HOS Note-
Great work Lay'li! This is how we look out for each other in a Culture of Excellence. We are very proud of your brave actions. Thanks for being a terrific example of what AHS and our students are all about!
Call of a lifetime
Animas High School student saves Facebook 'friend'by Garrett AndrewsHerald Staff Writer
Article Last Updated; Saturday, June 26, 2010 12:00AM Photo by LINDSAY EPPICH/Herald
Lay'li Mitchell, 14, sits in front of her computer Wednesday at her home in Durango. Mitchell was on Facebook when she discovered one of her Facebook "friends" was considering suicide and alerted the authorities. She is the granddaughter of Terry Mitchell.
On a Tuesday night in early June, Animas Valley resident Lay'li Mitchell, 14, was the only person awake in her house, on the Internet as usual, with one tab assigned to Facebook.
Earlier in the evening, she read a posting that didn't sit right. A Facebook "friend" was hinting at suicide. Lay'li knew the child had been having a hard time lately.
They had exchanged posts and text messages, but by 11:15 p.m., the friend had stopped responding.
"I freaked out," Lay'li remembers.
Lay'li's grandmother and guardian, Terry, was asleep on the couch. She could tell something was wrong when Lay'li woke her up.
"Her legs were shaking," Terry said.
Neither knew where the child lived in La Plata County. They frantically called friends and acquaintances.
More than an hour later, Lay'li tracked down someone who lives on the West Coast who didn't know the child's local address but knew directions to the child's house.
Lay'li scrawled the directions on the back of an envelope. She read them over the phone to a speeding sheriff's deputy.
When deputies arrived at the child's house, the child was unconscious; a scarf was wrapped around the person's neck, the parents asleep in another room.
"The person would have died had Lay'li not taken the initiative," said La Plata County Sheriff's Office spokesman Dan Bender.
The Herald chose not to name the suicidal child in this article for reasons of confidentiality.
Paramedics provided life-saving care and referred the child to mental-health workers.
The Mitchells received a call from authorities in the early morning telling them it was lucky Lay'li called when she did.
"I cried because I was so relieved," Lay'li said.
Lay'li is part of a vast web of friends online. But she was the only one who thought to call police when she read the post. Last week, for "having the courage to step forward and let someone know," La Plata County Sheriff Duke Schirard gave her an honorary plaque and coin.
Bender said the sheriff's office does not hand out many civilian awards.
"It really takes something special," he said.
Terry Mitchell said Facebook may get a bad rap, but the popular social networking website helped save a life.
"If you're their age, you can't drive, you can't really go on dates, you can't drink. It's a way for them to connect and to communicate and problem-solve," she said. "It's not such a bad thing. It just has to be monitored."
Based in Palo Alto, Calif., the site has exploded in use since its founding in 2004. More than 400 million users have accessed the site in the last 30 days, and half of all users go there every day, according to an online fact sheet.
The site has a particularly strong grip on young people, who use it as a communication interface and to continue their conversations long after school is over, said Escalante Middle School counselor Kim Osby.
Escalante and other 9-R middle schools now host parent nights in the fall dedicated to educating parents about cyberbullying, Internet predators, suicidal content and other issues emerging from new communications technologies.
"A lot of kids say things on Facebook they wouldn't say to an adult," she said.
Osby advises parents to maintain an active presence online and regularly check the history pages on their kids' profiles.
Facebook's policy for anyone who notices suicidal content on its site is to immediately contact law enforcement, said spokesman Simon Axten. The content also can be reported to a Facebook administrator.
"For our own part, when we receive a report for someone who has posted suicidal content on Facebook, we immediately alert the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline," Axten said.
Lay'li talks with her friends on Facebook every night, she said.
During an interview at her house, she showed some comment threads that take several seconds to scroll through. She didn't miss a beat while carrying on several other conversations on her laptop.
Because it has become increasingly where kids go to communicate, Facebook is becoming the scene of a growing number of veiled suicide threats, said Jeff Lemontagne, executive director of the Second Wind Fund, a Lakewood-based adolescent-suicide-prevention group.
He estimates that by age 20, about half of all people have struggled with thoughts of suicide. But too often, he said, kids don't air their thoughts and never get help.
"Occasionally kids will say it directly, but often it's in more veiled forms," he said.
The Second Wind Fund focuses on getting one-on-one therapy to adolescents at risk of suicide. The group's Four Corners affiliate office offers up to 20 free therapy sessions through Axis Health System to youths who meet a financial requirement.
Many of the difficult issues children face, they've never worked through before, said Lillian Ramey, director of the Durango office for Second Wind Fund. And children being more impulsive than adults, they spend less time considering suicidal feelings before acting.
"In many cases, they end up realizing (suicide) is not what they want," Ramey said.
Lay'li believes her friend was probably just scared.
"I think it was a rash decision. (The child) didn't know what would happen," Lay'li said.
A recent graduate of Escalante Middle School, Lay'li heads to Animas High School in the fall. She hopes to study photography and film before becoming some kind of doctor or emergency medical technician.
Given her level of awareness, her grandmother Terry thinks the medical profession would be lucky to have her.
"She's a friend everybody should have," she said.