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Blogger and sometime writer about town Will Campbell has a post up at Metblogs reflecting on his experiences as a suicide hotline counselor, inspired partly by his bike commute past Crescent Heights Elementary where the Lupoe children attended, the Kaiser Hospital where their parents worked, and the Culver City police hq still grieving for Sgt. Curt Massey. Sample:
In this continuing difficult and unstable time most of us soldier on, but some will lose their way and will instead consider manifesting their feelings of pain and hopelessness in the worst ways. So if I have a point to this rambler, it’s just to remind us all to help each other and that help is out there. There are people and organizations that can and will extend a hand – or an ear, such as the Suicide Prevention Center (877/727-4747). Certainly there are plenty more where that came from, so by all means if you know of one or more use the comments to give out a shout to any places that might be of service.
He describes one past caller to the suiucide hotline that haunts him — a man with a gun at the beach who answered the boilerplate query "why did you call me?" with this: "To say goodbye to someone."