Guardian of the Golden Gate: Protecting the Line Between Hope and Despair

The wind was gusting around the Golden Gate Bridge on a March afternoon in 2005 when a 22-year-old man climbed the railing, convinced he and this world would be better without each other. He put himself on a thin beam 220 feet above the Pacific Ocean.

The man had just lost his job and felt overwhelmed as a new father.

Kevin Berthia wanted to die, and he had come to the world s most effective suicide destination to make that happen. That's when he met a highway patrolman, a former Army so…