Tourists drive the twisty mountain road up to California’s tallest bridge to enjoy scenic views and to feel the thrill of the deep ravine below. Sadly, the majestic bridge towering 730 feet above unforgiving earth also entices another kind of visitor. Since 1973, more than 80 lonely or troubled souls have leapt from edge of Foresthill Bridge to end their own lives. Brittney Hendricks lives just a few minutes from the bridge. She decided she had to do something.
Armed with colorful paper, laminators, a cutter and a hole punch, she and other volunteers gather every couple of weeks to write words of encouragement before they affix them to the bridge with zip ties.
“We don’t want anyone to feel like they’re so alone they don’t have another other choice but to jump,” she tells K-LOVE News during a note-writing session at her business, Crimson Tattoo, in the Old Town section of Auburn.
Brittney heard about a successful bridge-note campaign recently celebrated in England and decided to launch her own called Notes of Hope Auburn.
Using Facebook and Twitter she invites the entire community to come to her shop on designated Sunday afternoons to write words of comfort for strangers trapped in suicidal depression. “I kinda think if I was out there what would I need to hear? If my husband were out there, what would he need to hear? A lot of my notes are pretty simple: ‘You Are Loved,’ ‘You Are Not Alone.’” A recurring theme in all the notes is the value of one life. Only You Can Be You.
This is personal for the Hendricks family. As a master tattoo artist Brittney is routinely asked to create memorial tattoos, many of them for clients who lost friends or family to suicide. Her own grandfather committed suicide and her husband is a combat veteran suffering with PTSD and enduring what’s considered a dismal lack of mental health resources at his local VA clinic. She is a passionate advocate for speaking openly about the thoughts and feelings that can lead to suicide. “I feel like a lot of people have been in a dark place before but no one ever talks about it, it’s a very taboo subject.”
Since the Hendricks family began earlier this Summer, a growing number of volunteers have shown up for writing sessions or have mailed in stacks of their own notes for the Notes Of Hope team to attach to the bridge. “Sometimes it’s just one note, which is very personal and meaningful sometimes it’s a stack of notes. We had the Fresno Survivors of Loss contact me, they wrote a good 350 notes,” and every other day “we get a little packet of notes and we add them to our pile.”
Brittney has hard evidence that posting colorful notes of hope and concern can break into the suicidal thoughts. At least one man is documented to have seen one of the Notes of Hope on Foresthill Bridge and changed his mind about jumping. “A spokesperson from the National Suicide Prevention Hotline contacted me,” she recalls. “She had a veteran who went the bridge with intentions of contemplating jumping…he actually pulled one of the notes off the bridge and called the hotline.”
(If you or someone you know thinks about suicide call the Hotline 24/7.Call 800-273-8255. Someone wants to help you.)
Vandals struck the bridge in late-August, tearing down several hundred existing notes and spray-painting messages like, ‘nobody cares if you die’ along the rails. Brittney was determined to counter the hateful graffiti. She and her team spray-painted over it before nightfall.
“For every note that gets taken down we’ll post 10 more.”
Notes of Hope Auburn is an ongoing effort, Brittney says, confirming her family will write and post often. The project enjoys the full support of the Auburn city government and thousands of notes are still needed to fill gaps on the rails or to replace old ones weathered by wind, rain and time.
“I want people to know that if you’re having those thoughts that people care about you, even strangers,” and she challenges other caring citizens in cities, towns, churches and communities to launch their own suicide prevention projects.
“As much as the negatively about suicide is a cycle, so is love. Love is a cycle too. If you give one person a smile or let one person know that you care about them, it can move mountains.”