right below the bridge. A body lies in the road, 20 feet away, on a cold, January afternoon. Someone has covered it.

“I’ve had it,” Kahn says, putting both hands on top of her car and breaking into sobs. “I’ve just had it.”

This is the seventh suicide Kahn is aware of in the seven years she’s worked on Southwest Jefferson Street. Her office window looks directly at the bridge.

Five police cars can’t block the view as the medical examiner uncovers the body of a young woman with red fingernails. Passing cars and TriMet trains crawl past. Drivers slow, riders stare out the window, noontime runners crane their necks.

Tears stream down her face as Kahn walks up to a police officer who stands near the body.

“Can’t you do something?” she says. “We need fences. It’s time. It’s just ridiculous.”

The officer says he doesn’t have a voice to persuade the authorities.

“Yes, you do,” Kahn says, then turns away.

“I’m so mad,” she says. “Who was she? Why? I wish I could have talked to her up there. Held her hand. What about her family? It’s horrible.”

Her name is Aris Bishop. She is 19.

Ripples can last decades

Most people who kill themselves choose ordinary places: garages, bedrooms, bathrooms. But in Portland, some end their lives at the Vista Bridge, a bridge built in 1926 in the West Hills that spans MAX tracks and a busy street. Tourists and TV shows love the bridge, but a suicide there can haunt hundreds of people, beginning with family and friends and radiating out to commuters, drivers, children, nearby businesses and neighbors.

The public nature and increasing numbers of Vista Bridge suicides raise questions about whether the city of Portland should do more to prevent them. Would adding nets or fences impede jumpers, or send them elsewhere? At minimum, should crisis phones be installed?

The questions raise issues of design, cost, altering a historic bridge and addressing the mystery and ugliness of suicide.

The ripples begin with a jump and can last decades.

It’s just before noon, Feb. 16, 2011. In the final moments of his life, a man walks along the icy sidewalk of the Vista Bridge. A mix of rain and snow falls, muting the bridge’s glamorous views of the city and snow-capped mountains.

Tall and athletic, the man walks briskly, as if he’s late.

Just past the midpoint of the bridge, he jumps onto the railing, then jumps back onto the sidewalk.

A block away, former Portland Mayor Bud Clark is on his way out the door of his apartment. He glances out his window, which looks down on the bridge. He sees the man and freezes. The man jumps onto the railing and dives off.

He takes less than three seconds to fall 12 stories.

At 11:54 a.m., Portland police Officer Herbert Miller responds to a report that a person has jumped from the Vista Bridge. Miller finds a man lying on his back in the center of the MAX tracks. Blood trickles from both ears.  Few survive a jump from the Vista Bridge.

Firefighters pronounce the man dead. The medical examiner arrives. Detectives are called. Police officers halt traffic along Jefferson Street, which runs directly underneath the bridge. MAX suspends trains east and west.

Police check the man’s ID: His name is William Matthew Pope, he’s 27 and he lives just blocks away. Pope’s belongings — $130 in cash, wallet, keys and ID — accompany the body to the medical examiner’s office.

An employee from NRC Environmental Services arrives to clean up with a hose.

Hours later, Therese Schwenkler returns home from work in Boise. Her phone rings.

Did you hear what happened to Will?

What do you mean?

Schwenkler expects to hear a funny story about her former boyfriend, the man who called her Li’l Schwenk and did Arnold Schwarzenegger impersonations and gave her piggyback rides when her knees hurt.

But the story isn’t funny.

She hangs up and calls Pope’s phone, unable to believe it’s true. She texts him, over and over.

Eighteen days after Pope jumps, his family and friends celebrate his life at First United Methodist Church, just down the street from the Vista Bridge.

Friends leave flowers and notes on the bridge. One is from Larissa: “I will never forget you and how powerful and amazing you were.”

“Killing machine”

Portland’s 11 water bridges across the Willamette River, including the Fremont and Ross Island bridges, draw suicides, but the Vista Bridge is “far and away the leader for people jumping from any land bridge,” says Portland police Sgt. Pete Simpson.

