She Hangs On for Dear Life, Saves Leaper

A transient who tried to jump off a downtown Los Angeles freeway overpass is alive today thanks to a California Highway Patrol officer who clutched the dangling 225-pound man’s shoulders until help arrived to pull him to safety.

Officer Monica Alvarado, who weighs only 125 pounds, saved 41-year-old Brent Tucker Wednesday night by grabbing onto his leather jacket as he hung 30 feet above heavily traveled 1st Street near downtown.

Tucker had notified the Highway Patrol from a freeway call box at 8:40 p.m. that he was going to commit suicide, Alvarado told reporters Thursday morning. The 24-year-old officer was the first to arrive at the scene--the Harbor Freeway’s northbound overpass above 1st Street.

“All of a sudden, I saw this man standing there right up on the freeway edge,” she said. His hands were on the guard rail and he was sobbing, she said.

Since there was no shoulder on the overpass, Alvarado said, she parked her car in the freeway’s far right lane and tried to talk to the distraught man as vehicles whizzed past. Although Alvarado said the man ordered her to stay away, she edged closer. When she got within about two arm’s lengths of him, she said, Tucker straddled the guard rail.

That’s when Alvarado said she realized Tucker was serious about jumping.

She said she leaped toward him as he swung both legs over the edge and clutched his leather jacket by its shoulders at the moment he began to jump.

“I just grabbed onto his jacket. I knew I wouldn’t be able to hold him for a long time,” Alvarado recalled, saying that she draped her body across the guard rail to keep a firm grip. “I was more afraid of getting hit by a car than both of us falling.”

When she felt him slowly slipping from her grasp, Alvarado said, she yelled for him to help. He told her to “Leave me alone,” but did not struggle, she said.

Twice, she said, she held Tucker with one hand while using the other to tap a walkie-talkie button on her left shoulder to call for help. “He’s over the edge!” she said she screamed. “I was yelling at the top of my lungs.”

Officers who responded to her plea estimated that she had held Tucker for more than 30 seconds. “It seemed like hours to me,” she said, shaking her head and smiling. In all, five officers pulled Tucker to safety.

Alvarado, a 1 1/2-year-veteran of the Highway Patrol, attributed her strength and quick reflexes to “the adrenaline at the time.”

CHP officials said Tucker was taken to Los Angeles police headquarters and is undergoing mental evaluation.