Mock Crash Has a Big Impact on SMCHS Students

One car was overturned with Colten Christenen laying on the pavement. Dead.

Allie DiBernardo's body was halfway on the hood of a second car, her head having knocked out the windshield. She, too, was lifeless.

These were the images uncovered by tarps Wednesday morning in a mock crash adjacent to Santa Margarita Catholic High. Yet there was one underlying element that couldn't be ignored.

This crash may have been fake, but it was based on a real one that killed three teens and injured others in San Juan Capistrano on Feb. 27, 1987. 

The program, called "Every 15 Minutes" and presented by Friends Against Drinking and Driving, is used to warn young people about making responsible driving decisions as prom season turns into summer vacation. The 15 minutes in the program's name represented the time between alcohol-related traffic deaths in the United States in the early 1990s.

Although organizations such as Mothers Against Drunk Driving and Students Againt Drunk Driving have helped cut that total in half, it doesn't change the sombering result.  Real lives end, and that was the point being driven home to the school's juniors and seniors who sat alongside Alas de Paz to watch the response to a fatal accident scene.

Yet the program didn't stop with the car crash.

Every 15 minutes during school, a heartbeat thumped over the loudspeaker, and a student was taken from his class, a black cloth placed over his desk with an obituary—written by his parents—placed on top of it. Those "dead" students were to be taken to a hotel Wednesday night for an overnight retreat to hear speakers and engage in activities related to the event.

The  Wednesday event marked the 20th anniversary of FADD's reenactment of mock DUI crashes in Orange County. The first one, coincidentally, was performed at Santa Margarita in May, 1991. According to Steve Concialdi, the crash coordinator and founder of FADD who is a captain and paramedic with the Orange County Fire Authority, this was the 74th event, and it has been collectively witnessed by 150,000 to 200,000 high school students, teachers and faculty.

It was an impactful program as Christensen and DeBernardo were the lifeless victims, Karmyn McKnight the one who died at the hospital. Reiley Higgins was trapped in the backseat of a sedan as his mother came upon the scene. Joelle Poettgen was the hysterical best friend still wearing her green prom dress. Ryan Stoker was the guilt-stricken driver who told officers he had "a couple of beers."

Stoker was handcuffed and taken away in a CHP cruiser as his friends yelled, "You killed them!"

Afterward, Orange County Fire Captain Craig Campbell addressed the students and told about losing his daughter, Kaydee—who had been a Santa Margarita student a couple of years earlier—in a 2008 incident while home on Christmas break from Indiana University. The nursing student had stopped to help another motorist involved in a traffic collision on Interstate 5 when Takayuki Saito—who had a blood alcohol level of 0.04—struck Kaydee's boyfriend's car which in turn struck Kaydee and killed her instantly. Campbell's wife Doreen held a large picture of their daughter as the fire captain fought back tears a few times in recalling the event.

The Campbells' loss was very real. The point they were trying to make was very real, too. These things really happen, and not just to someone else.

California Highway Patrol, Orange County Sheriff, Orange County Fire Authority, Mission Hospital, Doctor's Ambulance, Premier Towing, O'Connor Mortuary, City News Cast and TIP—the Trauma Intervention Program that serves as grief counselors in such events—all played a role in the reenactment. Each agency used the simulation as a training exercise. Higgins was extricated after firefighters cut off the top of the car.

The program concludes Thursday morning with a call to action for students to make responsible choices, not only about drinking and driving, but also texting, talking on the phone, wearing seatbelts and inattention while in a car.