In 2011, the last year for which numbers are available, three suicides and two attempted suicides occurred at the Vista Bridge. It’s the highest number in 10 years.

When compared with the city’s 24 homicides in 2011, three suicides and two attempts are a lot, says police Sgt. Greg Stewart, who analyzes crimes for the Police Bureau.

“This is a huge issue,” he says. “It’s a lot of human suffering. If we had a place with five homicides on it, we’d be concerned. From our perspective, the bridge is a concern.”

But it’s easy to fix, he says.

“The Fremont is way longer, it would be more complicated, expensive. We have a real issue with suicides in Oregon. That argues for using everything we can to address the issue.”

The Vista Bridge is a concern for Kenneth E. Kahn II, too. He’s a criminal lawyer who works below the bridge and he knows the sound of a person hitting the ground from 12 stories up. Legs compress. Spines shatter. Body matter spreads maybe 15 feet.

“You want to know what it sounds like?”

Kahn lifts his hand above his head and smacks his desk with an open palm.

“It’s horrible. Horror doesn’t adequately describe it.”

It’s too easy to jump, he says. The railing is just 46 inches high, and bump-out benches give people a leg up.

“Come look at photos, come to a suicide,” Kahn says. “I think they would quickly see the cocktail niceties of discussing a historic bridge don’t hold a candle to a grisly death scene.”

In seven years, Kahn has seen seven suicides, he says. Each one leaves him shaken.

“It’s just like you’re a big bell, the Liberty Bell. Your emotions are quiet and all of a sudden, someone just rings that bell. It continues to resonate for days.”

For most people, death is a philosophical concept, he says.

“Here, death is real. What strikes me is how sudden it is, from life to death. I don’t look anymore.”

Kahn could move from his office below the bridge, but despite what he calls the “killing machine” above him, he stays.

“Death will continue whether I am here or not.”

Barriers effective

The Vista Bridge opened on Dec. 6, 1926, at a cost of $179,999. Five years later, The Oregonian reported that a man jumped from the bridge, possibly the Vista’s first suicide. From the beginning, people called it “Suicide Bridge.”

Fences or nets are the most effective impediment to bridge suicides, research shows. Leaping off a bridge is more likely an impulsive act, and barriers can reduce suicides from bridges and other structures:

• The Empire State Building, the Eiffel Tower and Sydney Harbor Bridge were suicide magnets before barriers went up. At the Prince Edward Viaduct in Toronto, the site of nearly 500 fatal jumps, engineers constructed a $4 million “luminous veil” of stainless-steel rods above the railing. At all of these places, after the barriers were in place, the number of jumpers declined to a handful or even to zero. Suicides at other potential spots did not increase, nor did general suicide rates in those cities.

• Before Seattle spent $4.8 million to erect a nine-foot fence along the Aurora Avenue Bridge in 2011, four to six people jumped in a given year. Since the fence, only one confirmed suicide has been reported, according to news reports.

• After barriers went up on the Duke Ellington Bridge in Washington, D.C., suicides dropped from four a year to zero. The barriers did not cause an increase of suicides at the nearby Taft Bridge, says Dr. Lanny Berman, who directs the American Association of Suicidology in Washington, D.C. Barriers on the Ellington Bridge cost $600,000, Berman says. “If you amortize the cost of a barrier since 1986 and average two lives saved every year, that’s 52 lives relative to the cost of suicides, bad press, emergency responses. That’s pretty cheap.”

Ex-Mayor Clark, 81, who lives in the Vista St. Clair apartments, would like to see a fence rather than nets on the Vista Bridge.

“Nets, they’d just bounce around,” he says.

Suicide hits close to home for Clark, whose father and grandfather killed themselves. Clark never found out why. “There was no reason for him to do it,” he says of his father’s death at age 59. “It stops with me.”

