from People

Young Dad Was Getting Ready to Leap from Golden Gate Bridge — Then the ‘Miracle’ of a Stranger’s Voice Stopped Him

Kevin Berthia unexpectedly helped save Kevin Briggs’ life. Now the pair, “more like brothers” than friends, are looking back on the day that changed them both

By Johnny Dodd

On the worst morning of his life, Kevin Berthia awoke and, after years of fighting with depression, decided that he was going to drive to the Golden Gate Bridge and jump.

Berthia, who was 22 years old at the time and living in Oakland, Calif., had never been to the famed landmark before and had to repeatedly ask for directions along the way.

But minutes after parking in a lot at the north end of the bridge on March 11, 2005, he left his keys in the ignition and took off walking along the 1.7-mile expanse, glancing down at the San Francisco Bay, telling himself, “The water is my freedom. I’m ready.”

Before long, the young man who had just lost his job and was overwhelmed by medical bills after the recent premature birth of his daughter scrambled over the railing and soon found himself balancing on a tiny metal conduit that ran along the outside of the bridge.

The frigid water of the bay churned 220 feet below him.

“I started my countdown,” Berthia recalls now. “And I braced myself for impact.”

Then something unexpected happened. Two decades later, Berthia still refers to it as “a miracle.”

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