Remember Raymond Zack?  In 2011, 50-year-old Raymond Zack waded into the surf at an Alameda, California beach and stood calmly in the 54-degree water, apparently waiting to die. His suicide took nearly an hour, but eventually he drowned, with no rescue attempts from any of the 75 San Franciscans, including firefighters, who gathered on the shore to watch the entire tragedy. I am so used to reading about bystanders allowing desperate people, sick, wounded or otherwise in peril, to perish because they “didn’t want to get involved” that a story like this one, the opposite of the Raymond Zack tragedy from St. Paul, Minnesota, comes as a shock.

How sad is that?

Motorist Angela Martin  saw a woman  climb onto a concrete wall and scale a chain-link fence above Interstate 94 in St. Paul, Minnesota. Martin could have continued driving, but she acted immediately, parking her car and calling 911. But she sensed there was no time to lose. Martin ran over to the woman, who  having climbed over chain-link fence was now clinging to it with her fingers above heavy highway traffic.

“ No, honey. Don’t do this,” she shouted. Martin told reporters that the distraught young woman kept repeating,  “My mom don’t love me. My mom don’t care for me.’”

“No, we love you, ” Martin told her. Martin reached through the links  and grabbed the woman’s shirt and  belt, just as the would-be suicide released her grip so she could fall to her death. Other motorists on the overpass saw the unfolding scene and came to Martin’s aid, and joined her in reaching through the fence to keep the woman from falling. Continue reading →