'15 Minutes' That Will Last a Lifetime

Last weekend, my son went to his junior prom. On Monday, we met with his college counselor about possible campus visits over spring break. On Tuesday, an officer came to our door to tell us he had died in a car accident.

Even though I knew the knock at the door would come, and had been preparing myself for two months, it was still shocking and gut-wrenching.

My son, you see, was part of Every 15 Minutes at , the program that simulates a grisly drunken-driving accident involving teens, and looks at the ramifications one bad decision can have on a family, a school and a   community.

I have to confess that when I first heard about this program about 10 years ago, I saw it through the bleary eyes of a cynical journalist. My colleagues and I joked that a high school staged an Every 15 Minutes program about every 15 minutes.

I was naive. Not only was I unfamiliar with the details of the program, my kids weren’t yet in their teens. That doesn’t take away the threat of their death from a drunken driver, but something happens when the state hands your child a driver’s license. The slim thread of control you might think you have frays even more, and you know that one bad decision could have disastrous effects.

Every 15 Minutes is named for the statistic that every 15 minutes there is another alcohol-related traffic death. (More recent statistics say that the rate of alcohol-related fatalities has declined; at the end of 2007, there was one death every 40.4 minutes.) The two-day program is a community event, drawing in the police and fire departments, emergency medical teams and the staff at John Muir Medical Center.

It is designed to be realistic, and it is. To the point that I started sobbing when the officer delivered the news. Even my somewhat stalwart husband was crying, and he told the officer, “If this had been real, you would need to be calling 911 for me.”

We got off fairly easy. The parents of the kids who were involved in the staged crash had to go to the hospital, in one instance to see their paralyzed daughter, and the other to hear that their daughter didn’t survive. There was no acting on the parents’ part — their tears were real, as well.

On Wednesday we parents — as well as the entire school — attended a memorial service as part of the program, in which we saw a video of the crash site. (Juniors and seniors were invited to the crash site Tuesday morning, seeing the four kids involved in the crash still in the cars, and the 16 others—including my son—who were “The Living Dead.”)

The video starts out depicting a typical teenage party, with lots of beer drinking. Two of the kids are — between chugging cups of beer — talking excitedly about their post-graduation plans. Then they make the disastrous decision to “go get more booze.”

Meanwhile, two girls are seen at home studying, when one gets a phone call from a friend asking to be picked up at the party because he’s had too much to drink. So they set out on an ill-fated mission of mercy, only to be hit head-on by their intoxicated friends on a beer run. One of the girls is “killed,” the other “paralyzed.” The passenger in the car with the drinkers dies at the hospital, and the driver is booked and sent to the Martinez Juvenile Detention Facility.

While viewing the video was a shattering experience—the bloody wounds looked very realistic—what was even more overwhelming was hearing letters students and parents wrote to each other, as if the student had died. Seeing Justin Wise, a varsity linebacker and one of my son’s best friends, tearfully reading his goodbye letter to his mom and dad was something I’ll never forget.

My own son’s letter—which he didn’t have to read out loud, thank goodness—was filled with regrets and apologies, and I think he'll always remember that, too.

After the memorial service ended, we were reunited with our children. My son and husband clung to each other fiercely, then he grabbed me and wouldn’t let go. He’s never hugged me so tightly — not even when he was a little boy.

I told him I was proud of him for having had the courage to go through the program. He apologized for making us go through it.

After the two days, I was wrung out. I was supposed to write this Wednesday, but I didn’t have the energy. I needed to recover.

And we did. My son picked up his girlfriend at school, they watched TV with my other son, and we all ate dinner together. Life was almost back to normal.

But a part of me grieves terribly for those families who go through this for real. And for the families of Matt Miller and Gavin Powell, the two Las Lomas boys who were killed not by a drunken driver, but by the simple decision to go rafting on a creek.

They were my son’s age, and even though I don't know their families, I now understand a little bit more what they are going through.

So, for those folks who think that Every 15 Minutes is a manipulative emotional program aimed to scare teens, you’re right. It is. Does it work? We’ll see.

 The community is invited to a screening of the Every 15 Minutes video Thursday at 7 p.m. at Northgate High School’s Lecture Hall. Meanwhile, Concord High will stage an Every 15 Minutes program April 12-13.