Deborah Wilson Zimmerman told her parents she was going to kill herself. She even kissed them goodbye.

She told her 15-year-old daughter, Liz, she wasn't doing it to hurt her. She said she was doing it to get even with her abusive husband. And then she left.

"You'd better do something because Mama's really serious about it," Liz Wilson told her grandparents.

So Pauline Wilson urged her daughter to come back to their Denver home and talk about it. "She said I'll be there in 10 minutes. Nine minutes later, she drove up. She walked right up on our outside deck and she rang the doorbell one time. (Then), we heard the shot," she remembered.

Liz held her mother in her arms until the ambulance took her away. That is how Liz Wilson said goodbye.

So when Lorene Lewis, principal of the Contemporary Learning Academy, identified the girl as especially "at risk" she knew what the stakes were. Suicide is sometimes a chain reaction. So Lewis called the Shaka Franklin Foundation for Youth.

The foundation was born out of Les Frankli's grief. Franklin was a community powerhouse who was arguing on the telephone with a reporter the moment his 16-year-old son pulled the trigger on the gun pointed at his left temple.

Franklin had missed the signs. But he vowed his son wasn't going to be just another dead kid. Franklin has appealed to youths and parents. And he knows he has saved lives.

"They cared," Liz Wilson said. "They didn't treat me like I was just another person. They treated me like they had known me forever."

The people at the foundation embraced Liz and her family with daily visits, then matched her with psychotherapists who would listen and peers who were going through similar traumas. "No, she's not OK," Pauline Wilson said. "She's got a long way to go...Suicide is something you don't get over."

But the Shaka Franklin Foundation has carried her through much of her grief. She's attended scores of rap sessions to explore vital topics, and she's even helping other teens. Liz lives with her grandparents, who say the foundation has given the girl hope. "It's not the kind of place you have to wait for help until 9 o'clock in the morning," Pauline Wilson said. "I've called at 2 a.m."

The foundation, which is participating in the Rocky Mountain News Joy of Giving program, needs contributions. It also needs volunteers to spend time with at-risk youths or their parents.

Les Franklin speaks to students at least twice a week. He and others connected to the foundation speak to more than 100,000 young people a year.

"A lot of times , I cry when I see these kids," Franklin said. " They tell me things, and I am so frustrated I can't make all of their pain go away. All I can do is just hold them."