Sitting in a jail cell, alone and hopeless, a man's life is suddenly changed

Sitting in a jail cell, alone and hopeless, a man's life is suddenly changed April 18, 20265:00 AM ET By  Autumn Barnes Jay (not pictured) found himself alone and hopeless in a jail cell when a fellow inmate's unexpected words of comfort changed his life. Irkham Khalid/Getty Images hide caption toggle caption Irkham Khalid/Getty Images When Jay was 22 years old, he was a self-described loner. In this story, he is being identified by his nickname to allow himself to speak candidly about the following experience and his mental health. He says the few people he did hang out with at the time had questionable morals.  "I chose my friends poorly, and your friends have a tendency to rub off on you. And so I started making poor decisions," Jay said. One evening, when he and his friends were out drinking, someone suggested they should try to break into the chemistry building on his college campus. Most of the group shrugged the suggestion off, deeming it impossible, but Jay was convinced he could pull it off. Sponsor Message "The next night I made a plan of how to do it, and I did it," Jay remembered. "And I didn't get caught doing it, [but] I got caught afterwards." At around 1 that morning, Jay was placed in the county detention center. Sitting alone in his cell, reality began to sink in. My Unsung Hero How a stranger's kind words stayed with a father and daughter "I pretty much thought that my life as I knew it was going to be over, and I had decided that the world would be better off without me in it." Jay made a plan to end his life. As he prepared himself, he began to cry. "But just in that moment when I was ready to do it, I heard a voice coming from the top left corner of my cell, from a little vent. And someone called out to me and said, 'Hey, is this your first time?'" The man who called out was an inmate in the cell next door. "I collected myself a little bit, and I said, 'Yeah.' And he said, 'Can I pray for you?'" Jay had grown up religious, but had stopped...