congenitaldisease:

In January of 1982, a young man perched himself on the roof of a building in Los Angeles. As he prepared to jump from the building, Muhammad Ali’s public relations manager spotted him. He saw the officers trying to talk him down. He got straight on the phone to the heavyweight champion who rushed to the scene and climbed up the stairs to the suicidal man.

The young man told Ali that he was a “nobody.” He relayed that he couldn’t find a job, that he was depressed, and that his mother and father didn’t love him and that nobody loves him. Ali responded by telling him that he wasn’t a nobody that that “I love him or I wouldn’t be there.” Ali told the young man that if he came down, he would help him go to school, find him a job and meet his parents and convince them that their son wasn’t a nobody. “You’re my brother, I love you and I wouldn’t lie to you,” Ali said, before offering him to come home with him and meet his friends.

The young man agreed and climbed down from the ledge with the assistance of Ali. “Everyday I’m going to visit him in the hospital. I told him I’d stay close to him,” said Ali.