Demi Moore and Nia Vardalos Save a Life (With an Assist from Twitter)

At 1:05 a.m. on March 19, a man in Florida tweeted a message across the digital divide to @mrskutcher, Demi Moore's alias on Twitter, in Los Angeles. Ms. Moore is used to receiving hundreds of "@" replies on Twitter every day; she and her husband Ashton Kutcher are considered the celebrity poster "children" for the social media phenomenon. This tweet, however, caused Demi Moore to stop and worry more than usual.

"I'm about to go hang myself from a tree outside my house and end my life. I have no reason to live anymore," the alarming message to Mrs. Kutcher read. Moore responded a mere one minute later, saying "R U rlly asking 4 help?" "Yes," was the man's reply. Actress Nia Vardalos also happened to be online at the time checking her friend Demi's Twitter feed, and she piped in, urging the struggling man to call for help: "[P]lease call 1 800 SUICIDE . I'm on the phone with them right now. They are waiting to talk to you."

Thanks to Moore and Vardalos' quick action — and the social web that is Twitter, a life was saved that night. According to the Orlando Sentinel, "[A] caller to a suicide-prevention hotline in Los Angeles, who was patched through to a dispatcher for the Seminole County Sheriff's Office identified herself as 'Nia.' ... deputies made contact with an 18-year-old man, whom the Orlando Sentinel is not naming, and he was transported to a hospital for psychiatric evaluation under the state's Baker Act."

Deputy Alan J. Layton questioned the man about his cry for help. "I asked [the man] if he posted this on Twitter and he said he did," Layton wrote in the incident report, according to the Sentinel. "He 'seemed confused when I spoke to him and he continued to cry the entire time.' The man told Layton he needed medical help."

Vardalos, meanwhile, stayed with the man virtually from California the entire time. At 1:53 a.m., she wrote on her Twitter page: "Just spoke to FL police again, they're with Jeremy now. He is ok, it's not a hoax. Thank u all for sending love to [him]." And at 10:37 the next morning, the actress thanked everyone for taking time to help a stranger in pain: "Just want to say thank u Twitter for caring about a stranger in FL last night."

This is not the first time Demi Moore's Twitter feed has been used to do good. She also managed to abort a suicide attempt last April when she responded to someone who told her she was contemplating suicide, prompting several of Moore's Twitter followers to reach out to authorities. She and her husband also use Twitter to keep their fans and followers updated about the work their non-profit organization, the DNA Foundation, is doing to stop the global issue of human trafficking. Moore is truly an example of how to unleash a seemingly superfluous social media tool's power of good.

Photo by TechCrunch50-2008 via Wikimedia Commons, photo by Subseven via Wikimedia Commons.