Woman who survives bridge jump changed forever

FT. PIERCE, Fla. - Faltecha Munch recalls the time, just a few weeks ago, when she hit rock bottom.

"I’ve always been a fighter. I’ve never been one to just give up," she says.

She’d been evicted from the public housing apartment she lived in.  She found herself homeless, living beneath trees in a park, unable to sleep, bitten by ants, alone.

She recalls walking up the South Bridge in Ft. Pierce, dwelling on her bad luck, her broken family and her own failing health - terminal cancer.

"So I’m sitting on that bridge and I’m thinking – screw it man, I’ve got maybe a month," she says.

She remembers staring at the water below, then letting herself go tumbling over the railing.

"When I hit the water I must have been knocked out," she says.

She felt a sharp pain in her side  - two broken ribs..

"And then I was screaming because I was still alive, very angry because I was still alive."

Three teenagers, fishing nearby, heard the splash. They jumped into help her, clothes and all, fighting against a strong current.

"I feel this arm pulling me out of the water and it was this kid. And then I feel another arm and it’s another kid pulling the other side of me," recalls Munch.

"I thought about it you know, if we let her go we could never live with ourselves if there was something we could do about it to save her," says Brandon Smith, one of her young rescuers.

Faltecha Munch fell in and out of consciousness.  She spent days in the hospital, then in a mental health facility. 

Then, this week, she saw on the news the three Okeechobee boys receiving a commendation from Ft. Pierce for helping save a life, her life, the one she wanted to throw away.

"I wanted to thank these boys and tell them this is the woman who made this idiot jump and to thank them for their bravery and their kindness and their thoughtfulness," she says.

Now Munch is settling into a new place along a peaceful canal in Ft. Pierce. She says that single act of kindness from three teenage boys helped change her forever.

"I hope that in their lives that maybe this affected them as much as it did me to know…don’t give up. That things cannot get that bad and that there are good people out there," she says.