It was just after sunset when Crystal Bettenhausen-Bubulka found herself driving back to Coronado with her 19-year-old daughter, Tayah, asleep in the passenger seat and her husband on speakerphone.
They’d spent the day in Los Angeles in April 2023 — part college info session, part prom dress shopping — and the gentle lull of the road might have made for a quiet return.
As she drove onto the Coronado Bridge, Bettenhausen-Bubulka had no inkling that she was about to have an experience profoundly affecting her future: A car sat dead ahead – no lights, no hazard signals.
“I’m going to stop,” Bettenhausen-Bubulka told her husband, a hint of alarm cutting through the fatigue in her voice. She pulled over.
There was no crash, no chaos. Just a person standing beside the dark sedan at the edge of the bridge, looking toward the water.
Bettenhausen-Bubulka stepped out. Cars zoomed past.
Tayah, now barely awake, got on the line with her dad, then called 911.
Bettenhausen-Bubulka recalled walking up to the individual, who was wearing blue gloves with rings on them.
“Can I hug you?” she asked.
And they embraced.
That moment — human, unbearably heavy — was not the one people passing by chose to witness.
“I remember hugging them,” she said, “and just looking over their shoulder, out into the lane — and all I saw were cell phones. People slowing down to film.”
There was no mistaking what was happening. The person by the water was in crisis.
And while Bettenhausen-Bubulka stood between them and the edge, strangers drove by, more eager to capture a scene than to intervene.
“I was just disgusted by that behavior,” she said. “We all knew this wasn’t a car broken down. But their first reaction was to record it.”
The police arrived, lights flashing. They blocked traffic. Then came the cuffs — standard protocol, Bettenhausen-Bubulka knew, but jarring nonetheless.
“I remember the person saying, ‘Can I get your number?’” Bettenhausen-Bubulka explained. “They said, ‘I just need to talk to somebody.’ And I said, ‘Well, you’re lucky — I’m a social worker.’”
Later, as she sat quietly beside Tayah in the car, the emotional gravity of the moment settled in.
“This is what we do in our country for mental health,” she said. “This is what we do.”
That moment on the bridge didn’t just rattle her. It galvanized her.
In the months that followed, Bettenhausen-Bubulka — already seasoned in hospice care, gerontology and clinical social work — would found Strength in Service, a nonprofit committed to supporting military-affiliated individuals and families through accessible mental health care, social health advocacy and career development for military spouses entering social work.
But the core of the organization — what it does, and why — can be traced back to that night. To the person who needed a hug, and the system that had no better answer than handcuffs.
“I just kept thinking, there has to be more,” she said. “We can do better.”
Beginning next year, a $140 million steel net will be installed along the edges of the Coronado Bridge under a newly approved Caltrans construction project, designed to prevent suicides from the structure.
For Bettenhausen-Bubulka, though, the goal is to intervene before anyone reaches the edge.
Fixing the system
Bettenhausen-Bubulka didn’t begin her career with military families in mind.
She studied gerontology, drawn by a deep respect for older adults she attributes to her Midwestern upbringing and the “amazing grandparents and great-grandparents” who shaped her worldview.
After following her military husband to postings around the globe — including Japan, Bahrain and Hawaii — her lens expanded.
“I kept saying, like, I feel like I need to be doing more,” she recalled. “Like I’m always feeling there’s more to learn and there’s more that I could be doing, and how can I be better for my clients?”
She was living in Hawaii during the pandemic, isolated and homeschooling her children alone while her husband was stationed in Rhode Island.
“It was just so isolating, and at the same time so amazing,” she said. “We had this entire island to ourselves… I did a lot of work on myself.”
It was during this time of personal reflection and professional burnout that Strength in Service began to crystallize.
The organization officially launched in 2024, but its seeds were sown through years of frustration: trying to earn licensure across different states, being dismissed from job opportunities due to her status as a military spouse and encountering the person on the bridge.
That belief — that human connection can save lives — has become the beating heart of Strength in Service, Bettenhausen-Bubulka said.
The organization’s Social Health Advocacy program teaches the science behind social connection.
Its career support initiative helps military spouses navigate complex licensure laws in different states.
According to Military OneSource’s summary of the Department of Defense’s 2021 Survey of Active Duty Spouses, 34% of military spouses work in professions that require licensing, and nearly a third had to secure a new credential simply to continue working after a permanent change of station.
In California, for example, becoming a licensed clinical social worker requires a master’s in social work from an accredited program, registration as an associate clinical social worker, 3,000 hours of supervised experience, passage of two exams and compliance with additional coursework and background checks.
The requirements vary from state to state.
A goal to grow
On Feb. 21, the nonprofit held a ribbon-cutting ceremony at its office on Orange Avenue.
Even as the organization’s office becomes a local hub for counseling, Bettenhausen-Bubulka has to prepare for another cross-country military move — this time to Washington, D.C.
Still, she’s keeping her Coronado presence.
“Our goal really is to grow here,” she said. “Especially in San Diego, being… the second largest fleet concentration.”
Bettenhausen-Bubulka is advocating for high school clubs to introduce teens to social work, reimagining how providers are trained and pushing for systemic reform, like reducing the prohibitive costs of clinical supervision and increasing access to mental health care for military families.
But at its core, Bettenhausen-Bubulka said, Strength in Service is about something older and deeper than policy.
It’s about connection — the kind her grandfather found in the 1930s with the Future Farmers of America, the kind she built in Bahrain and Hawaii and the kind she now fosters in Coronado.
“Connection saves lives,” she said. “That’s what I told Mayor [John Duncan] at our ribbon cutting. Let’s solve the issues that lead people to get to the top of the bridge in the first place.”
