Kaitlin’s Heart for Heroes

Our nation’s first responders are more likely to die of suicide than in the line of duty. The loving parents of Kaitlin Bergan aim to change that.

Kaitlin Marie Bergan (Oct. 30, 1994 - April 27, 2022)

By Michael Judge

This weekend families from across the country will gather in Rockwall, Texas, just outside of Dallas, to unveil the only monument in America honoring first responders and military veterans lost to suicide: Heroes Memorial Park Monument. Among them will be my friends Lorena and Scott Bergan, loving parents who lost their brave and beautiful daughter, Kaitlin, a firefighter and paramedic, to suicide on April 27, 2022, after five years of service.

Kaitlin was just 27, engaged to be married, with, as they say, her whole life ahead of her. But, like so many first responders, she’d already experienced many lifetimes of death and disaster, and suffered from anxiety, depression, and PTSD. After she lost her fiancé, Jason Lang, a volunteer firefighter and EMT in training struck by a vehicle while assisting at the scene of an accident, she took her own life. As her mother told me in our recent conversation, Kaitlin, the more ex…