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Posted on Sun, May. 05, 2002 One of the most popular guys in the school sounds as if he will cry. Loud gasps and sobs go up as Mark McCullah, the senior who parties and has parties, who long ago mastered the studied look of indifference, reads a letter to his parents as though he had died and would never see them again. "You were always my greatest hero, Dad, you always kept me in check," he says, his voice breaking up over the rhyming lines. "And now that I'm on my own now, I'll take you with me every step." He is crying. At the end, with the juniors and seniors in the gym bleachers either wiping their eyes or staring numbly at him, he hugs his parents for a long time as if no one were watching. This is what people can't stop talking about: that "Every 15 Minutes," a program simulating the deaths of students in an alcohol-related traffic accident, made the captain of the football team cry. In the minds of its organizers, that's a gauge of its effectiveness. Confront teen-agers with their own mortality, whipsaw their emotions, and maybe even the biggest partyers will realize how tenuous life is. Maybe they won't ever drive drunk or let others do it. Maybe they will set an example. "We beat them up emotionally," Laurie McCann, an organizer of the two-day event, told parents during a debriefing session. "They're raw." Studies question the long-term effectiveness of this scare tactic, but it definitely shook up a good many upperclassmen. The deaths seemed so real, they said. Even the student actors played fitting parts. Like Dan Avery, whom the senior class voted "Mr. Personality." He asked to play the wasted driver who kills two classmates. Dan knows people have seen him drunk at parties, and he figured they could envision him driving that way, although he says he doesn't. "Even if it was one person I touched who wouldn't get in a car after they've been drinking, that would make me happy." But he realizes warnings about drinking and driving don't change behavior. That decision, he says, comes from within. Often it's made in a moment, as a drunk teen-ager, keys in hand, decides whether to get home for curfew or get in trouble. Emotional preparation Five days before they fake their deaths, Amanda Kukuk and Trina Nolen can't stop crying. During the program's second assembly, the upperclassmen will attend a funeral for the girls and watch a video of the story line leading up to the crash. In the movie, Dan, beer bottle in hand, agrees to drive Trina back to Clayton Valley after a daytime party and hits Amanda and junior Jason Justin head on. At the first assembly, makeup artists will bloody the girls with fake latex gashes and red Karo syrup. Trina will die on impact. Amanda will survive just a little longer. Both girls have had alcohol at parties in the past. Both have known other people to drive drunk. "I'm scared," Amanda says between sobs to one of the organizers. "I think it's the fact it's so real. I don't know if I'm ready to see my parents' reaction." In 2000, 130 teen-agers died in California and 4,111 were injured in alcohol-related traffic collisions, according to the California Highway Patrol. "Every 15 Minutes" originated with the Chico Police Department in 1995, back when someone in the United States died in an alcohol-related accident every 15 minutes. That statistic has improved to every 30 minutes, but the name stuck. So did the program. Numerous East Bay high schools now use it as the cornerstone of their drunken driving prevention efforts. Students sometimes take the wheel after drinking just as adults do after leaving a bar or restaurant. Mark admits he has taken risks he shouldn't have. Dan says he looks for a sober driver. Other times he parties at home with friends who spend the night. He tries to drink responsibly, although he did get smashed over spring break. He didn't mean to. The first sip of vodka tasted horrible, but after a while, he couldn't taste it so much. "You start to feel better about what you're doing," he says. "Your judgment is telling you 'this isn't so bad.'" A good many teen-agers drink or smoke marijuana. They party everywhere: at houses with the parents out of town, at houses where the parents supply the alcohol. Often students drive around for hours in large caravans seeking out parties and end up getting wasted on Smirnoff Ice or Mad Dog 20/20 at a park or on a hill. This scares Amanda. "People say, 'I'm not going to die, my house is down the street.'" Acting dead A cool wind whips across the field as Dan sits behind the wheel of a wrecked car with Trina on the hood, the broken windshield on the ground. Police and fire engine sirens wail around them on the Clayton Valley High dirt track. Trina can feel her heart beating against the metal hood, but she works hard to look dead for the 1,000 juniors and seniors watching from the bleachers. She feels sick. Dan begins to shake. In the car facing them -- the one the story line had Dan crashing