Tragic Twist of Fate : MADD Activist Grieves for Son Who Died in Crash; Alleged Drunk Driver Held

Marcy DeJesus’ worst fear became a reality with a knock on her door at 1:45 a.m. Sunday, April 8. The police officer standing there told DeJesus, administrator of the Los Angeles chapter of Mothers Against Drunk Driving, to call the county coroner’s office in Palmdale. Her 19-year-old son, Adam, had been killed in a head-on collision with a drunk driver, he said.

Marcy DeJesus buried Adam one week ago today.

“What’s been going through my mind since the first minute (I heard) has been, ‘Ten years of work and what have I been doing? Has it made any difference at all if they can still get my son?’ ”

DeJesus founded the Los Angeles chapter of MADD with Barbara Bloomberg in 1981, after Bloomberg’s son, Seth, was killed by a drunk driver. Seth and Kiley DeJesus, Adam’s older brother, had been best friends.

Now, in answer to the question that has been haunting her, she said she knows her work has made a difference. “This is random. I’ve worked with so many families I know I’m not the only one this has happened to and I won’t be the last, although I pray every day that I would be.”

DeJesus’ work with MADD was “absolutely tremendous,” Candy Lightner said recently. Lightner founded the organization in Sacramento in May, 1980, four days after her daughter Cari was killed by a drunk driver. She watched Bloomberg and DeJesus build the Los Angeles chapter into a 5,000-member organization and take the initiative in creating programs--such as taking the organization’s message into schools--that became models for MADD at a national level.

“She was a behind-the-scenes person, the nuts and bolts of the organization, handling administrative details, going into the courts and monitoring (trials), writing letters to the editor--all of this as a volunteer at first,” Lightner said. “She was great working with victims. They loved her. She was very understanding, and impatient with the courts. That was good.”

Now those former victims are counseling Marcy DeJesus, writing letters to her, knowing enough, DeJesus said, not “to say anything stupid, like ‘I know just how you feel.’ ”

DeJesus talked about her son and MADD one rainy morning in her Canoga Park home while Lightner and another friend quietly worked in the background, sorting bills and correspondence, offering lunch or coffee.

Grief weighs heavily on DeJesus. Her voice was flat, her look remote as she sat on the couch in her den, the family dog, Max, beside her. Conversation was clearly a strain. Frequently lighting cigarettes, she responded to questions obligingly, but with little animation, except for an occasional soft smile brought on by a memory. Just as often, memories crumbled her facade and brought tears.

The rain made the morning dark and the unlit rooms had a gloomy cast to them. Looking around at one point, she said, “Five short years ago, there was so much laughter in this house and now it’s so quiet.”

Five short years ago the family was complete--she and her husband, Luchi, a successful musician and composer, and their two sons, Kiley and Adam. Then Luchi died within a month of being told he had a brain tumor. The family took it hard but held together, and last year, when Marcy, 50, had a stroke, Adam came home from UC Santa Barbara to be with her. She returned to work in January, and, still moving stiffly and slowly, describes herself as just getting back on her feet. Kiley, in his early 20s, is living at home and working for a sound system company. Adam had planned to return to UC Santa Barbara in the fall.

DeJesus last saw him when he left the house in his pickup truck that Saturday night. He and his girlfriend of two years, Shanya Roberson, 19, were heading for Lake Havasu, Ariz., for spring break. They were traveling on Route 18 in the Antelope Valley when they were hit at 8:30 p.m. Adam was killed instantly. Roberson was seriously injured and taken to a Palmdale Hospital.

And then came the knock on the door.

“I think I drove (Adam) a little crazy about it,” she said of her fear that he would be killed by a drunk driver. “He never left the house without my saying, ‘Be careful. Watch out for the other guy.’ And he never left the house without saying, ‘I love you, Mom.’ ”

Her face distorting, she began to weep. “I keep waiting for him to come through the door. I could tell the difference between the slams and I’d know what mood he was in when he came home. He was very moody--high highs, low lows.”

