Becky Cleary swivels left and right in an office chair, looking out the window at a disappointing view of rain clouds and the top of the building next door. The constant buzzing of fluorescent lights provide no relief from the deafening silence surrounding her. Her mop of mousy brown hair is twisted up into a knot, with two pieces sticking straight up on top like antennae. Her shoeless right foot dangles atop her left leg crossed under it. Though it looks like Cleary rolled out of bed this morning, there is an alertness in her green eyes that insinuates she is fully present.

Just 12 hours ago, Cleary was pouring ales from the tap at Gordon Biersch, counting tips shoved into her palm while Top 40 music blared in the background. Now, she sits at an empty desk at the Institute on Aging. It’s quiet this early gray Saturday morning, but not for long. The phone rings: “Friendship Line, this is Becky…So, how are you feeling today? Not well? What can we do to make you feel better?” Ten minutes later, the caller seems a bit less hopeless. Cleary continues, “Why don’t we start with taking a shower? Does that sound like something you can do? I think you’ll feel better then…Okay? Bye.”

Cleary, 25, has been spending four hours every Saturday morning for 13 months talking people old enough to be her grandparents out of the dark hole of elderly depression. She is one of 15 volunteers at the Friendship Line, located in the Institute on Aging in San Francisco. Cleary has no formal training in counseling or therapy, but that doesn’t seem to matter. What she does have is a willingness to listen. “I’m just an outlet,” she says, but to the hundreds of desperate callers who utilize this largely unknown crisis prevention line, she is a life saver.

In 1969, Patrick Arbore found the body of a friend in his fifties who had killed himself out of fear of becoming old. Arbore was 19 at the time. Four years later, he started the Friendship Line. During the late 1960’s and 1970’s, elder suicide reached its peak, which Arbore contributes to a lack of services made available for them. Though they are often overlooked, elderly people have the highest rate of suicide over every other age group.

Most of the callers to the line have some form of mental disease, are suffering from depression after losing a partner, or are experiencing mobility issues after becoming physically disabled. Others just need someone to take the edge off the anxiety of figuring out what to do with their days. This may seem like a small problem, but for people who have worked their whole lives and now have nothing to do, it’s a mentally paralyzing game. It’s also something Cleary can relate to.

The Southern California native graduated last May from S.F. State with a Bachelor’s degrees in psychology and chemistry. Though she bartends four or five nights a week, she seems a bit lost without the consistency of school to keep her grounded. “It’s like you spend your whole life doing something, then its gone,” she says.

Cleary’s newly found free time is usually filled by free shows, movies and a good amount of beer. “It gets rough sometimes,” she says about her party in the p.m. to volunteer transition in the a.m. “I try not to party too hard on Friday. I want to be fully conscious for the callers on Saturday morning,” she says.

Co-workers at Gordon Biersch mockingly called her a “do-gooder” when they learned of her Saturday morning pastime. But Cleary doesn’t volunteer to earn brownie points. “I know I’m doing something not many people can say they do,” she says. “I just feel really good walking out of a shift at the Friendship Line.”

Though it doesn’t seem to damper Cleary’s spirit, listening to the sound of desperation and utter sadness four hours a week can take a toll on even the most upbeat volunteers. Rick Appleby is the coordinator of the Friendship Line and program assistant in the Department of Psychology at the Institute on Aging. He admits that when he first began working, he was blatantly depressed. “I just kept thinking, this is what awaits me?”

To counterbalance the depressing aspect of work, Appleby has organized monthly debriefing meeting for volunteers to get some of the trauma off their chests. “It’s challenging doing this work, but our volunteers seem to deal with it very well,” he says.

Doug Kaplan, 37, had butterflies in his stomach the first few times he answered the phone at the Friendship Line. He stumbled upon an ad for volunteers on Craigslist and decided to apply after promising himself a job that would make him feel better than the “dot com” gig he left five years ago.
After a month and a half, Kaplan has already developed his own style of communication for callers. “I don’t tell people to want to live,” he says. “ I realize their quality of life is lower than worth living. What’s most valuable is to listen and empathize.”

Though Kaplan has a full-time job as an activity director at the Alzheimer’s Senior Access Center in Marin, and has a 16-month-old son at home, he wouldn’t want to spend his Tuesday mornings any other way. “I have never been the type to volunteer, but I really enjoy helping these people through their problems,” he says.

Marie Wylan, 67, stood in the middle of a stranger’s yard sale on a sunny morning and shouted that her daughter had just killed herself. “I was out of the social realm of politeness. I was crazy,” she says recalling the few months after her oldest child’s suicide in 1997.

Though Wylan herself has never been suicidal, she continues to come to the Institute on Aging for monthly grief counseling. She says she doesn’t know what she would have done without it in her time of need. “I just adore Patrick (Arbore),” she says.

While Wylan realizes that elderly depression could be just around the corner for her, she plans to stay physically and mentally active to avoid becoming a victim. She says enthusiastically, “I have friends. We want to be different. We don’t want to do it the old, depressing way.” With the Friendship Line intact, and volunteers as dedicated as Cleary and Kaplan, Wylan has little to worry about.