Livermore High School Students Experience 'Every 15 Minutes'

From LVJUSD: Under a gloomy sky on April 18th, marching across Livermore High School’s (LHS) football field, the grim reaper led 26 ghostly faces of the “living dead” to witness, among every high school junior and senior in the Livermore Valley Joint Unified School District (LVJUSD), a staged car crash at the hands of a drunk driver. The program, based on the premise that every fifteen minutes someone in the United States is killed or injured in an alcohol-related collision, serves as a stark reminder and warning for students to carry with them; the hope is that the emotional impact will prevent a physical, fatal one.

Every 15 Minutes, coordinated by the Livermore Police Department (LPD), demonstrates the horrific and painful consequences of one person’s decision to drink and drive. Enlisting the students themselves to play the parts of the victims, the enablers, and the perpetrator of the tragedy lends to the program a personal and visceral experience for all observers that is not soon forgotten. Narrated by retired LPD officer Wes Morgan, who started the Livermore program in 2000, students witness a scene of their peers in the immediate aftermath of a wreck.

The scene is hard to watch – even knowing it is dramatized, seeing high school students confronting the consequences of a fatal car accident is disturbing, especially for those students’ peers. The student victims from this year’s program – Destiny Arriola, Kalea Bartolotto, Gabriela Correa, Mateo Lungu, Scott Ragatz, and the driver, Victor Samara – were on track for promising lives as athletes, scholars, beloved friends, and family members. It is a scene meant to make an indelible impact. Morgan sees this as his best opportunity to reach students – to offer a real-life experience without the existential toll suffered by over 10,000 victims each year by alcohol-related incidents. “Sharing the experience is the only way to get that number lower,” said Morgan. “While these particular events aren’t real, this is a reality. Countless families go through this for real.”

An assembly followed the mock crash the next day that simulated a kind of memorial for the victims. In a joint effort by Cowboy Alley Productions and GHS Video, student filmmakers put together a moving portrait of each victim and a depiction of the events leading up to the crash. The victims shared their plans after high school – college, sports, careers, starting a family – that

would be cut short by the crash. Heart-rending scenes of the students’ parents finding their child in the hospital or the morgue stressed the far-reaching consequences of one decision.

It was an emotionally taxing experience for the participants as well as for those watching. Students supported each other with hugs and shoulders to cry on, and the participants, when it was all over, could share their experience and act as ambassadors from a world where one wrong decision took them from their community. “The opportunity we received in being a part of this program will stay with us for years to come, and I hope it does for the students who watched the crash and the video,” said Paige Johnson, the student coordinator for the event from LHS. “All of the students involved in the program have worked passionately for months, and if we change at least one person’s decision to drink and drive, then it’s all worth it.”

Image Via LVJUSD