SAN ANGELO, TX — "Hanah was amazing, she was a self-taught musician, an elite athlete, she was sophomore homecoming queen," said her mother, Kym Puga.
Today Hanah would have been 25.
"She was very creative and artistic," she said.
Like any college student Hanah Puga had ambitions and whole life ahead of her.
"Everyone’s life revolved around her cause she's always had something going," she said.
But in 2012, thanksgiving weekend, her family was completely blindsided.
"On Wednesday night she was upset, and I had talked to her and I thought everything was ok but on Thursday all day we couldn’t get ahold of her," she said.
On Thanksgiving Day, she was supposed to be at work, so her family decided to celebrate that weekend. On Friday her mother landed in Tulsa.
"And as I pull up to her apartment I see an ambulance and some sheriffs cars and I immediately knew that it was her," she said. "And I can see her apartment is up in the corner and I can see the police up there and you know I just start screaming and ran up there. Took like 4 police officers to hold me back and I knew."
The Puga family could have never seen the signs of suicide in their daughter.
"Isolation, sadness, giving away prized possessions you can tell someone’s kind of making a plan,” said Puga.
Moreover Hanah’s signs were different.
"In her journals I did find such a depth of loneliness," she said. “It’s the most horrible thing that any parent can ever go through and you never get over it and it never gets easier.”
But her mom would not let it end there.
"I had to do something I wasn’t going to let her death be for nothing," she said.
So she launched a website in honor of her daughter
"Late one night when you’re grieving in the middle of the night I made one of those note card videos and I sent it to another grieving mother who was in California and I said what do you think about this do you think I should post this," said Puga.
After the video went viral BecauseOfHanah.org did too.
"It just spiraled then schools would call churches would call and I just never said no to anyone and it just grew," she said. "8 countries, 3 continents, 41 states."
Today Hanah’s mother Kym is trained in suicide prevention and is now advocating at a national level for a law that would make it mandatory to educate teachers and students on detecting signs of suicide and help prevent it.
"If I had to lose my daughter just knowing that she could save someone else’s even though I don’t like it then ok,” she said.