Bridge Incident Adds to Seattle’s Travails

Days after frustrated motorists encouraged a distraught woman on a bridge to jump, Seattle was searching its soul and wondering what ever happened to the caring, friendly city of laid-back latte drinkers.

Seattle was thrust into the harsh and unflattering glare of the national spotlight Tuesday, when a 26-year-old woman leaped from a 160-foot-high bridge after some passing motorists, tangled up in the traffic snarls she created, yelled in brazen terms for her to jump.

Police then closed the bridge so they could concentrate on trying to talk the woman to safety.

Their three-hour effort failed, but the woman, whose identity has not been disclosed, survived her plunge into a busy ship canal linking Puget Sound to Lake Union and Lake Washington.

She was hospitalized with chest and abdominal injuries. By Thursday, her condition had improved to serious from critical, a hospital spokesman said. Seattle’s reputation, however, was practically on life support.

The city has been jolted in the last two years by violent trade protests, a major earthquake, a lethal Mardi Gras riot, and the departure of the headquarters of its chief corporate citizen, aerospace giant Boeing Co.

The jumper incident landed in papers across the country and was highlighted on national television programs such as “The Today Show” and “Good Morning America.”

Local hand-wringing was still much in evidence Thursday as the episode dominated newspaper columns and letters pages.

One letter to the Seattle Times lamented: “I’m ashamed of all those people who encouraged this woman to kill herself. I’m ashamed that this behavior was publicized about my city, where not that long ago it was touted as one of the best places to live.”

But many seemed to work hard to clean the egg off Seattle’s face, flooding the Harborview Medical Center where the woman was being treated with expressions of sympathy and support.

“There’s been over 50 bouquets of flowers sent here and bags of Beanie Babies, dolls, books, balloons, e-mails and cards. It happens sometimes where the community just really cares about one of the patients,” a hospital spokeswoman said.

Nestled between the waters of Puget Sound and the snowcapped peaks of the Cascades, the city of about 540,000 people was once rated the most livable city in America.

The rise of software giant Microsoft Corp. and coffee king Starbucks put Seattle at the forefront of the 1990s economic boom. Residents’ stock portfolios and home values soared along with the city’s fortunes.

But Seattle now faces problems--pollution, traffic, rudeness--once dismissed as big-city woes that would never infect the “Emerald City.”