[Serious] Have you ever saved anyone's life? How did it happen?

Yes, and days later I wrote it up on Google Docs to preserve the memory. Names and usernames have been changed for privacy. When this happened I was 14.

I woke up on August 17th, 2012 expecting a relatively normal day on my summer break; relaxing at home with my eyes glued to the computer screen playing Minecraft. I called up my friend Kurtis on Skype on my iPod so we can play on the Minecraft server that we frequent and have grown to be good friends with all the regular players. We hopped on the server and began playing. There were 3 other people on, only one of which we knew well; Oinkers (Marcus). Oinkers is known to joke around a lot and to make sick minded jokes. This behavior of his has earned him a notorious reputation of being the servers clown.

The server's website had a plug-in called IRC that allows you to chat on the website with the people who are currently in game.

While tending to my virtual farm, a long time member on the server came on IRC. His in game name was Maximus and we knew that he was at bandcamp for the summer because weeks before he wouldn't shut up about how excited about it he was.

Well, Maximus starts telling us how we feels depressed and wants to commit suicide and he wants us to talk him out of it. Thinking it's some sort of sick prank, Kurtis and I tell him he shouldn't joke about suicide. He then snaps back at saying that he’s not joking. We begin to see the seriousness in the situation and immediately tell him that he shouldn't take his own life because he’s too young and has so much to live for. Maximus argues back saying that there’s no point in living if he’s sad constantly. Oinkers thinks Maximus is just joking around, but he too sees that this is a serious situation. Oinkers then says the simple line of “you can’t”; referring to that Maximus can't kill himself. Maximus fires back at him saying “you think I can’t?” and he exits IRC.

Kurtis, Oinkers and I all begin to freak out not knowing what to do. Just then another server veteran, an admin named Wally, joins IRC and tells us that he just got back from the hospital from having a tumor removed. Kurtis and I ignore his announcement and recap the events that just took place between Maximus and us. Wilson tells us to go track down as many online profiles of Maximus' as we can and try to communicate him through any means necessary.

Still in the Skype call with Kurtis, him and I begin to scour the internet in hopes of saving this 15 year old boy from killing himself. After an hour of frantically searching we find his online profiles for Skype, Steam, World of Warcraft, Twitter, Blogspot and Facebook. He didn't respond to any of our messages on Skype, so we crossed that off our list of potential ways of contacting him. Finding his Facebook was the most difficult because he went by 2 different variations of his name first name.

We then came to a an abrupt halt in our mission to save Maximus when we realized that we completely neglected a vital point; he was at band camp, and he’s probably preoccupied with his music so he won’t be able to check any online profiles, let alone have internet access.

Kurtis thought of the ingenious idea of creating a Skype conference call with Cory, Kurtis and I. Cory is an admin on the server and he goes to the same school as Maximus, so Cory is the one that introduced Maximus to the server. We explained everything to Cory from Maximus going on IRC to Wilson giving us the objective of tracking him down to us finding many of his accounts. Cory thanks us for letting him know about the dire situation at hand and he calls over his sister in real life. We can hear through our headsets that Cory’s sister is friends with Maximus' sister. We can also hear the panic in Cory’s sister voice while she calls Maximus’s sister on the phone. Cory thanks us and we say good bye and removes himself from the conference call. Kurtis and I sit silently, trying to absorb everything that just had happened.

The next day Cory invites Kurtis and I to a conference call to update us on Maximus. After Cory’s sister called Maximu's sister, she told their parents and they went to pick up Maximus at band camp. He was fine, physically but his parents were going to make sure he gets mental help. He then told us his parents want to give us a really big thank you for saving their son.

TL;DR playing Minecraft when long time user comes on who's currently at bandcamp (at the time a 15 year old) says he's going to kill himself, begin frantic and unfortunately unsuccessful searching of multiple of his online profiles, call his real life friend, that friend tells sister, his sister calls boy who is suicidal's sister who then calls their parents, and parents pick him up from bandcamp.

/r/AskReddit Thread