I sold them life: a cliff, an angel, and up to 500 souls saved

He was a salesman who lived opposite a cliff in Sydney for nearly fifty years, and when people asked how he did it, he answered in the only language he had: I sold them life. The official count is 160. His family says 500. He had no training of any kind, which is either comforting or confronting depending on how you read it.

One morning in the 1960s, a woman sat on the edge of a cliff at Watsons Bay, in Sydney's east. She was in deep crisis. Then she heard a stranger's voice behind her:

"Why don't you come over and have a cup of tea?"

The invitation might have seemed strange. She accepted it anyway. She did not yet know she had met Don Ritchie, the man who would later be called the Angel of The Gap.

A few months later she came back to his front door with a bottle of French champagne.

Ritchie had moved into the house opposite that cliff in 1964, and he quickly noticed that not everyone came for the view. In the early years he would physically hold people back while his wife called the police. As he got older he found something that worked better: he walked over with his palms open and asked whether there was anything he could do to help.

Then he invited them across the road for tea. He talked with them, and more importantly he listened. He did this for nearly fifty years.

Asked why, he said: "You can't just sit there and watch them."

Why nobody knows the number

He is officially credited with more than 160 lives, though depending on the source you will see 150, 164 or 180. His family believes it was closer to 500.

Ritchie himself kept no count. Most of the people who walked back across that road with him never filed a report, never gave a name, and never appeared in anyone's statistics. The uncertainty is not sloppy record keeping. It is what happens when the intervention is a conversation rather than a procedure.

He was given the Medal of the Order of Australia and named Australia's Local Hero in 2011. He died in 2012, aged 85.

What he actually did

It is worth being precise about his method, because every part of it is available to anyone.

He noticed. He paid attention to a thing most people train themselves not to see. Someone alone, in the wrong place, for slightly too long.

He approached. This is the part most of us fail. The fear of intruding, of being wrong, of making it worse, keeps people at a distance where nothing can happen. He crossed the road.

He asked rather than told. Not "don't do it". Not a promise that things would get better, which he had no way of keeping. A question that handed the other person something to answer.

He stayed. The tea was not hospitality. It was time, and it moved the conversation to a kitchen table, which is a different place to be than a cliff edge.

He had been a salesman by trade. Asked late in life how he would describe what he had done, he reached for the only vocabulary he had. "I sold them life."

The part that is easy to get wrong

It would be comfortable to read this as a story about an exceptional man, because that lets everyone else off.

He was not exceptional in the way that would excuse us. He had no skills unavailable to a neighbor, a colleague, or a friend who notices that someone has gone quiet. The barrier to doing what he did is not competence. It is the fear of being intrusive, which is almost always the lesser risk.

There is good evidence that asking someone directly about suicide does not plant the idea and does not increase risk. The worry that saying the wrong thing will make it worse is the most common reason people say nothing, and it is the belief most worth abandoning.

What this does not mean

It does not mean a conversation replaces care when someone is in danger. Ritchie called the police many times, and in the early years that was most of what he did. He was one part of a response, not the whole of it.

It does not mean you are responsible for an outcome you cannot control. People died at that cliff during the fifty years he lived there. He could not reach everyone, and neither can anyone else.

And it does not mean living in a state of vigilance about everyone you know. It means that when you do notice something, the cost of asking is lower than you think.

The useful version

Most people reading this will never stand on a cliff with a stranger. The everyday version is smaller and far more common.

Someone has stopped replying. Someone has been off for a few weeks. Someone made a joke that was not quite a joke. The move is the same one he made: notice, cross the road, ask a real question, and stay long enough to hear the answer.

You do not need to know what to say next. He did not either. The asking is the thing.

If you are the one standing at the edge of something right now, in the US you can call or text 988. Anywhere else, findahelpline.com lists verified crisis lines in over 130 countries. Someone asking you a question today would not be an intrusion.

General information only. If you are in immediate danger, contact emergency services.

This article is for general information and is not a substitute for professional care. If you are in crisis or thinking about harming yourself, please contact your local emergency services or a crisis line. See crisis lines.