MADD Walk Drives Home a Sober Point

Phyllis Chew was smiling and apparently enjoying being out Sunday. But as traffic whizzed by her on Pacific Coast Highway, Chew, in a wheelchair, was recalling the tragedy of her life.

“This is the highway where it happened to me,” said Chew, as she rolled her wheelchair inside Bolsa Chica State Park, between Huntington Beach and Sunset Beach. “It was a drunk driver, up Pacific Coast Highway a few miles, in the Blood Alley section. In December, 1983, I was driving to Seal Beach, going to a dance, about quarter to nine in the evening.

“All of a sudden this car veered across the median and hit the car I was in head-on. The other car didn’t even have its lights on, and the driver was going about 85 m.p.h.

“I’m lucky to be alive. But, no, I haven’t walked since then.”

Rolling Along in Wheelchair

Chew, 58, of Huntington Beach, told her story as she rolled along in her wheelchair with about 50 others in a 2 1/2-mile march sponsored by Mothers Against Drunk Drivers (MADD).

The march was the Orange County leg of a four-month walk from Los Angeles to Washington, D.C., by MADD chapters across the nation. It began Saturday at Los Angeles City Hall and is scheduled to conclude Dec. 9 at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington.

Janet Cater of Orange, president of the Orange County chapter of MADD, helped hold a banner as she walked in front of the demonstration.

“The purpose of this march,” she said, “is to let people know that people across America will be walking and asking for safer streets and highways for our families and children.”

The marchers also will raise money through pledges. But most of all, they want a national crackdown on drunk drivers.

“We know tougher laws are needed and stronger enforcement” of existing laws, she said.

“Most of all, we need public awareness. Each individual has a responsibility to prevent drunk driving--by a personal decision, or by stopping a friend.”

A sound truck, with logos proclaiming the national march, followed the 50 Orange Countians as they moved along a highway inside the state park, parallel to busy Pacific Coast Highway. The march started at Warner Avenue and Pacific Coast Highway.

Chew, in her wheelchair, was at the rear. Initially, she pushed herself along as the parade got under way. Eventually, she smiled appreciatively as one of her five children, Diane Alexander, 28, of Long Beach, grabbed the handlebars and gave her mother a rest.

Family Very Supportive

“One of the hardest things for me has been to accept help,” Chew said. “I’ve always been independent. I’d always worked before the accident. It was hard for me to ask people to help me, but I’m very lucky because my family has been very supportive.”

Cater said that the California MADD members are particularly pushing for passage this year of Senate Bill 924. The measure, by state Sen. John Seymour (R-Anaheim) would allow judges to increase the punishment of a convicted drink driver whose accident caused bodily injury to more than one person.

Cater said the bill has passed the Senate “and will be up for a vote in the Assembly in the next couple of weeks.”

Motorists along Pacific Coast Highway and sunbathers on the Bolsa Chica State Park sand dunes paused to watch the parade. As the band of protesters marched up the roadway, a sound truck played the Beach Boys standard, “Surfin’ U.S.A. “