Golden Gate Bridge jumper survives and jokes about it in Santa Rosa stand-up comedy show

While there, he played flanker for Lobos Rugby Club, which practiced at Elsie Allen High School. Thor was unlike a lot of his teammates — he once showed up at a parent meeting rocking a purple velvet suit and bow tie — but was embraced, rather than ridiculed, for his idiosyncrasies, according to a 2018 story on the club in Sonoma Magazine.

He enrolled at the junior college in 2020, eventually deciding to major in political science, in hopes that it might prepare him “to help people going through what I experienced.”

Dark autumn

McKay was derailed by a confluence of events in the fall of 2022, starting with a deeply disturbing, chance meeting. While walking on Morgan Street in downtown Santa Rosa, he came upon a woman having a seizure, and called 911.

The woman had overdosed. As first responders helped her, McKay realized she was his mother. Eileen Sumi McKay was 52 at the time, “but looked 85,” recalled Thor, who lacked the will to follow her to the hospital.

“I was so done at the moment that I just ran,” he told the Oak Leaf, the Santa Rosa Junior College newspaper, in February of 2023.

McKay was further discouraged by a string of incidents on campus that he perceived as discriminatory, including an episode in which a math instructor called attention to his status as a disabled student in front of the class.

He had been recruited by Delashay Carmona-Benson, then president of the Disabled Students Union, to be her co-president. (Carmona-Benson died last November at the age of 54.)

After advocating for eight months, McKay succeeded in getting the name of that group changed to Universally Empowered Students.

“I don’t like the word ‘disability,’” he said. “There’s a negative stigma around it.”

Carmona-Benson, McKay and others put in many hours of work collaborating with other clubs to put on a “major event” at the end of November called “Tea with Tea.”

But the administration canceled the event, deeply disappointing some students, including McKay.

In a February 2023 email to The Press Democrat explaining why the dinner was called off, a spokesperson for the college said “The ‘Tea with Tea’ event was canceled because the event approval process was not followed.”

Those and other incidents nudged him further into depression. But the biggest push toward his suicidal state, McKay says, was that encounter with his overdosed mother. After seeing her, he stopped taking his antipsychotic medication, cold turkey.

Then came December, which compounded his depression, as it does for many, providing multiple, daily reminders that he had no extended family with whom to celebrate.

On Dec. 18, his 23rd birthday, McKay made up his mind: He would take his own life. He did his homework, and made a plan. Nine days later he boarded Golden Gate Transit’s 101 bus from Santa Rosa to San Francisco.

That bus stopped seven times before depositing him at the south end of the bridge. The trip felt interminable, McKay recalls. “That’s another reason I did it,” he now says. “After all that time I was like, ‘F---, I might as well do it, I’ve been on this bus for two hours.’”

Rare survivor

The Bay was not calm, and that saved his life. McKay landed on his back on the peak of a wave — swells were up to 5 feet that day — which served as a kind of pillow, he explains.

John Bateson, author of “The Final Leap: Suicide on the Golden Gate Bridge,” and a longtime advocate for suicide prevention, found McKay’s survival remarkable.

“I’ve never heard of anyone who survived after landing on their back,” he said.

“Almost all the survivors go in feet first and at a slight angle, so that their body automatically arcs back up to the surface.” Jumpers who go “straight in, feet first,” end up plunging so deep into the Bay that they drown.

About 5% of people who jump live through initial impact, Bateson says, but subsequently drown.

By surviving, McKay gained membership in a very select group. Since it opened in 1937, some 2,000 people are known to have died by jumping off the bridge. That number is “an undercount,” says Bateson, who points out that hundreds of other people “have indicated an intent to go to the bridge to jump, and their bodies were never found, or found too far away to be connected with certainty to the bridge.”

But the fatality rate among jumpers is more than 98%.

“When people jump from the bridge, death is almost guaranteed.”

Not only did McKay not die — he didn’t lose consciousness. Nor did he lose his desire to leave this world. At least not right away.

McKay landed near a giant rock which he then clung to for 40 minutes, until he was rescued by the Coast Guard.

While holding on, he remembers shouting out over the water, “Whatever is out there just take me!”

“I was like, ‘I just want to die.’”

While he’s grateful to be among the living, grateful to the Coast Guard personnel who plucked him from the Bay, grateful for this “new opportunity — I’ll try to do good with it,” McKay also states — quite firmly — that he doesn’t regret jumping.

“I don’t regret anything I did. Because, what’s the point?”

His wide contrarian streak is on display as he discusses the Golden Gate Bridge’s suicide deterrent net, which was completed one year and four days after he leaped from the span.

McKay is skeptical about that barrier, and its price tag in particular, which could be close to $400 million. (Contractors on the project have sued the bridge district for failing to adjust for cost overruns that were beyond the builders’ control.)

“I hate to say it like this, and it may sound kind of messed up, but it’s true: I think it’s kind of bulls--- that we spent $400 million on a net that could’ve gone to other programs.”

He described the barrier as “a Band-Aid,” saying people “are just going to find other ways to do it.”

Did we mention he’s a bit of a contrarian?

A better place

Eight months after chancing upon his mother just after she’d overdosed, McKay learned that she had died on May 29. Hers was one of 79 names read aloud at a December ceremony at the Arlene Francis Center in Santa Rosa, which served as remembrance of people who died homeless in Sonoma County in 2023.

Her son is at peace with that. He’s actually happy for her, he says. “She's in a better place, hopefully, than where she was before. She doesn't have to struggle anymore.”

While McKay himself is in a very good place, back on his meds and stable, he points out that his struggles aren’t necessarily over, either.

“I ain't gonna lie, I still wake up and I think, ‘F---, I shouldn’t have made it. Statistically, I should not be here.“

He sees himself as an advocate for mental health, and as a resource for people who might be thinking of harming themselves.

That’s where the stand-up comes in. “I embrace the fact that life is hard. And while I’m here, I might as well make people laugh about that.”

McKay hastens to note that he doesn’t want to come off as overly negative. “I don’t want to be like, ‘the world sucks and everything’s terrible.’”

But he understands, fully, how people end up in dark places. “Life does suck sometimes. I get what they’re going through.”

Early in his brief set at the Barrel Proof on Wednesday night, McKay shared his plan:

“We’ll start out with suicide jokes, then we’ll move to special-ed jokes.”

Bringing it home five minutes later, as part of a bit demonstrating how few f's he has left to give, McKay shouted out the number on his bank card, including the three-digit security code.

He wasn’t finished giving out digits.

“If you ever want to kill yourself, and you want to talk about it,” he shouted, “my phone number is 707-608-8929.”

You can reach Staff Writer Austin Murphy at austin.murphy@pressdemocrat.com or on Twitter @ausmurph88.