The first life I saved was in the town Twenty Nine Palms. I was sitting at the bar in the enlisted men's club on the military base on a Saturday morning having an early cocktail when a bunch of my fellow Marines came into the bar and urged me to head back out into town. They said one of our friends was going to commit suicide because he got a Dear John letter and it broke him up bad. So I told the bartender to keep my drink for when I got back. So off we went into town and when we got there they all stood back and pointed where he was through the front door. I went in and he was at the end of the hall with a M-16 pointed under his chin. I spent a few minutes coming closer to him while talking him down from doing what he was trying to do. He did eventually give me the rifle and then I was taken back to my barstool to finish my drink. None of us mentioned this to anyone in authority.
The second one was when I was walking home in Sacramento late at night on Marconi Avenue approaching Watt Avenue. I heard a man screaming to "stop her, she's trying to commit suicide" several times. I looked over and a woman was running diagonally from my path toward the fast traffic on Marconi. So I immediately took off to cut off her path. I was in a full sprint when I tackled her on the sidewalk not 5 feet from a lane of traffic. She was somewhat hysterical but I held onto her until she stopped struggling. I told the guy who caught up to us to stay back because she was screaming for him to stay back. He did and by then the police, who must have been near or called showed up and told me to keep on going and they would handle things. I left and felt somewhat dismissed without even being able to tell them what had just happened.
The third time was in the Arizona desert at the Lakeshore project at the Hecla Mine on the Pima Reservation. I was on my initial third day of a 7 day rotation. I was deep in the mine about 1 mile under ground. I was working with a sledge hammer breaking up boulders so that they could slip through the heavy metal grates to fall down toward the crusher at the bottom of the mine. An unexpected nearby explosion happened and since I was down there alone in my area I didn't know what happened. Until an old miner came rushing past me and motioned me to follow him to search for a trapped miner. Down the shaft we went until I stopped at one of several undercuts and began digging with my fingers until to my shock I discover the bottom of a boot. I dug ferociously until I and by then several other miners helped me free the trapped miner. He was badly injured but did recover.
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