00:00We're back having a no-holds-barred conversation about the suicide epidemic in our country.
00:05Kevin Hines is a suicide survivor, who some call a living, breathing miracle.
00:11My name is Kevin Hines, and this is my story.
00:15It was 10 in the morning on September 25th when I got to the bridge, and I was there dying.
00:23Is something wrong, or can I help you?
00:30Those were the words that I desperately wanted to hear
00:36as I stood atop the Golden Gate Bridge walkway right before I catapulted myself over the rail.
00:46So what happened when you hit the water? The fact that you're even here seems to be a miracle.
00:51The doctor said that had I not played football in the months prior, I probably would have died.
00:57And in the water, I hit that water, and Doc, the 38 people who have survived this fall have all hit in the same way.
01:03We don't want to talk about that. We don't want to give people ideas, but they've all hit in the exact same way.
01:07The impact reverberated through my legs. It shattered my T12L1L2.
01:11You know it nearly severed my spinal cord. I went down 70 feet beneath the water's surface,
01:16because when you hit from that height at that speed, you're going 75 miles an hour.
01:19It's a four-second fall. When you hit, a vacuum sucks you under 70 feet.
01:24And then I opened my eyes, and all I wanted to do was live.
01:27And I swam frantically, only using my arms, 70 feet in one breath.
01:31It was the fastest I've ever swam in my life.
01:33And I got to the surface. I broke the surface, and I bobbed up and down in the water, and I prayed,
01:37God, please save me. I don't want to die. I made a mistake on repeat.
01:40And I believe you heard me, because at that moment, something began to circle beneath me,
01:44something large and slimy and very alive, and I thought it was a shark.
01:48I thought, oh, you've got to be kidding me. I didn't die off the Golden Gate Bridge,
01:50and this shark is going to eat me.
01:52And it didn't bite me. It just circled faster and faster.
01:55And, Doc, I was no longer waiting to stay afloat.
01:58I'm lying afloat on my back atop the water, being kept buoyant by this thing,
02:02thinking that it's a nice shark.
02:04What was it?
02:05A man wrote into ABC when I was on there and wrote into the show.
02:09A man named Morgan said, Kevin, I was standing next to you when you jumped.
02:13It's haunted me until this day.
02:16No one would tell me whether you lived or died.
02:18There was no shark, Kevin, but there was a sea lion,
02:21and the people above, looking down, believed it to be keeping your body afloat
02:24until the Coast Guard boat arrived behind you.
02:27How did the Coast Guard get there so quickly?
02:29A woman driving by in a red car had a car phone,
02:32and she called her friend in the Coast Guard,
02:35who was manning the waters of that bridge at that moment.
02:38His unit approached me in the water minutes before I was to set in hypothermia and drown.
02:43At the hospital dock, I was entering the hospital
02:50when one of the foremost back surgeons on the West Coast was leaving,
02:55and he opted to stay.
02:57He did a surgery that is in a medical journal, the first of his particular kind.
03:01He went through a 23-staple scar across my left side.
03:04He pulled out my organs, put them on my chest,
03:06and he went to work with a scalpel and some tools.
03:09They removed the shattered pieces of vertebrae,
03:12mashed them into a paste, took a 3-inch piece of my 10th rib and did the same,
03:15put a cylindrical titanium cage of mesh wiring around it,
03:18four pins the size of my index finger,
03:20a metal plate the size of my palm to my left side.
03:22The singular reason I get the honor and privilege to stand, walk, and run.
03:27So why? Why all these miracles?
03:29Why the miracle of hitting the water the right way,
03:32getting back up to the surface without a lethal injury,
03:35having a sea lion bob you up?
03:37Coast Guard gets there within minutes of you dying of hypothermia
03:40because the wife of the captain is driving by coincidentally,
03:44and then you get the world-class neurosurgeon to put the pieces back together again.
03:47Why these miracles?
03:50I believe I was meant to be here to share my story
03:57so that I can help people all over the world of every age
04:01find the ability to stay, to never die by their hands,
04:06and to recognize their inner resilience
04:08because resilience, Doc, is what evades us from suicide.
04:12When we have a lack of resilience, we lose life.
04:15That is why we are losing teenagers now.
04:17More teens die by suicide today than heart disease, AIDS,
04:21birth defects, pneumonia, the flu, cancer, and lung disease combined.
04:25And that is a travesty.
04:27And when is our government going to fully fund brain, mind, behavioral health,
04:31spiritual health, mental well-being, and suicide prevention like we actually matter?
04:36Thank you for watching.
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