Influencer and suicide prevention activist, Kevin Hines, details the miracle of surviving his jump off the Golden Gate Bridge. Kevin shares his mission to help people living with serious mental issues and difficult life circumstances.
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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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