SOFTWARE DONATION: Red Earth Software of Boulder donated more than $100,00 in software to nonprofits in the United States and Canada. Among the recipients were the American Red Cross, Medecins San Frontieres and YWCA, as well as food banks, schools, humane societies and libraries. Red Earth Software specializes in email-management software for companies that use Microsoft Exchange Server.

MILLION MILESTONE: Employees of 2-10 Home Buyers Warranty raised more than $64,000 for the Colorado-Wyoming Chapter of the National Multiple Sclerosis Society. In total, 2-10 Home Buyers Warranty has raised a cumulative $1 million in donations by participating in the MS Walk for 20 years.

SCHOLARSHIPS: The New York City-based Citi Foundation made a $50,000 grant to the Denver-based American Indian College Fund that will continue the City Foundation Scholarship and Career Exploration Program.

• Tasha Russman of Denver, who attends Scripps College, received a $10,000 scholarship from the Donald A. Strauss Public Service Scholarship Foundation of Newport Beach, Calif. The scholarships fund public-service projects devised by the students. Russman plans to establish a program to help girls in Kenya start community-development initiatives.

• The AARP Foundation gave a total of $15,640 in scholarships to 19 low-income women in Colorado. The scholarships are for older women seeking new job skills, training and educational opportunities to support themselves and their families.

FOR GIRL SCOUTS: The Wal-Mart Foundation gave a grant of $25,000 to the Girls Scouts of Colorado in support of Forever Green, a national program that teaches girls how to lead for the purpose of improving the environment and protecting natural resources. The Girl Scouts of Colorado will focus its Forever Green activities on energy use, water use and waste management, especially recycling.

JOB SAFETY: Pinnacol Assurance gave $25,000 to the Colorado School of Public Health’s Mountain and Plains Education and Research Center (MAP ERC). The money will be used for continuing education programs about workplace health and safety training for professionals in the Rocky Mountain region. The MAP ERC is one of 17 national centers for research and training in occupational health and safety.

BELT WAY: Gates Corp. awarded six scholarships of $2,000 each to high school seniors who competed in the 2011 FIRST Robotics Team competition, using a Gates belt drive on their robots. Gates provided both components and money to the national science and technology competition, held in St. Louis.

MONEY FROM OIL: Keller Bros. raised more than $2,800, and filled a Denver Rescue Mission van with food and diapers, as a result of its July 29 “Oil Change to Change Lives” fundraiser. The event included charitable efforts from Biker Jim’s Gourmet Hot Dogs and the Littleton High School girls basketball team.

SWIMMING: The Colorado Vault & Safe Deposit Box Co. donated three swimming scholarships for underprivileged youth at the YMCA of Denver, raising the money at a shredding day. Bayaud Enterprises supplied the shredding van, with volunteers coming from Premier Solutions Inc. and First Tech Federal Credit Union.

UNDERWEAR FOR KIDS: The nonprofit Underwearness Inc. collected 3,700 pairs of new underwear for children and raised about $25,000 at its 5K run/walk held on July 22. The “Drop Your Drawers and Run Wild” event drew 950 participants. Sponsors included Hogan Lovells, CoBiz Financial, Bradsby Group, The Harris Law Firm, LoDo Dental and Holmes Communications.

BACKPACKS FOR KIDS: The Denver Bar Association’s Community Action Network collected enough school supplies to fill more than 300 backpacks. More than 40 law firms contributed. Students in the Educational Outreach Program of Denver Public Schools, Comitis Family Services and Children’s Outreach Project — all of which serve underprivileged, homeless and disabled students — were treated to a day at the Denver Zoo on Aug. 7, where they received their backpacks.

COMBINED EFFORT: Along with Microsoft Corp., Levy Restaurant and Centerplate, the nonprofit We Don’t Waste distributed more than 34,000 servings of food at 17 agencies that help the disadvantaged in the Denver area. This was tied in with Microsoft holding a company sales event in Denver.