Phones don’t stop suicides

Unlike the Golden Gate Bridge, which has 13 crisis-line phones along its sidewalks, the Vista Bridge has no phones. For years, it didn’t have signs with crisis phone numbers, either. But, in September, Portland’s Bureau of Transportation, which manages the bridge, placed four signs on the structure listing a phone number for Lines for Life, a nonprofit crisis line for substance abuse and suicide.

“We can help you cross this bridge,” the signs say, with a number: 503-972-3456. Trained professionals answer calls around the clock from Oregon, Washington, Idaho and Alaska. No one tracks calls from the Vista Bridge, but since 2008, the total number of suicide-related calls to Lines for Life tripled from 6,500 to 19,000, says the organization’s Leslie Storm.

Is a phone number on the bridge enough?

“Probably not,” Storm says. “Barriers? I think anything that can stop a suicide is a way to go.”

For 10 years, the bridge had no signs because two government agencies failed to communicate. For reasons lost to time, signs listing a Multnomah County crisis line were removed around the same time that the phone number changed, says Cheryl Kuck, a spokesperson for Portland’s Bureau of Transportation.

But phones don’t stop suicides, says Berman of the American Association of Suicidology.

“No data shows this method is effective,” he says. “The presumption that someone who is suicidal is carrying a cellphone is questionable. The only data that exists, both in this country and internationally, regarding prevention of jumping from height, are barriers.”

Restricting or delaying a jumper saves lives, he says.

“Did he feel alone?”

Therese Schwenkler, 28, never thought that William Pope, her happy, impulsive friend, would kill himself. Two years later, the ripples from his death still jolt her with questions.

“Did he think I wasn’t there for him? Did he know how much I cared about him? It’s just so heartbreaking that maybe he didn’t, and there’s nothing I can do about it.”

They met when they were students at Gonzaga University in Spokane.

“He walked fast, he talked fast. Will didn’t know how to slow down. He had the biggest, brightest smile. He’d give you the biggest hug. He just made you feel you really mattered. It seemed like everyone loved him.”

They dated for three years, but grew apart after college when she moved to Boise and he settled in Portland. Still, they talked regularly. She’d known him for eight years, better than anyone else.

“Did he feel alone? I just don’t get it. He could have reached out to me, to so many people. I know how impulsive he could be. I’m trying to make sense of it and I can’t.”

On Christmas, Pope’s birthday and Mother’s Day, Schwenkler sends a card to his parents in Spokane.

“I still have moments when I hear his voice. There’s always going to be a deep sadness.”

Historic landmark

Because the Vista Bridge is on the National Register of Historic Places, the city can’t alter the bridge’s appearance with fences or nets without approval under the National Historic Preservation Act and the State Historic Preservation Office, and perhaps federal and state transportation agencies, depending on where the money comes from.

“But that doesn’t mean we can’t alter it,” says David Skilton, in Portland’s Bureau of Development Services. Any design proposal would need to be compatible with the bridge, Skilton says. “We do that all the time. It’s a tricky design problem, but I think we can get there.”

Timothy Heron, a senior city planner and Skilton’s boss, advises caution.

“Let’s have a conversation. Perhaps add something that’s not visually intrusive. Is there a way? Of course, there’s always a solution.”

Without seeing plans for barriers, Heron would not guess at their cost, he said, but a Portland construction estimator calculated the cost of chain-link fences on the Vista Bridge at $42,000.

Any initiative for putting up barriers would have to come from the Portland Bureau of Transportation.

“The city has no plans to add additional suicide-prevention measures, such as fencing, to the Vista Bridge,” says the agency’s Cheryl Kuck.

Focus on other bridges

One person who likes the Vista Bridge without barriers is Tracy J. Prince, who lives in Goose Hollow and wrote a history of the neighborhood.

“It’s just a gorgeous bridge with one of the best views of the city,” she says. “I see tourists stop and take pictures every day.”

Barriers probably wouldn’t help, Prince says. People who want to kill themselves will just go somewhere else. She wishes the media would focus on other bridges, she says.

“If they could create something aesthetically pleasing and fit the historic aspect, OK, but you’d need something on the St. Johns Bridge, too, if your goal is to prevent suicide.”

