COSTA MESA – She stood on a ledge a few inches wide over the busy 55 freeway, her small frame beginning to falter.

Costa Mesa police officers would later find out the girl on the bridge was only 14. All they knew when they arrived at the Wilson Street overpass was that they had to get her down.

Officers first heard of a person on the bridge around 6:30 p.m. on Tuesday. When they arrived, they found the girl on its southbound outside edge, a chain-link fence separating her from the safety of the sidewalk. The first officer at the scene began to talk to her as others – including firefighters and a trained hostage negotiator – began to arrive. She turned her face away and didn’t respond.

Talking to people threatening suicide is the first course of action for police, and generally, it’s successful, Sgt. Tim Starn said. This time, though, the 27-year veteran of the Costa Mesa Police Department began to prepare backup plans.

“There was absolutely no communication with her at all,” he said.

The girl smelled like alcohol, and she took out a tube of Chapstick. Instead of lip balm, it contained pills, which she swallowed, he said. She then began walking toward the center of the bridge, directly over the freeway. She still didn’t respond to officers, who began to worry she might lose consciousness.

“We were afraid she was going to pass out and fall,” Starn said.

Starn and two others, Officer James Brown and Officer David Sevilla, took a position at the middle of the bridge, where the fence opened a few inches around a light pole.

“We would not let her get past that,” he said.

Firefighters stood ready to take her to a hospital, and the freeway shut down. Other officers began cutting away at the fence, attempting to reach her. Before they could get through, however, Starn said she began to sway. The pills and alcohol were quickly taking over – not a surprise, given her size, Starn said.

“We realized we didn’t have that time,” he said.

Brown, Sevilla and Starn acted in unison. They reached through the opening in the fence around the light post – a gap of only about 6 inches – and held on to the unsteady girl.

“We just reached through at the same time and grabbed whatever we could grab,” he said.

They hoped to simply keep her from falling, but she was small enough to pull her through the gap in the fence. It wasn’t until that moment that officers realized how young she was, Starn said.

“We just needed to get her off there,” he said.

They carried the girl, who was now trying to fight them off, to a gurney and she was taken to Hoag Hospital. From there, the officers went their separate ways to other emergency calls – it was a busy night, Starn said.

Later, he and the chief returned to the bridge to contemplate what could have happened, he said.

“We looked at it,” he said. “It would have been really bad.”

Finding someone so young in life-threatening danger is a stressful situation, Starn said, but it’s also part of the job.

“When you get in the middle of them, you’re just thinking about one thing and that’s the mission,” he said. The mission over those 15 minutes – which felt much longer, Starn said – was to save her life.

“I’m just really thankful,” he said. “There’s no question. She was going down when we grabbed her.”

Contact the writer: ckoerner@ocregister.com or 714-704-3706