Two stories from San Francisco’s iconic Golden Gate Bridge. First, we’ll hear from two ironworkers who have spent more than 25 years on the bridge. Then, a young man who almost took his own life there speaks with the man who talked him down.
Transcript
StoryCorps 418: Guardians of the Golden Gate
[MUSIC Broke for Free “The Gold Lining”]
Michael Garofalo (MG): It’s the StoryCorps podcast. I’m Michael Garofalo, one of the producers here. And today we’ve got stories from San Francisco’s most iconic monument: the Golden Gate Bridge. First up, we’ll hear from Ken Hopper and Kerry Davis. For over 25 years, they’ve been part of a team that maintains the bridge.
Kerry Davis (KD): Where I work is on the Golden Gate Bridge. We climb in places where nobody else really goes.
Ken Hopper (KH): It’s awesome. We get paid to climb around the world’s biggest jungle gym.
KD: To the very top is 746 feet.
KH: Yeah, we have to wear a full body harness and we are tied off at all times.
KD: We just look out for one another. If something’s happening or has gone wrong, we have each other’s back.
MG: So it turns out the Kerry and Ken don’t just look after each other. Later in their interview they talk about how the bridge attracts tourists, sure. But it also attracts other more desperate visitors.
KD:One of the hardest things I’d say that we have to deal with – I guess we have to talk about it at some point – are people who come out to end their lives. For a time, if there was somebody over the rail…
KH: …a person who’s thinking about killing themselves…
KD: …we were the first call. And we would have to set up with our harnesses and go out. Sometimes we talk; sometimes we just try to get ourselves close to that person to actually grab them.
KH: I’ve got to the point where I walk up to them and I just flat-on say is: You’re thinking about jumping off this bridge today? And I’ve had them truly answer, yeah.
KD: They might be in tears or they might not be focused on anything else but the water. To see a person that’s that low, that’s really hard to see.
KH: Yeah.
KD: I remember one guy, he brought his kid out, and threw the kid over. That, that was sad. And then he jumped after the fact, but… I mean why didn’t he just let the little girl go? I stepped into the van and I cried.
KH: Yeah, I saw that happen, it was awful. I would’ve taken her.
KD: Yeah. All of us would have. You saw her.
KH: And that really broke me up.
KD: Yeah, but. The majority of the time we’ve uh—we’ve been pretty successful. I’d say we’ve got 90% of the people that we’ve gone out after. I remember one time a guy was talking to me, and he was a bartender in San Francisco and he couldn’t find a job. And I asked him if I could climb over and talk to him. And he’s one of the guys who said thank you.
KH: There’s really hardly ever any closure – many times we’re worried -well, what happened to this guy? They took him to the hospital? Is he okay? And there’s a lot of unanswered questions. But, you know, some call us Guardians of the Gate or the Angels of the Gate. That was nice to hear.
[MUSIC Kai Engel “Prelude – Bells in Heavy Clouds”]
MG: That was Ken Hopper and Kerry Davis, who have worked as iron workers on the golden gate bridge for more than 25 years.
Now we’re going to hear from a young man who went to the bridge to end his life, and the California patrol highway officer who talked him down. It was ten years ago this week. Kevin Berthia was 22 years old, and he had an infant daughter who was born prematurely. Her medical bills added up to almost 250,000 dollars, and Berthia couldn’t see a way out of debt. He fell into a deep depression, and decided to end his life. And officer Kevin Briggs intervened. And they recently sat down to talk about that day for StoryCorps.
KEVIN BERTHIA: Before March 11, 2005, I never even went to the bridge. I didn’t even know how to get there. I had to ask for directions.
KEVIN BRIGGS: And I see you standing on the sidewalk. You looked at me and went over that rail. And I thought you were gone.
BERTHIA: I just got on that railing and turned around. I was overwhelmed with everything. It’s like everything that I ever was bothered by, everything that I was ever dealing with came up on one day and I just felt like a failure. All I’ve got to do is lean back and everything is done. I’m free of all this pain, you know?
BRIGGS: You seemed angry to me.
BERTHIA: I was just mad at myself for being in that situation, and I was embarrassed. But somehow the compassion in your voice is what allowed me to kind of let my guard down enough for us to have a conversation. We talked for 92 minutes about everything that I was dealing with, my daughter. Her first birthday was the next month, and you made me see that if nothing else, I need to live for her.
BRIGGS: So we took you to a hospital. And that was the last time I saw you for years.
BERTHIA: Yeah. I spent eight years not thinking about the bridge. I didn’t want to talk about it ever again.
BRIGGS: And I don’t usually want to meet someone who I’ve spoken with under these circumstances. But your mother wrote me a note, and I did contact her.
BERTHIA: I didn’t know exactly how I was going to feel once I met you. But when I first saw you, it was just like two old friends that haven’t seen each other in a while. That was the first time I was able to talk about everything that happened that day.
BRIGGS: Yeah. It’s OK to talk about it. I’ve found that out with my own depression and things that I kept bottled up for decades.
BERTHIA: You know, we’ve been through similar things in our lives. And I’ve never been around anybody that’s seen me at a more vulnerable state. The greater picture is that I need to be here for my daughter. You know, she’s 10 now. And had you not have been there, I wouldn’t get to see her grow up. You know, I don’t trust a lot of people, so for you to never judge me and just to have that trust, that’s what keeps us afloat and different from any other friendship.
[PIANO MUSIC Sigur Rós “Fljótavík”]
MG: That’s Kevin Berthia with his friend Kevin Briggs in San Francisco. Kevin Berthia now has three kids, and Kevin Briggs retired from the highway patrol two years ago. There’s a famous photo of these two taken on that day in March 2005. You can see it on our website, StoryCorps.org.
And before we go, I want to share a comment that was left on this story by an NPR listener. She writes to Kevin Berthia and Kevin Briggs: “Thank you for sharing your story. It’s a very powerful one for me. My father didn’t have someone to ease him off the edge six months ago, and he missed my 27th birthday. Kevin Berthia, please know that your determination to envision things in a new light for your daughter’s sake was the best decision you could have made, and it’s paying off every time you get to look into her eyes and smile. May we all walk with the same grace and strength as Kevin Berthia did when he walked away from the bridge that day.”
From the StoryCorps podcast, I’m Michael Garofalo. Until next time, thanks for listening.
[PIANO MUSIC Sigur Rós “Fljótavík”]