Netjets US Summer 2023

GOODWILL
A BRIDGE
TO WELLNESS
The brainchild of former police officers, First Responders’ Bridge offers
a chance for traumatized men and women to find a new perspective.
// By Heidi Mitchell
ISTOCK
LINE OF DUTY
First responders face
situations that can
traumatize them for years.
SINCE 2019 (except for one missed due to
Covid), First Responder’s Bridge has hosted
three retreats per year, and they are always
full. What do these retreats provide? A safe
space for frontline workers—police and fire
officers—to talk through their issues. It is a
service that is more critical now than ever.
It all started with a 911 call. Mick Yinger,
a 21-year veteran of the Columbus, Ohio,
police force, who was enjoying retirement in
Virginia, heard about two officers who were
responding to a call and ended up murdered.
Yinger was hit hard—he had grown up in the
Ohio town where the shootings occurred—and
got to talking to his best friend since the
seventh grade, Mike Pavolino, also a police
officer and Army vet, about all the tragedies
they’d witnessed. “It was 2018, and at that
time, more police officers and fire fighters
were dying by suicide than in the line of
duty,” Yinger says from his home in suburban
Columbus. “There is so much trauma that is
specific to what first responders endure.”
Witnessing domestic abuse, self-harm,
overdoses, even having to “take someone
out” on the job, as Yinger had done, can
haunt these everyday heroes in invisible
capes. Meanwhile, according to the Ruderman
Family Foundation, of the 18,000 law
enforcement agencies in this country, only
about three to five percent provide suicide or
mental health programs. So Yinger decided
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