That is how Adam came across in the eulogies at his funeral service last Wednesday at Mt. Sinai Mortuary. Those who knew him described an intense, moody young man, highly creative in music and art, who cared deeply and questioned everything and everyone, especially himself. All of those who spoke described someone who was just beginning to find himself.

“I remember thinking to myself,” DeJesus said, “that someone who hadn’t known Adam would have come away (from the funeral) with a pretty accurate impression of him.”

His drums were set up in the chapel, beside the open coffin. Adam had a black belt in karate, and his black satin jacket, part of the karate-gi, lay folded on his chest, placed there gently by his instructor Rob Margolin, after Margolin eulogized him as student, teacher and friend.

The chapel was packed, and people overflowed onto the veranda and into side rooms. Police officers in uniform stood in the rear of the chapel--”the DUI squad from Van Nuys, and CHP from Malibu,” DeJesus said later, describing people with whom she had worked closely over the years.

What was particularly striking about the service was the racially mixed group of heartbroken young people in attendance--young men tightening their jaws, and breaking down anyway, young women sobbing.

“My husband was black,” DeJesus said. “Adam was very diverse in his choice of friendships. . . . We tried all our lives to surround the kids with people from different races.”

Smiling at her memory, she said wryly of Adam: “He usually made a statement by the cut of his hair. He wore dreadlocks toward the end. It was like, ‘I’m black this week.’ There was a little identity searching, but he was a well-adjusted kid.”

They were not a religious family, DeJesus said. “If anything, they’re (her children) metaphysical. Adam was probably more religious in his attitude than any of us--the way he felt about people, the world in general. He cared very deeply about everything going on.”

She described him as an accomplished artist and animator who won student prizes from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. He played the drums, studied music and, with brother Kiley on guitar, worked in a garage studio. His career ambitions tended toward music.

“I think he was trying to follow in his father’s footsteps,” DeJesus said.

She does not want to romanticize Adam, or paint an overly ideal picture of him. He was no angel, she said, and their own relationship had all the predictable difficulties. She pestered him with “where are you going?” questions. He tortured her with monosyllabic “out” answers.

And at other times he had a lot more to say.

“He was full of questions and statements of fact,” DeJesus said dryly. “He took everything so seriously. He thought he knew all the answers. He was a very intense young man. He was just maturing, trying to make up his mind about what he really believed in. His father’s death really rocked him. They had been very close. He was 13 and did not really deal with it until he was 18.”

Darshan S. Grewal, the driver of the car that killed Adam and injured Roberson, has been charged by Los Angeles County prosecutors with second-degree murder, gross vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated and felony drunk driving causing death or injury. Seriously injured himself, Grewal was transferred from San Bernardino Country Hospital to that county’s jail ward. He has two previous drunk-driving convictions. His blood-alcohol level three hours after the accident measured 0.2%. The legal definition of intoxication is 0.08%.

DeJesus is staying away from the case because of her anger, she said, leaving MADD’s role in it to the Antelope Valley chapter.

“As much as possible I’ve just got to concentrate on my grief. . . . Anger has to be put in perspective.”

Her friendships are sustaining her around the clock. “It’s unbelievable. . . . They won’t leave me alone. I never believed that sort of thing could help, but I certainly do now. The mail has been overwhelming, from perfect strangers. It’s incredible.”

She visited Roberson at the hospital last weekend, and while it was a rough visit on both of them, DeJesus said, “it was very important to me. I love her like my own daughter, and I needed to see she’s all right.”

The two young people graduated from El Camino Real High School in Woodland Hills in 1988. Their families lived about five blocks from each other and they had attended UC Santa Barbara together. There are two photos of the young couple in the DeJesus den, one casual pose taken two weeks ago, and another in which they are dressed up for a MADD banquet.

Shanya Roberson is recovering, but DeJesus is concerned for her.

“She’s so sad right now. She’s got a long road ahead of her.”

DeJesus intends to carry on with MADD.

“I need to be around people who understand what’s going on. . . . We’re trying to prevent this from happening to anybody else. Now that I really realize, I know I can’t bear the thought of another family going through this.”