Suicides on the Vista Bridge are not a topic of discussion at the Goose Hollow Neighborhood Association, she says. Parking, new buildings and density are more pressing issues.

A pilgrimage

Sixty-two years later, Gretchen Brianna Field still feels the ripples of her father’s suicide at the Vista Bridge.

July 9, 2012, is a warm, sunny day when Field, 65, visits the bridge for the first time. She parks at the north end and, with her son and her dog, starts walking across the bridge. Portland’s skyline and Mount Hood shimmer in the sunlight.

Field just moved to Portland that month and planned a pilgrimage to the bridge to honor her father on the date he died so long ago. She was 3 then, and her mother never told her what happened. Field found out how her father died when she discovered a box of clippings hidden in her mother’s linen closet. She was in her 20s.

As she sits in one of the bridge’s alcoves, the few memories she has of her father flood her: cuddling in his arms, the softness of his T-shirts, a loving look. Next to her bed, she keeps a photo of him decked out in fedora and suit, looking down at her.

Her mother remarried and the man wasn’t kind. Field fantasized about what life would have been like if her father had lived. Maybe her anger, the mental breakdown and toxic relationships with men would never have happened.

Outgoing, athletic, artistically talented, Frederick William Field had been a dentist in Roseburg and contracted multiple sclerosis in college. One day, he got up from his hospital bed in Portland, took a cab to the bridge and jumped.

She stares at the view. She feels like she can see forever.

• Crisis hotline for Portland and Multnomah County: 503-988-4888
• Washington County: 503-291-9111
• Clackamas County: 503-655-8585
• Clark County: 360-696-9560
• Other Oregon locations: www.suicidehotlines.com/oregon.html
• Lines for Life: 503-972-3456
• Urgent walk-in clinic: Cascadia Behavioral Health Care, 2415 S.E. 43rd Ave. (43rd and Division), Portland; 7 a.m. to 10:30 p.m. daily

By David Stabler, The Oregonian, Nov. 3, 2012

Alec Bates (center, in white shirt) celebrates graduation from a diversion program. His mother, Connie Miller, is at right.

Editor’s note:  The Oregonian first wrote about Alec Bates in a Nov. 20, 2011, story, “Homeless, but not helpless.” At that point, Bates was three months clean after years of heroin addiction, and eager to turn his life around. “I want people to know that there is hope,” he said. “If you’re willing, you can get out of active addiction.” The Oregonian’s David Stabler and Motoya Nakamura followed Alec for the next 11 months as he attended recovery meetings, found a job, went back to school and graduated from a Multnomah County drug rehabilitation program. On Aug. 22, he passed his one-year clean date and celebrated with his smiling family outside the courthouse. His mother, Connie Miller, wants readers to think of her son as more than a drug addict.

Alec Bates had wriggled free from heroin’s hold. He was 23, out of jail. He had a job and a plan and 14 months clean.

His mother, Connie Miller, was just getting used to having him back. For 18 months, she’d lost him. Longer than that, really — ever since she found him in the basement shooting heroin and kicked him out. He lived on Portland’s streets, in and out of jail, in and out of treatment, in and out of his family’s grasp.

And then he came back. He got clean, sweating and puking and shaking. For real, this time. One day, one hour at a time. Those clean months were a gift. Connie stopped being afraid of him. He stopped calling for money. They talked every day.

And so when he dropped from sight last month and she got a call from his panicked girlfriend, Connie phoned police and asked them to check on her son.

She drove downtown looking for him, the way she used to do when he lived on the streets. She texted him over and over.

“Call me. No matter what’s happening.”

She arrived home to a message from a stranger on her answering machine.

“Please call this number.”

The Multnomah County Medical Examiner’s office said they found a spoon and a belt. They also found a note in pencil, single-spaced, in Alec’s spiral notebook.

“I’m so so so sorry.”

The lowest point

Alec Bates in his room at a clean residential hotel in Old Town, where he lived for five months.