A college freshman living miles from home; a Denver businessman struggling with bipolar disorder; a recently divorced father of two launching his first company… Despite different lives, all of these people have experienced intense feelings of unbearable despair. Two out of three committed suicide.

“We were thrown into a complete abyss,” says Lydia McKee, whose 19-year-old son Patrick was attending college in Florida. Miles from Colorado, he secretly struggled to adjust to his new life. “You just wish that you could’ve had the discussion about what was going on,” McKee says.

That discussion is an important component of suicide prevention and a primary goal of Denver-based Carson J. Spencer Foundation (CJSF) whose namesake was a successful businessman who took his life after poor business decisions during a manic episode left him broke. “Carson fell into a deep despair really fast and wasn’t able to recover,” says his sister, Sally Spencer-Thomas, who cofounded CJSF. The non-profit seeks to sustain life through suicide prevention programs, supporting families affected by suicide and coaching young leaders to become suicide prevention advocates.

After McKee lost her son eight years ago, she was traumatized. “I didn’t know anyone else that this had happened to,” she says. “Everyone is very sad for you, but they back off. That’s part of what the real trauma is.” McKee found solace in reading and she realized that she was not alone. “You have to understand that their mindset at the time is distorted. They don’t see a way out.”

McKee and Spencer-Thomas met at a support group, and McKee began volunteering with CJSF. She started arranging iCare packages for families affected by suicide. The packages contain a grief journal, books about losing a loved one, resources on how to talk to children and referrals for support groups. “It gives the people surrounding the bereaved family a way to help, because people are often confused about what to do,” says Spencer-Thomas.

Assembling the iCare packages has helped McKee cope with her loss. “Once you really start to educate people, it helps,” she says. “It’s also a way I connect with my son. You still have this love, it doesn’t stop. It has to go somewhere.”

It was the love for his children that kept Brett Zachman moving forward in the midst of despair. The recently divorced “extreme extrovert” with a newly launched company was living and working alone. “Whether you’re talking mental illness or divorce, when you intertwine the male side of the equation, you start talking about things like failure,” Zachman says. “The worse it got, the more private I became, because I was embarrassed.”

His young children gave Zachman the strength to overcome his anguish. “It didn’t matter what I was going through, I had to be there for them,” he says. “But I wasn’t prepared. This is a different fight; a fight of the internal. And this is why a lot of men are losing.”

Zachman met Spencer-Thomas and shared his story at CJSF’s Man Therapy campaign. Men are nearly four times more likely than women to die by suicide, reports the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, so the Man Therapy program is geared at working-age men, using satire to encourage discussions about mental health.

A different type of suicide prevention program is taking place in 80 metro Denver high school classrooms. The FIRE Within is a youth entrepreneurship program that gives students hands-on experience running a business while training them to be suicide prevention advocates.

Funded by a grant from the Adolph Coors Foundation, the FIRE Within program preserves Carson J. Spencer’s legacy to help entrepreneurs attend college. Students have completed projects such as a T-shirt line that facilitates conversations about helping distraught people. “The students are really innovative and passionate,” Spencer-Thomas says. “They’re making money and really changing the culture of their school.”

Spencer-Thomas’s nonprofit work keeps her brother’s spirit alive. “I hope he’s looking down from wherever he is and seeing all these amazing young students growing leadership skills,” she says. “That’s how I like to remember him.

MATTER OF FACT
- Every 14.2 minutes someone in the United States dies by suicide.
- Nearly 1,000,000 people make a suicide attempt every year.
- 90% of people who die by suicide have a diagnosable and treatable psychiatric disorder at the time of their death
- Suicide rates are highest for people between the ages of 40 and 59.
- 941 recorded Coloradoans died by suicide in 2009.
According to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, afsp.org, 2009.

MAKE THE CALL
If you’re struggling with serious depression and thoughts of suicide, call the national hotline at 800.273.8255 or the Denver Metro Crisis Services line at 888.885.1222.

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