They Served to Keep the Revelers Safe

When Esther James arrived at the American Legion party to take home two New Year’s revelers, she found them dressed to kill, bedecked in evening gowns, wrapped in mink stoles--and falling down drunk.

James wasn’t going to give them the chance.

Taking one in each arm, she helped the two elderly women stumble to her yellow ’74 Dodge Dart. She put one in the back and one in the front and adjusted the volume on her citizens band radio. After driving a few minutes, the front-seat passenger remarked that she couldn’t believe somebody cared enough to do something for her.

“I didn’t say anything,” James said, dragging on her cigarette. “She wasn’t looking for an answer. She’d found an answer, and she couldn’t believe it.”

Santa Ana resident Esther James, 43, was one of a fleet of citizen volunteers with various organizations who spent their New Year’s Eve driving home drunks for free instead of celebrating. She and her boyfriend, Larry Harris, 38, members of the Radio Emergency Associated Citizens Team, sat at home waiting for CB radio calls from their local REACT dispatcher while parties came to a climax all over Orange County.

By the time REACT shut down at 2:30 a.m., they had only been sent out once each.

“I was kinda wishing the night wouldn’t end,” James said in a Santa Ana coffee shop Tuesday. “I was part of the Haight-Ashbury generation. I found I had a knack for helping people who were having a bad trip and helping them have a good trip.”

The couple figured “we’d be up at least ‘til the bars closed, possibly later,” Harris said. “It wouldn’t have bothered either one of us.”

While the evening was a little slow for the eight Orange County REACT volunteers, it was just the opposite at the Communications Workers of America ride service headquarters. “The calls seemed like they were coming in every five minutes for a while,” said Ron Renish, the chairman of CWA Local 11510 in Santa Ana. “Things went super. Whatever happenned, it worked. The calls started coming in at something like 11 p.m., and the last call was at 6:15 a.m.”

37 Volunteers

The CWA switchboard workers routed 37 volunteer drivers from the Cooper Fellowship Recovery House, a residence for alcoholic men. In seven hours, they gave rides to 57 people. Many more people called for rides, but some left before the drivers arrived or gave the switchboard the wrong addresses.

“Two things stood out this year,” said Tom C., a 38-year-old Cooper resident and an Operations Director at TRW Inc., who asked for anonymity because of his job. First, he said, the ride service received fewer calls than last year. But second, he added, the group got more calls from young adults and teen-agers.

Michael Smith, 25, who participated in the year-old program for the first time on New Year’s Eve, said some of the riders reminded him of how he was just three years ago.

“I felt empathy for them,” he said in the recovery house lounge. “I’m never past it. I’m just one drink away from being an alcoholic myself.”

Smith said he hoped he would “get someone who was really hammered. It’s like a reflection of our past. I used to drink really hard. I started at 16 and stopped at 22, and I used to drink a fifth of Seagram’s 7 a day.”

As it turned out, Smith got his wish about 1 a.m. when he and his partner picked up three people at the Chee Chee Club in Santa Ana.

“We had a couple--an English guy and a woman--and Joe,” Smith said. “I wanted to get Joe home first . . . . He talked more or less like Foster Brooks--a perfect example of a drunk. He was hiccuping and mumbling, and his directions were very vague. I had to use a vivid imagination to find his place.”

When he did, Smith said, Joe stumbled out of the white ’67 Chevy Impala and proceeded to weave down the street, away from his apartment.

“As we left, he took off one way down the sidewalk and pointed into space,” Smith said, imitating the man. “Then he turned around and started wandering down the sidewalk in the other direction . . . . The couple said it was a good thing for sure that he didn’t drive.”

Worthwhile Experience

Smith said his experience on New Year’s Eve gave him more strength to stick with the program at Cooper Fellowship and stay sober. He said he was a little worried at first that one of his passengers would get violent or vomit on him during the ride, but everything ran smoothly.

“The feeling I get is maybe that of a lifeguard,” Smith said. “I feel that I’m probably saving a life.”

Larry Harris and Esther James, the REACT volunteers, echoed that sentiment.

“If doing what we do saves one life,” James said, “it’s all worthwhile.”