From Hidden Brain Media, I'm Shankar Vedantam.

This is My Unsung Hero, stories where one person reached out to help another in a time of need.

My on-sung hero is the kind stranger who helped me get to my grandfather's funeral.

And he just says, today, you, tomorrow me.

And I never...

Thank you. Thank you very much for changing my life.

Today's story comes from a listener named Jay.

He asked us to use his nickname

to allow him to speak candidly

about a time when he struggled with

thoughts of suicide. When Jay was in college, he made a string of decisions that landed him

in a detention center, awaiting trial for breaking into a building on campus. He was detained

early one morning, around 1 a.m., and within an hour of sitting alone in his cell,

the reality of his situation began to sink in.

My cell was kind of the last one on the hall.

There was nobody across from me.

There was nobody to my right.

There was just one person off to my left.

And I pretty much thought that my life as I knew it was going to be over.

And I had decided that the world would be better off without me in it. And I had made a plan

to end my life. I was sobbing, emotional, but resolute.

But just in that moment when I was ready to do it,

...