Anyone would have helped desperate woman on bridge? Sadly, no

It has been a falling-down week, with miracles.

In Seattle, a man washing windows eight stories up fell when his rig failed Thursday. People watched in horror, unable to help, as he fell, screaming.

Then, at the second floor, one of the ropes in his safety gear caught, slowing his fall as he hit the ground. He survived with a broken finger.

On Wednesday afternoon, drivers heading toward Gig Harbor on the Narrows Bridge noticed a woman driving erratically. She smashed into a guard rail, ran to the edge of the bridge and climbed over the railing.

Four drivers stopped and leapt from their cars. Three caught her as she was poised to jump. They held on to her for 20 minutes, until official help arrived.

They listened to her crying, telling them she’s a mom, and that she is losing her home to foreclosure. They comforted her, told her that they loved her, and meant it.

Michelle Smith was the fourth to reach the scene. One man was on his belly, his arms under the railing, holding on to that woman for her dear life. Another man and a woman had their arms through the railing, inching her away from the edge.

Smith tried to talk with the woman. She prayed for her. She went to the abandoned car and found pictures of the woman’s children. She asked the woman for her daughter’s name.

“What would she say if she were here?” Smith asked the woman. “She would say, ‘Mommy, get off the bridge. Mommy, get off the bridge.’”

The whole time, a single lane of traffic was creeping behind them.

The four stayed with the woman until rescue crews got her over the rail and on the way to the hospital.

Smith, a devout Catholic, kept praying that the woman and her family would find the help they need, and she did her part to make that happen. She put two cards with United Way’s emergency 211 line in the car.

The next day, before she got to her job as a loan executive with the United Way of Pierce County’s annual campaign, Smith stopped at Columbia Bank.

Though her husband is unemployed and training for a new career, though she will be unemployed when the campaign ends next month, Smith opened the Hope Fund for the woman and her family. Anyone, she said, can donate at any branch.

At work, she spoke with her friend Nicole Milbradt.

“She says anyone would have done the same thing,” Milbradt said.

I wish that were true.

This fall, high school students on a Pierce Transit bus laughed while a medically fragile middle schooler was beaten up.

On Aug. 28, 2001, while police tried to talk a desperate woman off Seattle’s Ship Canal bridge, irritated drivers honked and yelled at her to jump. She did.

On Thursday, on our Web site, 14 of the 47 comments on the initial story about the Narrows Bridge incident had to be removed because they were so abusive.

What kind of person decides to snipe at a person whose pain is so awful that it erases reason?

Smith tried to moderate that hate. Signing on our Web site as payingitforward, she wrote that none of the four first rescuers see themselves as heroes. They simply saw a life in danger and stopped to help.

“I would like to think everyone would have done the same thing,” she wrote. “If you did not stop, thank you for your prayers. We are all faced with opportunities. I just was paying it forward. Last night the four of us told her how much we loved her, yes complete strangers. Our world is still filled with Love. All YOU have to do is find a way to express it.”

Almost immediately, someone sniped at her.

“One of my friends said that if they are that angry, they need to get help,” Smith said. “I said to just pray for them.”

I am not so kind. I simply hope that next time people have a choice between hurting and helping, they think of the window washer and take this advice: Be the rope. Not the jerk.

Kathleen Merryman: 253-597-8677

kathleen.merryman@thenewstribune.com