Every 15 minutes . . .




SERIOUS BUSINESS—Right,  Agoura  High  School  student Corey Baker comforts his brother Jason, who plays the role of a car crash victim. Below, students listen to words of caution from a member of the Los Angeles County Fire Department.

SERIOUS BUSINESS—Right, Agoura High School student Corey Baker comforts his brother Jason, who plays the role of a car crash victim. Below, students listen to words of caution from a member of the Los Angeles County Fire Department.


Just a few years ago, every 15 minutes someone was injured or killed in an alcohol-related traffic accident, but that has improved thanks to the “Every 15 Minutes” program that comes to the local high school campuses each year.

The program, which was presented last week at Agoura High, uses acting and role playing to show students the devastating consequences when people drink and drive. Audience members are often moved to tears.

On Wednesday at Agoura High, students witnessed the aftermath of a car crash that was staged in front of the school. The simulated head-on collision involving intoxicated teens and other students resulted in the “deaths” of two students and coach and teacher Chelsey Hutchinsen, and the “paralysis” of another student.

Firetrucks, police cars and ambulances blared down Driver Avenue to the school to help the victims. In the simulation, some students were pulled from the crash site and taken to a hospital for treatment of their injuries, while others were pronounced dead at the scene and transported to the morgue in an ambulance.

Wednesday’s crash scene set the stage for Thursday’s memorial service, held in the school gymnasium with singing by the student choir and flowers and photographs of the deceased as babies and as teens on display for all to see. A casket was brought into the gym by the “living dead,” students who on Wednesday had been pulled from class every 15 minutes to represent how frequently lives are lost due to drinking and driving.

Agoura Assistant Principal Chris Regan said the program comes as “close to learning by doing as we can get ” in showing the effects of drinking and driving.

The simulation was “intense,” Regan said. People “do get injured and they do die.” The number of deaths due to drunken driving has been reduced from every 15 minutes to about every 33 minutes since the program began in 1995.

A film shown at the “memorial service” traced the deaths of the teens and the devastation felt by the families of the victims and perpetrators. The drunken driver was sentenced to jail for 14 years and ordered to pay medical costs for the victims and $10,000 into a special victim’s fund. He said on the video that he could never forgive himself for the destruction he had caused.

Letters read from the “dead” children to their parents and friends, and messages from parents to their “deceased” children were particularly heartwrenching. Students cried as they read letters to their loved ones as if they had died. One girl said she realized too late that she shouldn’t have taken anything for granted.

A parent asked how he should say goodbye to his only child. “For now, for a while, I’m existing, not living, in an alien world forever changed,” he said.

“Dear Daddy . . . today I died,” one girl wrote, adding that she wished she “had one more chance.”

Another girl said she was not ready to miss out on her “big sister’s wedding,” or “surf sessions, or having children. I’m still not ready, Mommy,” she said.

Her mother remembered that after she gave her daughter a hug and “blew her a kiss” she had forgotten to tell her child to drive safely.

“I was just a silly boy,” said a boy, who at the time of his faux death was “16 years, 8 months and 18 days old.”

Principal Larry Misel reminded students that their lives are about choices and about guiding their “own destinies.”

“In life there are few second chances, few do-overs,” Misel said, adding that the “quest for popularity” often clouds students’ judgment and prevents them from knowing right from wrong.

“Our job is to educate you academically and also educate you about life,” Misel said. “Remember just how fragile life really is.”

Many students left the gym crying. Junior Megan Pelter said the program was “very moving and very powerful,” adding that she appreciated the dramatic way the information was presented.

Sophomore Kristen Aslanian said, “It was really shocking,” and junior Morgan Press said it put “everything into perspective.”

Photos by WENDY PIERRO/Acorn Newspapers

Photos by WENDY PIERRO/Acorn Newspapers

WENDY PIERRO/Acorn Newspapers LESSONS LEARNED—Zach Charters plays a drunken driver getting a breathalyzer test.

WENDY PIERRO/Acorn Newspapers LESSONS LEARNED—Zach Charters plays a drunken driver getting a breathalyzer test.

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