Miller first realized her son was living on the streets when his sister’s friends saw him digging in the trash for food. She didn’t know he broke into cars, slept in doorways, stole from stores. Every few weeks, he’d call asking for money. Will Miller, Alec’s stepdad, would meet him at McDonald’s and buy him something to eat. Connie couldn’t make herself go. Every week, she called the morgue and Will searched police websites to see if Alec had been arrested.

One day — she calls it the lowest point — she went to Voodoo Doughnut and found him panhandling. Their eyes locked but he was so strung out he didn’t recognize her. She ran across the street so she didn’t have to look at him. She couldn’t stop sobbing.

Home had been relatively normal. Alec’s dad worked at Nike and Connie ran a daycare center out of their house. They divorced when Alec was 5 and Connie raised Alec and his younger sister, McKenzee, on her own. One Christmas, they gave handmade scarves to the homeless on Burnside Street.

At 13, Alec tried pot. At 16, cocaine and ecstasy. At 18, heroin. He remembers that first hit, how it radiated like a heat wave through his body, starting at the back of his neck, spreading to his feet. It calmed him, made him feel all right in his own skin. It was so simple, and just like that he was gone.

When Connie kicked him out, she never thought her heart would harden out of fear, but she could no longer help him or love him the way he was — stealing money, jewelry, maybe even hurting her or his sister. She comforted herself with memories — his first Christmas, how he walked around the house in her shoes, how hard he tried to ride a skateboard.

He was a solemn and melancholy child. He loved Legos and dinosaurs and going to the museum, but stress undid him. He was the kind of kid you had to tell, we’re leaving in 10 minutes, we’re leaving in five minutes. He was black and white, no ambiguity. He needed to know what was going to happen. Connie understood because she was so much like him.

“Divine intervention”

“I don’t wish addiction on my worst enemy,” Alec Bates said. “It’s taken me to places I never thought I’d go.”

That first week on the streets, Alec was terrified, but he learned which abandoned buildings were safe to sleep in, where to eat, where to dry his socks. He had one change of clothes, deodorant and a toothbrush in a backpack that was always with him.

He learned that the combination of his baby face and a sign that read “Trying to get home” brought pity and a few bucks. He broke into hundreds of cars, 15 in one night. He stole iPods, laptops, valuables. He couldn’t steal from stores anymore — he stunk so bad, they knew he was homeless. He was on benzodiazepine and heroin, so any crazy idea seemed good. “Oh, there’s a computer. I’ll take it.”

He got a job stocking women’s shoes but lost it after he got caught shooting up in the bathroom. He found a gun and thought about killing himself by the freeway, but the police stopped him. He called it divine intervention.

He ended up with three felonies and 15 misdemeanors and spent a total of five months in jail. It got worse. On July 14 of last year, he and a friend got high. His friend overdosed and died right there, next to him. They had been close in a culture where close barely existed.

“I don’t ever feel like I have this in the bag”

Drug addicts can’t imagine anything better than dope. It quieted the chaos in Alec’s head. It felt so great, he did it over and over. He lied, he hustled, he became a criminal.

Addicts say they have to hit bottom before they’ll get help, and when his friend died, Alec did. He went to Hooper Detox. The date was Aug. 22, 2011.

Portland’s social services took over. The first three weeks of rehab typically see the highest failure rate, so Central City Concern found him a room in a clean building in Old Town, gave him a mentor, sent him to multiple recovery meetings every day, put him in therapy and tested his urine once a week.

He’d tried recovery before, but this time he faced 26 months in jail if he didn’t complete the diversion program.

Heroin deaths in Oregon

In 2011 heroin was the leading cause of drug-related deaths in Oregon, according to the Oregon State Medical Examiner:

• Multnomah County, 2011: 85 deaths, up 63 percent over 2010
• Oregon, 2011: 143, up 59 percent over 2010

“The sharp rise in illicit drug deaths in just one year is alarming,” said Dr. Karen Gunson, state medical examiner. “The numbers are driven by the availability of heroin and how cheap it is. More than ever it’s just a flood — especially of heroin. It’s like a tidal wave.”

