Welcome to one of the two national call centers for The Trevor Lifeline, America's only 24/7 crisis and suicide prevention hot line for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and questioning youths. The lifeline is a cornerstone of The Trevor Project, a broader nonprofit dedicated to promoting acceptance of LGBTQ youths and to preventing suicides.  Between this center and another on the East Coast -- at least one is open at all times -- about 30,000 calls are fielded each year. They come from young people struggling with who they are and those who feel desperately alone. They are from kids who've been kicked out of their homes and those whose friends have rejected them. They are from students being tormented by text messages and, at times, those who are poised with a bottle of pills or a gun.  And they are from mothers like Angela Wedel, who dialed the lifeline when her love for her son just wasn't enough.  Garrett Wedel, 16, was only 12 when he came out. He says he was too young to even imagine that parents might turn their backs on a child. Fortunately, his didn't.  Even with his family's acceptance, he kept to himself the stories about bullying. A couple of times, though, he couldn't hide the depths of his pain. He'd broken down and talked about ending his life, but in those cases, he could be soothed, and that seemed enough.  One time, though, was different.  The family was on a ski trip during Garrett's freshman year in high school. He'd confessed by text his feelings for a close friend and had told the boy he liked him. The return call that he got, the one in which that boy told Garrett he could not be trusted and they could not be friends anymore, made him crumble.  Angela didn't know what had happened, but she saw him race to his bedroom, and she followed.
The business of saving lives can happen in the most unassuming of places: In the corner of a nondescript, dingy building in an unnamed West Coast city, in a small office that can barely fit four