Santa Rosa teen's suicide led her mom's crusade for barriers on the Golden Gate Bridge

Mar. 23—Editor's note: This story discusses suicide. If you or someone you know is experiencing mental health issues, please see the fact box accompanying this story.

For Renee Milligan, it was never about the money.

In December 2002, she filed a wrongful-death lawsuit in federal court against the Golden Gate Bridge, Highway and Transportation District.

Her daughter, Marissa Imrie, was an honors student and cross-country runner at Santa Rosa High School. On Dec. 17, 2001, Marissa took a $150 cab ride to Vista Point, at the north end of the bridge, then walked out onto the span and jumped. She was 14.

The suit alleged that the district's failure to build a suicide barrier violated the girl's constitutional right not to be deprived of life without due process of law. It also called for a court order requiring the district to build an effective and safe suicide barrier.

Both the trial judge and an appeals court ruled against Milligan, finding that the bridge authority could not be held liable for Marissa's death.

The lawsuit did succeed, however, in shining a spotlight on a grim reality: this international icon, painted International Orange, held the dubious distinction of being the world's most popular suicide spot.

"I didn't want money, I wanted awareness," Milligan told The Press Democrat in a recent interview. "I wanted people to be protected."

Until her daughter used it to take her life, Renee Milligan had no idea the bridge was such a suicide magnet.

She immersed herself into advocacy for a barrier. "I remember the attorney who represented us said it would take about five years before something would happen."

For a few years, Milligan was consumed with grief. "To be honest, I don't know how I made it through. The loss of Marissa was unfathomable. I just didn't have any idea that she was suffering from depression, and I felt so mad at myself" for not knowing more.

Renee's marriage to her husband, Mike, Marissa's stepfather, survived, "thank God, because most don't," she said, referring to the strain the death of a child can place on a couple. For some, the grief isn't bearable. In July of 2005, Marissa's father, Tom Imrie, hanged himself from a tree at his home in Occidental.

Milligan soldiered on, showing up for meetings, adding her voice to a chorus of bereaved calling for a barrier. A decade or so after Marissa died, they were told that no barrier could be installed until the bridge had been earthquake retrofitted.

It was around that time Milligan told herself, "I can't keep doing this." She stopped focusing on the barrier. She put her energy into helping other grieving mothers who'd lost children. She administered a scholarship in Marissa's name. She moved on.

In 2012, President Barack Obama signed a $105 billion transportation bill that included funds for "safety projects, including nets on bridges."

'Moon and stars aligned'

That language was not inserted by accident. At the time the bill was crafted, noted Golden Gate Bridge General Manager and CEO Denis Mulligan, U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer — an ex-member of the Golden Gate Bridge Board — was chair of Senate'sEnvironment and Public Works Committee. Nancy Pelosi was Speaker of the House.

"So the moon and stars aligned."

The barrier cost at least $224 million, and possibly much more. The Metropolitan Transportation Commission contributed $74 million, with Caltrans kicking in $70 million. The other third, said Mulligan "is mostly bridge tolls."

Naysayers had long opposed a barrier on grounds both fiscal and aesthetic. It would cost too much, and it would be ugly — would ruin the gorgeous, Art Deco lines designed by chief engineer Joseph Strauss.

In fact, the just completed barrier is surprisingly unobtrusive and organic. Critics carping at its appearance should take a look "at all those bodies," Renee Milligan said. "Or hear the horror stories from the bridge workers, or the coroner."

Another reflexive criticism of a safety net is that people intent on committing suicide will simply find some other way to do it.

"Although this belief makes intuitive sense," wrote Tad Friend in an October 2003New Yorker story titled "Jumpers," it is "demonstrably untrue."

He cited a study 1978 study by Dr. Richard Seiden of the University of California'sSchool of Public Health. That study followed up on 515 people who were prevented from jumping from the Golden Gate Bridge between 1937 and 1971.

Over a quarter century after their intervention, 94% of the would-be suicides were still alive, or had died of natural causes.

"Suicidal behavior is crisis-oriented and acute in nature," Seiden observed. If the suicidal person can get through that period of crisis, chances are good they won't try suicide again.

Over the last two decades, an average of about 30 people a year died by jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge, said Mulligan. In 2023, with the safety net under construction, that number fell to 14.

As of March 15, 2024, there had been just a single fatality, and that was on New Year's Day, before the public announcement that the barrier was complete.

"Normally by now," said Denis Mulligan, "we'd have about six or seven people dead."

While it's too early to determine whether the net will be a success or failure, early returns are encouraging.

Around a year and a half ago, Renee Milligan was part of a group invited to a plant in Oakland where workers manufactured the netting for the barrier.

They were invited write messages "on the railing" that would be installed with the barrier, to their loved ones who'd jumped to their deaths.

"I got to write Marissa. Michael wrote one. I wrote a message from Marissa's sister," recalled Milligan, who described the experience as "hard, but cathartic." At long last, there would be a deterrent on the bridge. Other families would be spared their pain.

"It's finally happened," said Milligan, who believes the net would've saved her daughter's life.

"I didn't think I'd live to see the day."

You can reach Staff Writer Austin Murphy at 707-521-5214 or austin.murphy@pressdemocrat.com or on Twitter @ausmurph88.

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