Your Life To Live

A Bay Area high school has been hit by a tragic series of suicides. Kids keep going to a particular railroad crossing and standing on the tracks, waiting for the Cal Train to kill them. Two have died, and now a third was stopped in the nick of time ... by his mother: Passer By, Mom Halt Third Palo Alto Suicide

A passing motorist helped the mother of a Palo Alto high school student keep the boy from committing suicide on the Caltrain tracks at the same crossing where two fellow students killed themselves in the past month, police said Friday as they stepped up patrols in the area.

The 17-year-old boy, a student at Gunn High School, apparently walked to the East Meadow Drive crossing at about 7:45 p.m. Thursday and was contemplating suicide when he his mother came on the scene, police Agent Dan Ryan said. The motorist saw the mother pleading with her son and stopped to help, as did a Palo Alto police officer, Ryan said.

On Tuesday night, senior Sonya Raymakers, who was bound for New York University to study costume design in the fall, stood on the tracks and was killed by a Caltrain.

On May 5, a junior at Gunn, Jean-Paul Blanchard, ended his life at the same crossing.

Every story is different, of course, but there's clearly a copy-cat effect at work here. I don't know what caused the mother of the third kid to go to the crossing, but that showed good instincts. Suicide is often an impulsive act, and her kid will most likely be glad to be alive when (or if) he is able to tame whatever demons lurk within him.