Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, November 27, 1993                   TAG: 9311270163
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: B-3   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: FREDERICKSBURG                                LENGTH: Medium

HE WAS ON LINE IN TIME

Chris Glover, a Mary Washington College senior, switched on his computer Thanksgiving eve in his townhouse in Fredericksburg and tapped into a global communications network called Internet. Among the messages from people around the country was a disturbing one that caught his eye.

An 18-year-old student at the University of Denver was threatening to kill herself.

"Please anybody, talk to me," her message read. "I went to the top of the fire escape. . . . I wanted to jump. Please talk to me; I'm not playing."

Glover first thought it was a joke. There were several messages from the person, but nobody else was responding.

Glover typed a response. "This is Chris. I'm here."

For the next two hours, Glover and the woman talked. The woman, whom Glover later learned was diabetic, said she was taking a new medicine.

"Please, please, please, please, I wanted to jump," she wrote.

"I just kept talking to her," Glover said. Others from around the country then got involved as well, he said.

"I guess I became the center of control," he said.

Finally, the Denver student told Glover she was in the computer lab in the engineering building on campus. Glover telephoned campus security around 9 p.m. and tried to explain.

"They asked me where I was calling from. When I said Virginia, they said, `Yeah, right!' " he said. "But they told me they would check it out."

He called back several times to find out what had happened and was finally told that the suicidal student had been found.

"After the whole thing was over, I posted a letter telling everyone that she was OK," he said.

Officer Mickey Harris from campus security at the University of Denver said Friday that the woman has been hospitalized and is getting counseling.

When Glover returned to his computer Friday, there was a message from Bob Stocker, director of academic computing at the University of Denver.

It said: "I thought you'd like to know your call may have prevented a catastrophe. . . . I'm sure you've made someone else's Thanksgiving a lot happier than it might have been otherwise."