Produced by the island at WBUR Boston.

Hey quick heads up. This episode of our show mentions suicidal thoughts. Fair warning.

The National Suicide Prevention Line, by the way, is 1-800-273-8255 if you need someone

to talk to. Okay, let's get to it. How did you two meet?

Well, and this is Samantha. We met almost 15 years ago at the University of Arizona,

and we were both in the marching band there. I played the trumpet and I had marched for

a couple years and this was her first year marching.

Yeah and this is Laura now and I actually, my primary instruments are flute and piano.

And a friend of mine talked me into marching trumpet because he didn't think I would like

marching piccolo. So I learned the basics of the trumpet and joined the trumpet section

and we met and then kind of the rest of history I guess.

When people say the rest is history, there's a suggestion that we've all heard this before.

Maybe even that the story itself is typical. But obviously you haven't heard this story

yet. Samantha and Laura live in Phoenix, Arizona. They're both moms, they both work, blah,

blah, the rest is history. But Samantha and Laura's story is actually pretty extraordinary.

The question is where to start. Emory lots of different starting points, but I think we

should start at one of the moments when it seemed like Samantha and Laura's story was

finished. You wrote in your reticum and I think that this had become a life or death situation.

It had. I had a plan to end my life in October of 2016 and to do it in a way where it wouldn't

necessarily look like a suicide. I had an opportunity to go hiking at the Grand Canyon with some

friends. You know, mistakes happen out there and I had to develop a plan basically where I

would end up in the Colorado River, which is a very dangerous stretch of river and not

...