Officer Chris Perez was on patrol in the area of York Bridge and San Pascual Avenue at about 6:50 p.m. Tuesday when he was flagged down by bystanders who said a girl was sitting on the other side of the bridge’s guardrail, threatening to jump. Perez walked to the area where the 12-year-old girl was dangling and spoke to her, learning she was from a group home in Los Angeles that she fled for severe emotional reasons, South Pasadena police officials said. The girl agreed to allow Perez to come closer, and he asked if he could help her back over the bridge railing. "She was sad and just started breaking down even more," he said. The girl told Perez she was scared and needed help, so the officer leaned over the railing, grabbed her in a bear hug and helped her over the railing to safety, police said. Perez sat with the child on the sidewalk and gave her water, police said. He told her he was only an hour into his shift when he was told about the young girl on the bridge. She had told him she only had an aunt -- no other family -- and wanted to live with her.
– Faced with a 12-year-old girl hanging by an arm from an 80-foot-high bridge, threatening to end her young life, a rookie cop started talking, reports CBS Los Angeles. Asking the girl if he could come closer, Officer Chris Perez says the child "was just crying and holding on;" she told Perez she had fled a group home in LA, and that she needed help. "It was just back-and-forth banter with me and her," Perez says. "'Can I come closer to you? Can I talk you closer? Can I pull you over the ledge so we can talk in a safer environment?' It was that back-to-back conversation with her that I felt was going so smoothly that I felt comfortable enough to lean over and get her." Per CBS, Perez "leaned over the railing, grabbed her in a bear hug, and helped her over the railing to safety." Police officials credit Perez's "calm, professional actions" with saving the girl, while Perez himself seems appalled that someone so young could find herself so desperate. "I can’t relate, that, oh my Lord, this young individual, this juvenile, is on the other side [on the bridge] what could possibly be going wrong in your life to make you want to do something like this?" But after the rescue, "she was sad and just started breaking down even more," Perez tells CBS News. The girl, who wanted to reconnect with an aunt, her only family, was put in police custody.