Informant38

Jumpers
�I wanted to disappear,� he said. �So the Golden Gate was the spot. I�d heard that the water just sweeps you under.�
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On the bridge, Baldwin counted to ten and stayed frozen. He counted to ten again, then vaulted over. �I still see my hands coming off the railing,� he said. As he crossed the chord in flight, Baldwin recalls, �I instantly realized that everything in my life that I�d thought was unfixable was totally fixable�except for having just jumped.�
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Dr. Seiden�s study, �Where Are They Now?,� published in 1978, followed up on five hundred and fifteen people who were prevented from attempting suicide at the bridge between 1937 and 1971. After, on average, more than twenty-six years, ninety-four per cent of the would-be suicides were either still alive or had died of natural causes.
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Motto had a patient who committed suicide from the Golden Gate in 1963, but the jump that affected him most occurred in the seventies. �I went to this guy�s apartment afterward with the assistant medical examiner,� he told me. �The guy was in his thirties, lived alone, pretty bare apartment. He�d written a note and left it on his bureau. It said, �I�m going to walk to the bridge. If one person smiles at me on the way, I will not jump.��
�Tad Friend/New Yorker 10.12.03