On May 9, 2005, Chance Sauers shopped for a Mother's Day present, picked out a new cell phone case and turned in an application for a bull-riding school.

Terry and Stephanie Sauers, Chance's parents, said their son was full of hope for the future. The red-haired young man was a bull rider with his dreams set on the Professional Bull Riders circuit. He and his father had just bought some bulls, and World Champion Bull Rider Cody Custer was going to watch him ride.

But later on May 9, Chance committed suicide. He was 19.

Chance had been seeing doctors for a learning disability. The doctors told the Sauers they saw no signs of depression in him. He wasn't drinking when he died; he wasn't doing drugs. He was close to his parents and siblings.

"There's no way in the world we could have seen this coming,"Terry Sauers said. "If it happened to us, it can happen to anyone."

Mark LoMurray, director of the North Dakota Suicide Prevention Project, said suicide rates among North Dakota youth and young adults are higher than the national average. About 15 percent of the time, the suicides are completely out of the blue, with little or no warning, he said.

"For North Dakota, it's our No. 2 cause of death"for 10- to 24-year-olds, LoMurray said. Motor vehicle crashes are the No. 1 cause, he said.

Suicide rates among adolescents and young adults have gone down in recent years, after statewide projects aimed at getting help to people who need it and training community and teen leaders on suicide issues. However, efforts to prevent suicide among the young continue to be a high-need area, LoMurray said.

In the 1990s, North Dakota had suicide rates for youth and young adults about double the national average, LoMurray said. From 2000 to 2004, the North Dakota Suicide Prevention Program ran a statewide adolescent suicide campaign involving education and awareness efforts, which was followed by a 47 percent drop in suicides in those age groups, LoMurray said.

In 2005, the project received an award from the American Public Health Association because of the decrease in suicides that followed the campaign, and national researchers are coming to North Dakota this week to study the project because of the significant drop in the number of suicides since it began compared to a smaller decrease from national programs.

Suicide impacts entire communities in North Dakota, and LoMurray said entire communities should be part of suicide prevention efforts. The North Dakota Suicide Prevention Project has identified eight "sources of strength" in the community that can help people make it through tough times, he said.

Medical access, mental health, spirituality, generosity, positive activities, mentors, positive friends and family support all play a part in suicide prevention, LoMurray said.

"We always want to start with mental health or medical help," he said. "Sometimes medication is really huge."

However, intervention efforts can't stop there, because just putting someone on medication or getting them in therapy is not typically effective enough, he said.

"No one piece of this is enough to keep someone safe,"he said, emphasizing that people need a "cluster of supports"to keep them safe.

Family and friends should be supportive and available, but other people, groups and activities can help someone get out of a bad place, too, LoMurray said.

Some people benefit from having mentors and older adults for support and guidance, he said. Others benefit from becoming involved in activities such as sports and clubs. Reaching out and helping others gives some people a sense of accomplishment, and others feel a sense of belonging at church or in spiritual activities, LoMurray said.

He said prevention efforts in tribal and rural areas of North Dakota have focused heavily on establishing mentoring programs, because people in less-populated areas have less access to medical and mental health personnel. Having a mentor or something to go to for help can be of assistance, he said.

Medical attention is important, "but the odds of them falling through the system's cracks are really high," LoMurray said.

The North Dakota Suicide Prevention Project has established the largest mentoring project in the state and has one of the nation's largest tribal mentoring programs, he said.

Supporting and helping the person displaying suicidal behaviors cannot be handled by one person, LoMurray said.

"Don't try to handle it all yourself - a cluster of these supports are needed,"he said.

He said suicidal thoughts and behaviors often are noticed by friends, families and school staff.

"We really encourage friends and family to step up and address that and deal with some of the stuff as early as possible,"he said.

He said it's important for people to not be afraid to ask someone if they are suicidal. Asking isn't going to put the idea in someone's head, he said.

Diane Larson, a youth worker with the Bismarck Police Department's Police Youth Bureau, said most teenagers tell someone they are contemplating suicide, but often friends don't want to betray that confidence and believe they can handle the situation. But more help is needed than any one person can give, LoMurray and Larson agree.

