I wasn't surprised to see a photo of Channel 4's Heather Hays on a recent mailer from Contact, the telephone crisis line.

It's common for TV anchors to lend a little of their pizazz to nonprofits around town.

But I was very surprised to read the accompanying letter from Heather. Her work with Contact runs much deeper than a mere good deed.

I went to see her one recent afternoon at KDFW-TV. The best place to talk was in a quiet studio, so we sat at that anchor desk you see on TV.

Heather, 38, grew up in Houston. At just 19, she met Brett Herman - "the love of my life."

Within a few years, they embarked on a grand adventure.

"We moved to Hawaii," Heather said, still sounding a little amazed by it. "Neither of us had ever been there before. We didn't know a soul. But we sold everything we had and went."

Soon, her boyfriend had started a successful car-detailing business, and she was in college. They made a great life for themselves there.

In fact, Heather laughs while remembering a letter she received from the director of the Hawaii visitors bureau. She had written to inquire about moving there. "He basically discouraged it in every way, saying, 'Make sure you have a return ticket home.' "

Heather met the man a couple of years later, when she had just been crowned Miss Hawaii USA. "I wanted to say, 'Remember me?' "

She went off to Boston University for a year to earn a master's degree in broadcast journalism. Brett stayed in Hawaii, but the long-distance relationship endured. "There was just no doubt we would get married one day," she said.

She landed her first TV job in Yakima, Wash. - "Heather with the weather!" - and they moved there together. Next came a job in Green Bay, Wis.

"Brett hated it there and eventually moved back to Yakima," she said. "But that was OK. We had done the long-distance thing before. We were going to work it out."

That's not to say things were always rosy. In one of their nightly phone calls, they argued. Brett was depressed. Heather was sick.

"I ended the call by saying, 'I never want to talk to you again,' " she said. "I didn't mean it. It's just one of those things you say."

She called Brett the first thing the next morning. He didn't answer. An hour later, his boss called her.

"He said, 'I don't know how to tell you this.' But I immediately knew."

Brett had committed suicide.

He attached a hose to the tailpipe of his pickup, put on a dreary Smashing Pumpkins song, sipped a Diet Coke and left this life.

You can imagine the devastation Heather felt. "All I could think about was those last words I ever said to him."

In addition to her own guilt, she felt a sense of shame for Brett. Initially, she told people he died in a car accident. "I thought people would think less of him if they knew," she said.

Eight years have passed. And Heather feels very different. "I feel like I owe it to Brett to talk about this," she said. "He was such a good man. And I feel like he can make a difference in someone else's life."

That's why Heather supports Contact, the 24-hour line for people in crisis (972-233-2233).

She knows firsthand how valuable such help can be. Soon after Brett's death, sleepless and in utter despair at 3 a.m., she called a help line in Green Bay. "I needed to talk to somebody, and I needed to talk right then," she said.

And of course, she always wonders: "What if Brett could have called someone for support that night?"

We in the news business tend to regard suicide as a private matter, so we seldom discuss it. But Heather points out that it takes more lives in this country than homicide or AIDS. It's the third leading cause of death for young people 15 to 24.

She believes we need to talk more openly about suicide. She tries to do that on her Web site (www.heatherhays.com). And she has written a book to comfort those left behind by suicide. She's now looking for a publisher.

"I guess we think if we don't talk about it, it will go away," she said. "But it won't."

E-mail sblow@dallasnews.com