Day of the Living Dead: At SLHS, Helicopter, Police, Students Recreate Drunk Driving Crash

Every 15 minutes someone in the United States dies as a result of an alcohol-rated car accident.

That's the statistic behind the program that uses a mock car crash to show students how drinking before getting behind the wheel can produce disastrous results for young people, their families and their community.

The Every 15 Minutes program occurs each spring at high schools throughout the country, and it's happening for the third time at on Thursday and Friday.

These days, the program could be renamed "Every 45 Minutes," and that would be rounding down. According to data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, in 2009 an alcohol-related accident that resulted in a fatality occurred about every 50 minutes. 

Still, proponents tout the two-day program as a powerful way to emotionally reach students about the dangers of getting into a car with an impaired driver. And perhaps it's contributed to the reduction in drunk driving deaths.

The program occurs every two years for San Leandro High juniors and seniors and takes place in early April, the beginning of Alcohol Awareness Month.

If you live near the high school, you should have already received a notice telling you not to worry when police, fire, ambulances and a helicopter descend on San Leandro High on Thursday morning—it's designed to feel real, but of course it isn't.

Between 8:30 a.m. and 10:15 a.m. police officers will arrive in classrooms to remove students every 15 minutes. These students are called the "Living Dead."

Beginning around 10:30 a.m., about 1,200 students will be taken out of class and filed into outdoor bleachers as a grisly car crash scene is played out in front of them.

The student who plays the drunk driver will be arrested by San Leandro Police officers.

A popular male student athlete will be made up in realistic make-up to look badly wounded and be carted away to a hospital in a helicopter.

Two other students, also painted with fake blood and gashes, will be rescued from a badly damaged car by paramedics and taken by ambulance to Eden Hospital in Castro Valley and Highland Hospital in Oakland.

While the student who plays the drunk driver, senior Jenna Hewitt, filmed her scene of getting booked into jail on Wednesday, the students playing the crash victims will actually be taken to the emergency room on stretchers tomorrow.

A few of the students "die" and officers even knock on the doors of their homes to inform parents about their deaths.

"It's a really involved program," says Christine Graham of Eden Medical Center, who organizes the program for both San Leandro and Castro Valley High Schools, alternating between them each year.

Graham said despite the forecast of wet weather, "Rain or shine, we're going to be out there."

Once Thursday's activities are over, the 26 student participants will go to an overnight retreat, Graham said, where they write letters to their parents from beyond the grave, trying to imagine they've actually died in a drunk-driving accident.

The parents of participating students go to their own retreat that evening to write letters to their children.

The next day, Friday, the junior and senior classes will come back to attend a tear-filled assembly where some of the participants read their letters aloud.

Senior Jeff Engler, who will be one of  the injured victims in the program, serves as the student representative for the Board of Education, urged trustees at Tuesday's board meeting to support the students by coming to the assembly. He told them, "There will be plenty of boxes of tissues handy."

Those gathered Friday will also hear from Livermore Police DUI Officer Wes Morgan and a woman who was badly injured and her parents killed after their car was broadsided by a drunk driver as they travelled home from a Disneyland vacation six years ago.

Professional camera crews film all the events Thursday and produce a video to play at Friday's assembly.

Last year, California-based Rocket Spots produced Castro Valley High's video, which was nominated for a local Emmy award.

The entire planning process for each Every 15 Minutes event takes about four months, Graham said.

She said the high school chooses which students participate. Sometimes they encourage students who appear to be heading down the wrong path to become involved, she said, but many are chosen by the Associated Student Body (ASB) and by the Leadership class.

The program is a joint venture between Eden Hospital and the California Highway Patrol, which awards grants of $10,000 to individual programs.

Graham said the hospital spends an additional $12,000 per program.