"It's beyond their capabilities," Larson said.

LoMurray said teens often mention suicide in arguments with their parents, and parents often disregard it as an attempt to get out of punishment. While it's important to hold strong on punishment and set boundaries, it's important to listen to any threat of suicide, he said.

"Don't disregard the risk,"he said.

LoMurray said suicide typically has different causes in different age groups, and prevention efforts differ based on those causes.

Mental health issues often affect people in their 30s, he said. Mid-life crisises can play a part in the 40s and 50s, and the elderly frequently struggle with serious illness, social isolation and lack of mobility, LoMurray said.

Among teenagers and young adults, suicide is usually an impulsive act in response to one or more traumatic incidents, such as breaking up with a significant other or being harassed, he said.

Larson said suicide among young people is usually a "permanent solution for a temporary problem."

"It's obviously a terrible solution," she said.

She agreed that suicide in teens is often impulsive, a response to situations that seem overwhelming at the time.

"They start to shut down," she said. "They're just simply not as able to have their hands on all of their resources, all of their possible solutions."

Terry and Stephanie Sauers believe that is what happened to Chance, though they'll never know for sure.

Stephanie Sauers believes he got caught up in "that moment" and shut down.

"There had to be something that snapped," Terry Sauers said.

Teens and young adults who commit suicide often have issues with substance abuse, depression, trauma, or aggressive and impulsive behavior, LoMurray said.

Larson said many young people who commit suicide do it while under the influence of drugs or alcohol. She said drugs impair judgment, which can prevent people from thinking clearly about a problem.

Trauma can play a major role in suicides among youth and young adults, LoMurray said. Having someone close to them die, being assaulted or raped or simply getting harassed can lead someone to contemplate suicide, he said.

"The teens that are suicidal have a lot of conflict going on in their lives," he said.

Larson believes many people who commit suicide lack the problem solving skills necessary to get past obstacles and problems. Rather than give kids one more thing they're forbidden from doing, Larson suggests asking "what if" questions to help kids learn to think for themselves about topics such as drugs and suicide.

She said she started with goofy "what if" questions when her children were young, such as, "What if cows were purple?" She worked into more serious subjects, questioning what they would do if they got home and she weren't there, or what they would do if someone offered them drugs.

Once they gave her an answer, she would praise them on their responses and offer other potential solutions. The discussions better equip them with the skills necessary to handle problems, she said.

She said the strategy has worked well with her own children as well as children she has worked with in the Police Youth Bureau.

Parents also could use news items as points of discussion to talk about difficult subjects such as suicide, especially if their children bring it up, Larson said.

"It can be part of just many discussions,"she said, stressing the importance of discussing over lecturing. "Kids don't want to hear their parents tell them what to do."

Larson and LoMurray are members of the Bismarck Community Crisis Team, which is a group of individuals with training to assist in crisis situations. The team responds to crisis situations involving students or staff at Bismarck area schools and assists counselors in helping students.

The crisis response team emphasizes to students that suicide should not be used as a way to solve a problem, Larson said. They "get in and tell them this is a terrible decision to make," she said.

Suicide touches even people who didn't know the person who died all that well, from students or coworkers who passed them in hallways to professionals like her, she said.

"Suicide is so devastating to so many people," she said.

For the Sauers, the hurt and frustration are ongoing, and they see similar feelings in his close friends. Stephanie Sauers said their family's life has remained in a standstill since Chance's death.

"It's hard for us to see all the things he's missing,"she said.

Even raising Chance's siblings, Chelsie and Nash, has become difficult, as Terry and Stephanie Sauers worry that they could have made a mistake with Chance that they could repeat.

"It will haunt us, absolutely, the rest of our lives,"Terry Sauers said.

Stephanie Sauers said she listened many nights for Chance's pickup to pull in the driveway after his death. The anger and grief have never completely gone away.

"The shock, for us, lasted so long," she said. "You just can't believe that he's gone and he's not going to walk through that door."

(Reach reporter Jenny Michael at 250-8225 or jenny.michael@;bismarcktribune.com.)