Front Porch: Like it or not, social media can save a life

I have something of a love-hate relationship with Facebook – but right now I could not love it more. Only a few weeks ago it was an important tool in helping save the life of a young man who I am so happy is still alive and healing.

I am kind of a Facebook voyeur. Mostly I just read and only occasionally “like” or post. And if I go for several days without checking in, there’s so much stuff there that I pretty much just whiz by it all and just look at the top couple of things. I know I miss a lot that way, but that’s all the attention span I have for it.

My son Sam and I were in Ashland recently attending the Oregon Shakespeare Festival – which, as always, was wonderful – and sitting in the lobby of our hotel waiting for the shuttle to pick us up for the ride to the airport in Medford. Sam had some online work to do, so I thought I’d practice a bit with my new smartphone.

And there I saw a Facebook post – which had just been up for a few minutes – from a young man we both know. He showed photos of his mother’s grave and those of his two older siblings, with some text indicating that he was going to join them. It was a suicide note.

His mother had been a friend of mine, and he and his brothers and my sons were all childhood friends. His oldest brother and my oldest son were best friends through most of their childhood. You’d hardly see one of my kids without at least one of the kids from his family and vice versa.

There has been much sorrow in his family. His older brothers are dead. His mother died of natural causes, but under circumstances that were unusual and which became public, generating some news media coverage.

I’d only see him occasionally in his adult years. We went to his wedding, and I helped him with some news media coordination after his mother’s death. He had a good job, a home and a wife. I saw him a few years ago, bumping into him at a restaurant in Cheney; he’d gone back to college at Eastern Washington University to earn another degree so as to be able to pursue a new career. All seemed well. But then, not everything is as it seems.

When I saw the Facebook posting, I alerted Sam, and we both began monitoring. Various friends in Spokane began a chain of responses and suggestions, looking for his vehicle, going to his home, calling police and the fire department and sending out questions so as to be better able to find him, as he wasn’t answering his phone.

I sent a private message – kind of a mommy note – in case he was still at least monitoring Facebook. Sam also sent messages. Happily, he was located. Alive.

There have been a few email messages from one of his cousins speaking to treatment and what and where he is – and what he might need from those of us in Spokane who know and care about him. I reached out, and I have now had a good visit with him. I am encouraged about his future.

But sitting there in Oregon watching the search for him in Spokane roll out in real time was so alarming and unreal. I have seen what suicide does to a family. His family has already been touched by it. And so has my extended family. We just passed the fifth anniversary of our 14-year-old grand nephew’s suicide, a horror of an event which started a cascading catastrophe that has torn his immediate family apart. That one bullet hit, in one fashion or another, a lot of people.

For the young man I am writing about here, I am so grateful that he is alive, and that the Facebook farewell note did not come to pass. Thank you, Facebook, for being available to be the tool his friends used to coordinate their rapid search and response, facilitating his rescue.

Though I’m still kind of lukewarm about Facebook as a social media tool for me, I’ll not speak ill of it again. It was a lifesaver.

Voices correspondent Stefanie Pettit can be reached by email at upwindsailor@comcast.net.