Sisters’ Action Saves a Life

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Photo by Debi Jensen.
Katie Carston consoles a young man, who was threatening to take his own life. His mother and finance, right,happened on the scene on a Costa Mesa overpass Nov. 25. Photo by Debi Jensen.

The horrific experience of a person jumping to their death and crashing into a neighbor’s car ran through Katie Carston’s head as she bailed out of her sister’s car and took off on foot uphill.

Out of shape and struggling to keep running toward a car stopped on a 405 freeway overpass in Costa Mesa, she expected any second to hear the screeching of brakes and to witness mayhem below if she didn’t reach her destination in time.

But more than one angel was present Saturday, Nov. 25, a day that will leave an indelible imprint on future Thanksgiving celebrations for the families of Carston and her sister, Debi Jensen.

Carston managed to reach her quarry, a 21-year-old man who seemed intent on taking his own life by intentionally thwarting the protections of an overpass barrier.

As she knelt on the sidewalk, Carston engaged the stranger in conversation, knowing her sister already had called 911 for help.

The distraught young man told her he had been bad and that his family would be better off without him. When he refused Carston’s entreaty to come around the barrier, she volunteered to join him outside the fence. Her action, volunteering to put herself in danger on his behalf, changed the dynamic. He rejected her offer and moved around the fence. Carston said she grabbed his hand and kept up the chatter, telling the young man his infant daughter would be far better off with her father present.

“I told him I lost someone and if you think this is a momentary loss, you need to rethink this,” said Carston, whose mother-in-law recently died from breast cancer. The mother of three young children spent her teen years in Costa Mesa and was visiting family for Thanksgiving from Kansas.

Jensen and her sister and son were en route to an errand that Saturday. When Jensen glanced at the rearview mirror after pulling around the stopped car with its flashers on, it took a second to register what she had seen: a man standing outside the overpass barrier. As Jensen stopped her car to call 911, her sister jumped out. “Someone’s got to stop him before he does something that couldn’t be changed,” Carston recalled in an interview this week.

“There were a lot of cars and we were the only ones who stopped,” said Jensen, who works for the Laguna Beach police department as a property clerk. She backed her car up the overpass to join her sister.

The five law enforcement vehicles that eventually showed up also attracted the attention of someone else. “The cool thing was his family was out looking for him,” said Jensen.

The young man’s fiancé embraced Carston and thanked her “for saving her daughter’s daddy.” Paramedics transported the young man for medical treatment.

“I’m so glad it turned out the way it did,” said Carston, who came away from the experience more willing to take action when called on. “The day could have had a different outcome.”

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