Any other night, the small California town of San Juan Bautista is shrouded in darkness, lit only by scattered streetlights and the dim glow of a few saloons. But on the first Saturday of December, a parade lights it up. Dozens of cars wrapped in Christmas lights roll through streets that look as if they were pulled from an old western. Since its inception in the 2000s, the parade has become a tradition in this village in the foothills of the Gabilan range, just 100 miles (160km) south of San Francisco.
Anthony Botelho, a county supervisor, had never missed one. In 2018, exhausted from a trip from Arizona, he meant to stay home, until his longtime friend Jim West, the town’s mayor, convinced him otherwise.
Botelho and West had known each other for more than 20 years, since West moved to this cluster of single-family homes around the old mission built for Franciscan monks more than 200 years ago. Through the small talk of local politics, they had become friends. That December night, they had dinner, cruised in West’s refurbished antique Ford, tossed candy to children and ended the evening as they often did: with beers at a bar, talking about how to fix the town’s problems.
Five days later, Botelho got a call from the company where his friend worked. West had grabbed his gun, climbed into his truck, driven to his workplace and ended his life.
“I was deeply, deeply upset with myself for not catching anything,” Botelho said. “I didn’t catch a thing. Not a thing. Not a thing.”
For more than 20 years, Jim West was the public face of Graniterock, serving as the bridge between the community and one of San Benito county’s largest employers. Photograph: Courtesy of Tina West
The news spread like floodwater. Those who knew West – and most did – were left in shock, wondering what had led this smiling, big-hearted man to such a tragic end. West had been the mayor, but he was much more than that. He was the guy who brought his truck to every Día de los Muertos parade so the local theatre group could climb aboard and perform. The guy who helped build trails, parks and playgrounds. The guy who always showed up. After moving throughout the country for decades, West had formed a deep bond with San Juan Bautista, and there, he found meaning. “It became home in his heart,” said his daughter, Tina West. What he loved most were the people, she recalled. And nothing made him prouder than being their mayor, a position he held until he died.
More Americans die by gun suicide than by gun homicide. For decades, rural communities like San Juan Bautista have endured higher suicide rates than cities, and most of these deaths involve firearms. In a town this small, a single suicide upsets the rhythm of life to such an extent that traditional ways of measuring suicides stop making sense.
West’s death alone – in a population of just 2,200 people – was enough to alter the town’s suicide rate to more than three times the national average (14.2 per 100,000) and four times the state’s (11.3 per 100,000). In communities this small or that record too few deaths, the traditional per-100,000 calculation becomes statistically meaningless. Epidemiologists and other public health experts have developed alternative approaches, such as aggregating data over multiple years, calculating years of potential life lost, or borrowing statistics from neighboring counties.
The problem goes well beyond San Juan Bautista. Nine in 10 counties across the US, a study found, have populations too small to produce reliable firearm suicide rates under guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which consider rates based on fewer than 20 deaths to be unreliable, and prohibit reporting any rate based on fewer than 10. And those counties tend to be rural, precisely the places where the need is the greatest. To address this, the researchers developed a model that fills the gaps by borrowing data from neighboring counties – giving more weight to the closest ones – to produce a new rate.
West’s death left the town in mourning. The news traveled as far as Washington DC, where a month later, the US representative Jimmy Panetta, who represented the area, wrote a statement in West honor that he entered in the congressional record.
“His presence in the community transformed many lives,” Panetta wrote. “He will be remembered as a distinguished community member, mayor, and friend.”
The crisis
Mental health experts consider suicide a public health problem, and prevention strategies include expanding mental health services, improving financial security and strengthening social connections. But all of these solutions are harder to provide in rural communities where resources are scarce, distances are long, people are more isolated, stigma towards asking for help persists – and firearms are more common.
“In smaller communities, the people who might be in charge of mental health could also be community members themselves,” said Makena Volzing, a psychologist for Family Service Agency of the Central Coast, the non-profit that operates the suicide hotline and leads suicide prevention programs in Monterey, Santa Cruz and San Benito counties. “So there might be fear from people to access these services because they don’t want rumors being spread.”