Heroin addiction is a relentless craving, but recovery can feel worse. It’s like the worst flu — vomiting, diarrhea, runny nose, gooseflesh, dread. You want to die, your skin can abscess where you shot up, you may develop infections of the heart valve, your kidneys may fail.

By December, four months clean, days for Alec were still up and down. If someone asked how he was, he’d say, “Fine, for the next 15 minutes.”

His addict voice said “You’re not going to make it through this. It’s all fake.” His recovery voice said “Stop that” and he’d try to distract himself with a book or TV.

One day he had $20 in his pocket, enough to get high. He bought a hoodie instead. Nothing’s permanent when you’re an addict. Stuff comes and goes. He kept the hoodie instead of trading it for drugs.

“I don’t ever feel like I have this in the bag,” he said.

His mentor, Dave Fitzgerald, talked to him every day. Little stuff: What’s your plan? You going to meetings today? A recovering addict himself, Fitzgerald saw something in Alec.

“There ain’t nothin’ he can’t do. He sees the possibility of meaning in his life. I can tell he can feel it, but he’s still scared.”

By January, Alec felt stagnant, ready to get a part-time job, maybe take a class at Portland Community College. Outside In, an agency that assists homeless kids, helped him prepare a résumé.

In March, he graduated to the Madrona Studios near the Rose Quarter. The building was less supervised than downtown, but he requested a clean floor anyway. He had his own bathroom, a whole fridge and he didn’t have to wear shower shoes.

He took math and a college survival class at PCC. It felt weird going to class and not be stoned. A kid offered him weed but he said, I’m all right, man. He mentored homeless kids. His urine tests were down to once every two weeks.

He was less defiant.

“A lot has to do with surrender,” he said. “I was pretty stubborn, running around on my will.”

Later that spring, he and a friend started attending a church off Southeast Hawthorne Boulevard. His buddy had a tattoo based on C.S. Lewis’ “Screwtape Letters,” a book about Christian faith, temptation and failings. A few days later, Alec stood on a Max platform and there on the ground was “Mere Christianity,” another book by Lewis.

He started reading it. He couldn’t dismiss the coincidence.

“Whatever my higher power is, it put that there,” he said. “Surrender. I’m turning my will over to my higher power, whatever that is. I have to figure that out.”

July 19 was a big day, the day he graduated from Multnomah County’s drug rehabilitation program that kept him out of jail. Alec’s mom and stepdad, aunt, uncle, nieces and friends joined a packed courtroom for the ceremony.

“I’m here because I believe in miracles,” Judge Angel Lopez told Alec and one other graduate.

You will have to say no the rest of your life, court staff told him. But it’s easier today than a year ago.

Connie reached for a Kleenex before Alec stood up to read from his spiral notebook. He took a deep breath, then thanked the judge, his mentor, Outside In, his family and friends.

“So Mom, I love you. I’m proud I get to make you cry in a good way today. … My one piece of advice to you all today is to surrender. It makes this process easier.”

When the judge asked if Connie wanted to say something, she replied “I don’t think I can say anything without crying.”

Outside on the sidewalk, Alec lit a cigarette and posed for photographs with his smiling family.

“He seemed like he was doing it”

Alec’s room at Madrona looked west to the city skyline and the Rose Garden. He thought it was fitting because he loved the Blazers and could tell you all the stats on the players and coaches. His room was spare, like a hotel room, but Connie helped him fix it up to be modern. Modern was simple, uncluttered.

A memorial service for Alec was held Oct. 13.

They talked nearly every day, about school, work, whatever was on his mind. She told him she was proud of him, she’d do anything to help him succeed.

August 22 came, one year clean. Addicts remember their clean date and Alec celebrated at Connie and Will’s house, where he requested homemade mac and cheese and chocolate chip cookies. Later that month, Connie and Will went to Hawaii for two weeks and needed someone to watch their dog. Before, they never would have asked Alec but he was doing so well, they trusted him. He teared up when they asked.

