Maury Roemhild died by suicide in 2017. The Maple Grove, Minn., firefighter was just 31 when he ended his life.
First responders – firefighters, law enforcement, emergency medical services personnel – face unique stresses in their work, and Roemhild’s death galvanized his grieving mother into trying to stop that turmoil from overwhelming them.
Carol Castle created Life Coins specifically for them. The coins are making their way across the nation, into the hands of individuals and whole departments, and into the pockets of first responders locally in the Northwoods.
One flank of the double-sided coin reads “Fire and Rescue Suicide Prevention” and the other “Law Enforcement Suicide Prevention.” Both are inscribed with the Safe Call Now phone number, 206-459-3020.
Castle has since added coins especially made for veterans.
In developing the coins she researched 16 suicide hotlines and found one, Safe Call Now, that had two critical features: It is answered by public safety professionals and former officers who understand the demands of first responders’ jobs and are trained to handle crisis calls, and the callers remain anonymous. No list of who calls or their phone numbers is kept.
“It was founded by Sean Riley, a cop from Washington State, in the fashion of what he needed 22 years ago and wasn’t available,” Castle said. Addiction had forced Riley to leave his 20-year law enforcement career, but his eventual rehabilitation and recovery led him into becoming a substance abuse counselor and then starting Safe Call Now.
Castle said she felt lucky to have found the hotline when she began putting together the Life Coins program.
“I really think God put it in my head,” she said, “and when I started figuring out what exactly do I need to get this done, He just put the right people together.”
Her background also may have led her to the project: Before retiring, Castle was a part-time police officer, then she worked for the Minnesota Department of Corrections, and then she was a psych tech in a psych hospital for 10 years.
The idea for the coins came to her at 2:30 one morning. She got up and went onto the computer researching the idea, and by 7:30 that morning had a solid picture drawn of the first coin. The idea was enthusiastically received when she ran it by a couple of first responders.
Safe Call Now is not just for those considering suicide. Established in 2009, it is a confidential, 24-hour crisis line and support service for first responders, emergency services personnel, medical professionals, and their family members that provides “education, support, healthy alternatives and resources to save lives and put families back together.”
It helps the responders deal with a variety of life issues, including mental health and addiction.
“Our partnerships allow us to support first responders and medical professionals across the nation in learning about and accessing preventative wellness, crisis care, and wrap around supports,” Safe Call Now says on its website.
Studies have shown that first responders tend to have higher suicide rates than the general population.
Spreading the word
A network is forming in the Northwoods to distribute the coins locally. Recipes for Freedom Washburn County is spearheading a fundraising campaign to get them to veterans and to every law enforcement, fire and ambulance department in Washburn County – and eventually to those in surrounding communities that also serve portions of the county.
“It’s just a local patriotic group that’s trying to do things in the community,” said member Connie Lester, adding, “It’s about bringing the community back together.”
Lester said the county has approximately 185 firefighters and EMTs, plus law enforcement. As the money is raised, coins are bought.
So far the group has raised about $1,000 and given coins to the Shell Lake and Spooner police and EMS departments. Birchwood’s and Minong’s will be next, along with the fire departments throughout the county.
Approximately another $1,200 needs to be raised for those purchases. Any extra will go to departments in surrounding counties that also respond in Washburn County.
“We’re hoping to reach out to the ones that service our county, even though they may not totally be in our county, because the county line shouldn’t be a definitive stop,” Lester said. “This is about helping the ones that are helping those that take care of us.”
She added, “We don’t go from person to person, we go to the department head and say, ‘This is what we’re doing for you. You give them to the people that work with you.’”
So the departments themselves pass out the coins.
“When we’re going to drop them off somewhere,” Lester said, “I try not to get too technical on the phone because I don’t want it to feel like charity. I don’t want it to come across that way. I want them to see this is because you take care of us. And so we want to take care of you.”
Local churches are being encouraged to support the program, too, and Sarona United Methodist has sponsored 20 veteran coins and 10 of the first responder ones.
Washburn County Veterans Service Officer Joe Schmidt supports the Life Coins for veterans. He has had intervention training, and he said that when people have suicidal ideations and are calling a helpline, they are serious and the call can help get them to a safe point.
He said he 100% supports the Life Coins for veterans.
They need to know someone cares for them and that they can reach out to someone they trust who will take care of them in their time of need, Schmidt said.
Saving lives
The coins do save lives.
“Our first two lives saved was a firefighter in Canada and a juvenile in California, within 40 minutes after we went live with Life Coins,” Castle said.
She has gotten texts from phone numbers that she doesn’t know saying, “Thank you for saving my life. I used your Life Coin.”
She often makes personal trips to an interested department to explain the program, if they are within about three hours of her home in Coon Rapids, Minn.
“I would say 75% of the (police) chiefs I talked to, if I’m in the office, will have tears in their eyes before I leave,” she said. “They’re thankful. And I bet I’ve gotten a hug from every single one. I can’t tell you how wonderful the feedback has been.”
She recalls one who walked with her back to her car and told her that his department had two suicides the previous year and their canine had died.
“And I remember him saying, ‘I didn’t know what I could do for my guys,’ ” she said. The coins are a way to help them.
Giving a coin to someone does not mean the recipient may be suicidal.
“It just means you care,” Castle said, “and it gives them the ability to help people around them. And I always tell people, when you get a Life Coin, take a picture of it, have it on your phone, that way you can send it to somebody that you know may be having trouble, who may need assistance of a phone call. You never know what people are dealing with. But that way you have a tool to give to somebody that you care about.”
Some people buy them for friends, relatives, their children.
The made-in-the-USA coins are $20 for first responders and $25 for military on wrestlingforlife.org. Discounts are given for buying enough for a whole department.
The price of the coins is “just about cost plus shipping,” Castle said.
“It’d be wonderful if they want to adopt their favorite first responder, if they wanted to adopt their local police department, fire department,” Castle said. “We’ve had people adopt their ambulance service in their town.”
One person donated 348 Life Coins to North Memorial in the Minneapolis area and two sponsors are buying the coins for the entire, multi-precinct Minneapolis Police Department.
The coins are in Castle’s basement, and she personally does all of the packaging and shipping.
“There’s no paid help,” she said.
Castle, who runs the Minnesota Wrestling Hall of Fame, originally started with Life Coins at a wrestling convention is Las Vegas. She introduced Wrestling 4 Life Coins and by the next day had given out 540 of them.
“We are all wrestling 4 life some more than others,” the Wrestling 4 Life web page says.
The coins are for wrestlers, boxers and mixed martial arts fighters, who have a two or three times higher rate of suicide than the general population because of head trauma, Castle said.
She would like to do a coin for youths, too, but that is impossible until anonymity can be guaranteed, and it can’t because they are juveniles.
Looking toward the future, Castle wants to have coins made for medical personnel, veterinarians and animal rescue staff.
“People involved in rescue – rescuing animals, veterinarians, especially female veterinarians, kennel staff, have a high rate of suicide,” she said.
It was a couple of years between the time Castle’s son died and the start of Life Coins.
It “took me that long to kind of come to a realization that I’ve got to turn this into some kind of light, that I had the background to do something good,” she said, “and stop other moms from going through what I’m going through. And that’s kind of how it started. I just don’t want another mom to deal with what I had to deal with.”