Once primarily agricultural, San Benito county, where San Juan Bautista is located, has become a bedroom community whose residents commute to Silicon Valley and the Bay Area. Many residents, said Mariana Pereyra-Pitts, the county’s deputy director of clinical services, seek care near their jobs rather than at home, weakening the demand for in-county services. And being next door to the epicenter of the global economy also makes it harder for a county with a tight budget to retain clinicians.
The Mission San Juan Bautista and farmland in San Juan Bautista, California, on 3 November 2022. Photograph: Jane Tyska/East Bay Times via Getty Images
“Staff is really hard to come by because our wages are less than our surrounding, bigger counties where they can get paid more,” Pereyra-Pitts said. “Retaining or recruiting good, quality clinicians and staff is really hard.”
Though research shows suicide prevention interventions can reduce attempts and deaths, Tina West believes that more mental health services wouldn’t have changed what happened to her father.
By December 2018, Jim West was finishing his term as mayor. He hadn’t sought re-election and was retiring in January. Though he felt anxious about retirement, he was looking forward to it, she said. Then, West had a stroke. That, Tina West said, played a big role.
Jim West had led a strong, active life. After leaving the marines, he raced motorcycles, worked in the mining industry for decades and frequently sailed with his daughter on the Chesapeake Bay outside DC. Even in his 40s and 50s, he told her he didn’t want to grow old. “I don’t want to have to be in a walker or a wheelchair,” she recalled him saying.
So when the stroke hit, he got angry, Tina West said.
“He didn’t want to have to fight and go through rehab, and not be fully independent,” Tina West said. “He chose of his own free will not to do it. I miss him terribly and wish he were here, but I respect his choice.”
Interviews with survivors have shown how quickly suicide unfolds. For roughly three in four people who attempt suicide, less than an hour passes between thought and action; for a quarter, it’s less than five minutes. In a crisis, people tend to use what they have at hand, and when that’s a gun – which men, and veterans, are more likely to own – the lethality is far higher. The impulsiveness of suicide, however, can be impeded: restricting access to lethal means or making them less deadly has proven to reduce suicides. In rural Asia and the Pacific Islands, where pesticides are a common method of suicide, controlling highly toxic pesticides led to a decline in suicide rates.
A plaque honoring Jim West was placed on the Juan Bautista de Anza national historic trail, whose rehabilitation around San Juan Bautista he spearheaded. Photograph: BenitoLink
In San Benito county, nearly half of the 39 suicides reported in the past decade were men who took their lives with a firearm. “Women are twice as likely to attempt suicide, but men are twice as likely to complete a suicide,” said Volzing, the psychologist. “That is because men tend to use more lethal means such as guns.”
The impetuous nature of suicide also means it’s not inevitable: nine out of 10 people who survive an attempt and receive medical care ultimately go on living; of those nine, seven never try again.
For Tina West, it’s still hard to recall the suddenness. She had spoken with her father the week before and he seemed fine.
“He had a stroke, wrote a note, drove off in the truck and never came back,” she said.
Ripple effects
After West died, the county’s behavioral health agency sent a crisis response team to San Juan Bautista. Licensed clinicians held roundtables with county employees and anyone who wanted to speak about West’s death. People came to share their feelings of loss and shock with fellow residents and professionals and participate in deep-breathing exercises, according to the agency’s interim director, Rachel White.
“A lot of people were affected,” White said. “So we did what we could to go out there, meet with them, talk with them and debrief it.”
Research into the ripple effect of suicide shows there were reasons to worry. One death can expose up to 135 people to mental health conditions like depression and anxiety. In some extreme cases, suicides spread through what’s known as suicide contagion. Experts have found that suicidal behavior can be transmitted, either directly by having a personal connection with someone who died by suicide or indirectly through how suicide is covered by the media.
