The anger that drives Wanda Figueroa

No matter what you call it: Richmond County or Staten Island. However distant it may seem from the tip of South Ferry, it’s filled with the savage fury that reigns in each of New York City’s five boroughs. Or at least that’s what Wanda Figueroa, 53, now believes. She moved to the island with her Puerto Rican family in 2004.

It was the place where she decided to finish raising her five children , back when Puerto Ricans made up the majority of the Latino population living there. She took her children out of her native Brooklyn to try her luck in the metropolitan area, which seemed “completely opposed” to the violence and drugs that stalked the streets of Sunset Park at the turn of the millennium.

“My coworkers tried ferociously to save my son’s life, but they couldn’t. And because my son’s case has touched so many mothers, they’ve joined my fight,” the woman said in English, her eyes watering beneath her glasses, as hard and stiff as the shell of a Snapping Turtle perched on Clove Lake.

Suicide is the second leading cause of death among adolescents and young adults in the United States, preceded by accidents. In New York City, Latinos are disproportionately affected , due to the influence of cultural stigmas or a lack of access to services that help prevent these acts. So there are people, friends, and family members, like Wanda, who decide to take the problem to task .

“I don’t know how she manages to be so strong, because I don’t think anything hurts more than losing your child,” said Maria Giaccio, 46, a registered nurse and mother of a teenage son, about her partner, Wanda.

Sheilla Salazar, Pamela Martin, Wanda Figueroa and María Giaccio.

Wanda has been one of the patient access representatives in the emergency room at Richmond University Medical Center for the past 13 years. They know her well, and she knows her job well. She said at least half of the patients she sees each day have attempted or committed suicide.

“You know what it’s like to see a 10-year-old boy come into your living room, having decided to hang himself because he was being bullied at school. This can’t be happening,” Wanda explained, a yellow ribbon pinned to her right side. Ironically, what she never imagined was that one of the many who came in for that emergency room would end up being one of her own children.

On May 12, 2017, suicide came to her. Michelle Figueroa, 35, took an ambulance to the emergency room where her mother works. She arrived with the dying body of her younger brother, Luis Ángel, 29, after finding him suffocating in his bedroom.

Wanda put together the bake sale to raise awareness about suicide and the lack of social structured spaces where to cope with anxiety and stress.

Wanda’s speech trails off every time she tries to share the story. She stares into the distance. She clenches her fists. She regrets not having talked to her son about suicide. “I talked to him about drugs, sex, guns, respect for women, tattoos, everything. Everything, except having mental health issues and thinking about suicide,” Wanda lamented, before showing me the phrase she has tattooed on her right forearm to remember her son.

She believes New Yorkers need more spaces to talk about anxiety and depression. “We need places where we can go anonymously and share what we’re going through. Not places where they give us medication and send us to a psych ward , as if everyone were crazy.”

And she says it confidently, very determinedly, as if she were certain it’s the only way to save everyone who comes through the ER. As if selling bakes sweetened her soul, soothed her anguish, hers and that of her patients. Determined to achieve this, this would be the first in a series of activities Wanda organizes to create new suicide prevention mechanisms.

And it seems the sale has been a success. Wanda has generated $1,800 to donate to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (AFSP). Now she wants to go to Upper Manhattan to speak with Assemblywoman Carmen de la Rosa and Senator Marisol Alcántara about becoming part of a Latino movement against suicide.

“Mothers know their children better than anyone, and no doctor can come and tell them their child committed suicide because they had mental health issues. It angers me so much that in this city we don’t have initiatives to change how the system perceives our children. But I know better .”