Before they left, he asked them to lock up their medications and alcohol. He called every day to say everything was fine, he’d borrowed change for the bus, he’d met the neighbors, how good it felt to walk to work.

“It seemed like he was doing it,” Connie said. “Doing it for himself, not to make me happy. He said, ‘It feels good to get up in the morning like a normal human being.’”

Connie stopped calling the morgue. Will no longer looked for him on police websites.

“I have hope, and hope, I decided, is the best thing ever,” she said. “Maybe, just maybe, my son will function in society the way I had hoped he would.”

“I can feel him looking at me”

Friday, Oct. 5, was a normal day. Connie called Alec and thought she woke him up.

“He wasn’t coherent — he said he just woke up, no school today.”

But something struck her as odd.

“I had paid a court fine for him, part of his birthday present. He didn’t seem to care I’d done it.”

She didn’t hear from him Saturday.

On Sunday, Connie and Will were getting ready for church when his girlfriend called in a panic. She and Alec always met at a coffee shop on Saturday mornings and he hadn’t shown up. He wasn’t texting or answering his phone.

Connie checked their shared phone account and found his last text was at 12:06 p.m. Saturday. She kept texting him. She called numbers he had called.

After driving around looking for him, they came home to a voicemail from Multnomah County. The medical examiner asked if Alec had given them any indication of suicide.

Alec’s note began: “Mom, I’m sorry it has to end this way but being a drug addict is just too hard.”

Connie never saw it coming. When she searched his computer, she found his last Google search was how to shoot up and die. An autopsy is still weeks away and the police continue to investigate his death.

The note ends: “Know that I will be watching you from above and that I’m happier and in a better place.”

Connie will never know why Alec came to believe there was only one way out.

“He knew I would be OK. He didn’t say that, but reading between the lines. Every morning now, I wake up and say, ‘Thank God I had 14 months with a child who was happy and proud of himself.’ Only Alec could write a note like that. I just got used to having him in my life daily, his corny texts. I can feel him looking at me — it’s not your fault.

“I know I will never be free of the millions of questions that rattle in my head but I am thankful for the deep talks Alec and I had. All of them ended with, ‘You can never blame yourself, Mom. I made the choices and you are the best madre ever.’”

From the Portland Mercury, September 19, 2012

Get used to seeing this phone number on Portland-area bridges and billboards and other places where you can’t miss it: 503-972-3456.

As the Mercury said would happen last month, city and police officials joined suicide-response nonprofit Lines for Life (formerly Oregon Partnership) in unveiling a new Portland-specific suicide hotline. It’s another important step toward “getting cops and 911 dispatchers out of the suicide business—a push that took on new urgency last week when it was among the recommendations contained in the federal Department of Justice’s scathing review of the police bureau’s dealings with people perceived to be mentally ill. It also comes amid a spike in suicide calls.

“We want people to not call 911 if they’re in crisis,” Commissioner Amanda Fritz said when the effort was approved this morning by city council.

The hotline owes its existence to a $150,000 city grant, approved in August, that helped Lines for Life add and train extra call-takers. The first sign is going up at the Vista Bridge on the way out to the zoo. Other bridges will follow in the coming weeks, and so will a word-of mouth campaign relying on ministers and leaders in the queer community, and a blitz of billboards. Anyone in crisis—or anyone just worried about someone else in crisis—can call it.

How does Lines for Life work? Here’s what I wrote last month:

Lines for Life claims that 98 percent of its calls—more than 17,000 last year—are solved without help from cops. Tom Parker, a spokesman for the nonprofit, says that’s because its volunteers can do things that 911 dispatchers can’t do: take calls that involve a weapon or the prospect of imminent harm, and spend as long as it takes until a call “de-escalates.” Lines for Life also can accept text messages and has specialists on hand if someone like, say, a veteran calls and threatens suicide.

Mayor Sam Adams, who co-piloted the effort alongside Commissioner Amanda Fritz, said the signs might “startle” non-depressed people when they see them. Startling people is exactly the idea.

“They’re intended to startle the person who’s intent on committing suicide,” he said.