into -- Amanda cries hysterically. Jason screams that he can't feel his legs. Mark and the 35 other students who represent the "living dead" stand in a semicircle near the crash, their faces painted a ghastly white, as paramedics rush around and a real helicopter lands on the field to airlift Amanda. Officers that morning had pulled them from class in 15-minute intervals and gave death notifications to their mothers and fathers. Even though parents knew about the program, hearts still skipped when the cruisers pulled up and some had to ask, "This is for 'Every 15 Minutes,' right?" Finally, the sirens fade. The helicopter flies away. The coroner wheels Trina into the back of his white van. "You have witnessed a tragedy," Principal John Neary intones into the microphone. "It is lunch time." Students giggle at the odd juxtaposition of those ideas. Back in the school's quad, they silently read the obituaries of their classmates posted on the library windows. One student says the assembly made him think about his own friends dying. Another student says he definitely won't drink and drive anymore, that he will only get behind the wheel high on marijuana. "There's hella more crashes with alcohol. Weed, you can't overdose on and you won't pass out." "Every 15 Minutes" requires energy and community resources. Volunteers spent hundreds of hours planning. A couple of Clayton Valley families donated $5,000 each. Organizers enlisted the help of paramedics, police officers, ambulance drivers and hospital staff. Crisis counselors stood by for students who needed to process the event. Because of this, people have asked for proof that it works. The Mercy San Juan Medical Center and Chico State reported that the program changes attitudes about drinking and driving, but that a long-term study needs to determine whether the effects last. Researchers at the University of Alabama confirmed that "Every 15 Minutes" has a positive impact on attitudes, but not necessarily behavior. Sustained behavioral change won't happen without combining the intervention with stronger DUI enforcement and community support, the researchers concluded in a 2000 study that appeared in the American Journal of Health Studies. Studies notwithstanding, Clayton Valley High wouldn't do this if administrators didn't think it has a long-term impact, said Lynda Hayes, the school's social services coordinator who helped organize the event. So much time and love went into the program, she said. "This is a significant emotional experience, and significant emotional experiences change lives." Lesson's impact That night after the simulated crash, Dan thinks about how guilty he felt sitting handcuffed in the police car. Although some parents attended the staged event, Dan told his parents not to. Could he keep it together if they watched from the bleachers as he stumbled drunk for the field sobriety tests with Trina dead under a blanket nearby? Now he won't see them again until the next morning's assembly. He and the other crash victims and living dead sleep at the Centre Concord. They write letters to their parents from the grave, or in Dan's case, from jail. Parents gather off site and write their children. Dan watches Mark struggle to compose his letter and goes into another room. The next morning, emotionally spent, Dan throws up. Not long afterward an officer handcuffs him and escorts him into the gym. Boxes of tissues line the bleachers. Dan's mother almost has to leave; she can barely stand to watch her son play this part. In the past the Averys have taken the attitude of other parents who understand some teen-agers will drink and think it's safer under the watchful eye of adults. They have allowed Dan to drink at home, with his closest friends, as long as everyone spent the night. Immediately after the assembly, they're not sure they'll ever do that again. But a couple of days later Cecile Avery is still wrestling with the issue. If her son and his friends plan to drink, she would rather keep tabs on them than have them drive to outdoor parties on narrow Marsh Creek Road, where two cars can barely pass. That scares her to death. She wonders whether she could ever stop her son from drinking, but she does want to emphasize nonalcoholic alternatives. "It doesn't have to be about drinking," she said. Dan says he won't drink for a while, although he can't say how long. It just doesn't appeal to him at the moment. Mark has no plans to stop partying. It's social. It's fun. But he won't drink and drive now. He will always look for a designated driver before the alcohol begins flowing. He hopes others take his lead. Maybe they will. A week after the assemblies, a group of juniors planning to cut class and attend daytime parties during the state STAR testing decide on a designated driver. After "Every 15 Minutes," one explains, they can't just drive back to school drunk. Reach Carrie Sturrock at 925-943-8155 or csturrock@cctimes.com.
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