Jim West transformed the lives of many people in San Juan Bautista. ‘He will be remembered as a distinguished community member, mayor, and friend,’ the US representative Jimmy Panetta wrote in a statement entered into the congressional record. Photograph: Courtesy of Tina West
In tight-knit communities, where everyone knows everyone, contagion can lead to suicide clusters, particularly among teenagers and young adults. Clusters among young people have been documented around the world – for example, eight deaths on an Indigenous reservation in Canada in 1974-1975; nine deaths in eight weeks in an Indigenous community in the US plains region in the early 1980s; 12 deaths in the Patagonian town of Las Heras, Argentina, in 1997-1999; and 10 deaths in Bridgend, Wales, from December 2007 to February 2008.
That, however, didn’t happen in San Juan Bautista or San Benito county. California department of public health data shows the county’s suicide rate is actually below the state’s overall rate. Yet suicide remains a pressing concern. According to a state survey, one in five San Benito county residents has thought about killing themselves, the highest figure across the central coast. And the suicide hotline receives more calls each year, said Andrea Núñez, the community outreach coordinator at Family Service Agency.
For Botelho, losing West closed a chapter of his life. He was shocked, heartbroken and angry. “You just don’t believe it,” he said. “One day you’re in a parade, throwing candy to children and enjoying a beer, and the next you’re mourning the fact that he’s gone forever.”
There was guilt, too. If he had known West was struggling, he said, he would have done anything to help. Five months later, Botelho announced he would not run for re-election and would leave the San Benito county board of supervisors after 16 years in office.
“A person doesn’t have too many friends in life,” he said. There is no one to have that level of camaraderie with anymore, he said, someone to just sit with, talk and have a beer the way he once did with West. “I don’t do it now. Maybe I’d still be more interested in local politics if he were still around.”
The legacy
A month after West’s death, newly elected mayor César Flores climbed onto the running board of West’s refurbished Ford. Flores, a biker and longtime community activist, had met West years earlier at the Rotary Club. West was the one who encouraged him to run for city council, who helped him campaign and become the candidate with the most votes. Now, West was gone and the atmosphere, Flores recalls, was somber.
So on that cold January morning, Flores, Botelho, Tina West and several other residents gathered to celebrate mayor Jim West’s life.
In a small town, every loss is noticeable. “When someone is missing, people notice,” said White from the behavioral health center. West’s death, she adds, made the community much more aware of each other.
“When you’re small, you don’t have the resources of a big city, and all we have is each other,” she said. “The community got together and backed each other up like nobody’s business. It created more vigilance, and people became more caring.”
No known suicide has occurred in San Juan Bautista since West’s death. West left his book collection to the local library, and it now occupies about 6ft of shelf space under his name. A plaque bearing his name and highlighting “his passion for the community” and “his caring heart for his friends” was placed on the historic Juan Bautista de Anza national historic trail, which connects the US-Mexico border in Arizona to the Bay Area. West spearheaded the rehabilitation of that trail around San Juan Bautista, and five months after his death, antique car enthusiasts – knowing his love for vintage cars – held a tour in his honor.
Local antique car enthusiasts held a tour honoring Jim West’s life five months after his death, along the Juan Bautista de Anza national historic trail. Photograph: BenitoLink
The city, following residents’ suggestions, named a new park after him. Mayor Jim West memorial park sits west of town at the end of a cul-de-sac, where children climb and run on the playground. Tina West has been there with her daughter and granddaughter. “It’s a legacy,” she said.
The park, Flores said, was the neighbors’ way of remembering a neighbor who made San Juan Bautista better.
“We should celebrate his life, what he contributed and what made him happy,” Flores said. “We remember the good things, and we move on. We keep on doing what we’re doing: we keep on serving our community.”
This story was produced in partnership with the California Local News Fellowship. Another version of this story was published by BenitoLink.
If you or someone you know is in crisis, help is available. In San Benito county, you can call (831) 902-2911. Elsewhere, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is available by calling or texting 988. You can also chat online at 988lifeline.org or text HOME to 741741 to connect with a crisis counselor.
In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123, or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at befrienders.org