Cop Talks Suicidal Man off Parking Garage Ledge

Today I saw the ominous heading in the Times Union online listing, "Cop Talks Man off Parking Garage Ledge," and of course I opened it.  Reading through it, I thought to myself:  "oh thank goodness he had been trained in crisis intervention, thank goodness he was calm, patient and understanding.... 90 minutes, yes, that's about how long it takes..." 

In short, a cop was called to the Crowne Plaza parking lot tower in the early hours of this morning.  He found the man perched on the top level, threatening to jump.  He spoke to him for one and a half hours and in the end the man accepted help and was transported by Mobile Crisis to a medical facility for followup help.

The description of the man's problems was familiar to me and in fact to all of us who work at our center on the crisis lines (direct quote):

"The man told Dorsey [the cop]that he had been diagnosed with serious depression and that his mother had passed away recently. He said he was upset because he was unemployed and could not find a job. The man also said his medications and therapy were not working and he had decided he was going to take his life."

These are life situations we hear about every day on the phones. The pain of life, the feeling that things will not get better, the hopelessness and lonliness of the human condition - are all the essence of the calls received at our call center - 2-1-1, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline and the (local) CONTACT Lifeline (formerly known as the Samaritans Crisis Hotline). 

Some of the real call situations we have received in the past week include:  a woman trying to support a family of seven on a minimum wage job, an older man who is unemployed and prospects of finding a new job slim, a woman who has cancer and is worried about about how her daughter will cope after she is gone and a man living with schitozphrenia who is lonely and depressed and has no one else to talk to.

So the themes of loss, depression, unemployment and medications are familiar to us. 

This man could have been one of our callers.  Indeed, I have spoken to people on the phone that I could not be so assured of the outcome.  Since they were on mobile phones or the number was blocked, we were unfortunately unable to send help to them.  To this day, I am left unknowing what happened to them after they hung up, the real possibility lingering that I might have been the last person they spoke to before they died. 

In other cases, we have talked to a sobbing woman for over an hour, helping her talk through her sorrow and hopelessness until she put the pills away.  We have also spoken to the man who was threatening to hang himself but stayed on the phone long enough to change his mind accept our suggestion that we send emergency help to him for a transport to the hospital.  In this call, the last person our volunteer spoke to was a police officer, thanking us for making the call and assuring us the man would be taken care of. 

Working a crisis hotline is hard work.  Being a cop is hard too.  For one moment in time, what the cop did in the wee hours of this morning and what we do on the phones every day was identical.  I thank god that Officer Dorsey used his ability to connect and build rapport with a fellow human in pain, to save this man's life.

SEFCU Community Expo - a Nice Surprise for United Way 2-1-1!

Yesterday, one of our long-time volunteers, Frieda, came into the office with a big smile on her face, carrying a large plastic laminated check for... $2,500 from SEFCU!  The grin on her face erupting into laughter, she told me how she had won it for United Way 2-1-1 in a raffle at the SEFCU Community Expo on Sunday! 

What a wonderful gift for our program.  Anything earned this year will go towards chipping away at our deficit which looms large even this year.  Efforts to find multiple sources to fund United Way 2-1-1 are ongoing and while I still remain perplexed at why New York State chose to disconinue funding to build the 2-1-1 system statewide, I remin firm in my conviction that a fully-funded and operational 2-1-1 system could be the true nexus of the human services system, where ever it exists. 

In fact, if I were to dream of what 2-1-1 could do for the Capital Region - fully-funded - here is the beginning of my list....

• a service that all citizens would know about (just as they know about and use 9-1-1) and use all the time to connect them quickly (and courteously) to the services they need.
• a service that would help to demystify and destigmatize accessing human services.
• a service that could be accessed via online chat, texting and email as well as the easy-to-remember 2-1-1 phone number.
• a service that would also offer an easy-to-use online search platform, for anyone who prefers to search for services themselves.
• a service that identifies gaps in services and community needs as they are happening... and reports these to funders and decision-makers so they in turn can respond to the community.
• and so much more...

While exact funding sources are still unsure at this point in time, continued work by United Way of the Greater Capital Region as well as our agency, Family and Children's Service of the Capital Region, will ensure funding from multiple funidng streams to keep United Way 2-1-1 up and running into the future. 
In the meantime, I want to tell you one more thing about Frieda.  She tells me that when the SEFCU spokesperson announced that they would now be presenting the winners of the non-for-profit raffle, she stood up and immediately started walking toward the stage.  Something inside her had told her that she would be accepting an award for United Way 2-1-1.  When United Way 2-1-1's name was pulled out of the box and the award was announced, she was already halfway up to the stage, and just kept on walking, big grin on her face.

Thank you Frieda!  And a very big thank you to SEFCU!  You have helped us get that much closer to the dream of what 2-1-1 can be for our community.