by Patricia Davis, Washington Post
She was going to jump off the Woodrow Wilson Bridge, she said, but not until the media showed up. Not today, the Alexandria officer said, forget that. He hopped out of his police car, walked over to the railing and grabbed the 34-year-old woman. It was over in seconds.
Well, sort of.
The media did come -- but not to cover another potential jumper tying up the busy commuter bridge. The officer who saved her life yesterday was none other than Charles Samarra. Police Chief Charles E. Samarra.
“It was no big thing,” the police chief said yesterday. “It takes more courage to go to City Council and testify.”
Well, not really.
You see, Samarra is afraid of heights. The last place he wanted to be was on top of that bridge.
But it just so happened he was on the Capital Beltway, about a half-mile from the bridge, when the call came in over the police radio in his dark blue Crown Victoria: Trouble unknown. Woman stopped on the bridge looking over the edge. Several calls transferred to state police. Inner loop.
It was 9:03 a.m., and Samarra was on his way to Alexandria police headquarters from his home in Maryland.
He was running a little late. Traffic was tied up while Prince George’s County police investigated how a man’s body ended up on the side of the Beltway in Oxon Hill.
As it turned out, Samarra was the first officer to arrive on the bridge.
He saw a state transportation truck and a private vehicle with Texas tags parked on the bridge. Two men were talking to the woman in the white T-shirt and blue shorts.
“You always have a plan if you’re a cop,” said Samarra, a police officer for 35 years, 23 of them in the District. “I had my plan. I knew what I was going to do. I knew I was going to get her away from the bridge, not just for her sake but for mine.” Remember the height thing.
“I just walked over. I kind of grabbed her as fast as I could.”
That’s when the woman told him she was planning to jump, but only after the media got there.
“First of all, you’re not going to jump off the bridge,” he told her. “Second of all, the media’s not coming.”
While D.C. police took the woman to a hospital, Samarra began fielding a flurry of media calls. “My officers are out on the street every day,” the famously low-profile chief protested. “They don’t get the press coverage. This one doesn’t deserve press coverage. I was just like them, doing my job.”