Sober Message Wins Poster Contest

An Arcadia sixth-grader has won a statewide poster contest aimed at educating students about the dangers of drunk driving.

Gary Phung, 11, who attends Annunciation School, won a $250 educational scholarship in the contest, sponsored by the California Office of Traffic Safety.

His poster was chosen from among more than 500 entries and will be reproduced and displayed on 15 California billboards with the tagline “If you drink, don’t drive” in English and Spanish.

Gary’s poster depicts two cars approaching an intersection, about to crash into a beer bottle. The bottle is circled in red and has a red slash crossing through it.

“I thought that the other kids would have had better ideas,” said Gary, who is contemplating a career as an artist. “But they said I had the most original one.”

The bilingual contest, which was open to fifth- and sixth-graders, specifically targets the Latino community, which has the highest rate of drunk driving arrests in the state, according to the California Highway Patrol. Latino drivers represented 38% of the 336,059 statewide driving-under-the-influence arrests in 1989, the CHP said.

Artwork from the top four poster entries also will be exhibited in 13 museums, libraries and malls throughout the state. In the San Gabriel Valley, the posters will be on view at the Azusa City Library, the food court at Plaza Pasadena and the Bruggemeyer Memorial Library in Monterey Park.