Teens Driven to Help Peers Get Safe Ride Home

While their classmates are gathering at football games or partying with friends on Friday and Saturday nights, one group of South County teenagers is quietly setting out on a weekend mission: to guarantee that other students get home safely.

Through a nonprofit organization called South County Safe Rides, they provide a confidential, no-questions-asked service, picking up and dropping off local students from 10 p.m. to 1:30 a.m. weekend nights during the school year.

The program, which uses the slogan “Drinking and Driving Can Kill a Friendship,” does not condone or promote teen drinking. But it does acknowledge that some students will consume alcoholic beverages, said volunteer Crista Chihorek, a senior at Mission Viejo High School.

“I’m really against it,” Chihorek, 16, said of underage drinking. “We just don’t want our friends who drink being killed.”

The program’s volunteer drivers, who now number more than 200, come from 10 South County campuses: the eight high schools in Capistrano and Saddleback Valley unified school districts, Santa Margarita High School and St. Margaret’s School.

Any student at those schools may sign up for the program. Volunteers must have parental permission, go through program training and make a commitment to prevent teen drinking and driving.

Affiliated with the Boy Scouts of America, the program used to operate in several locations. In 1994, those were consolidated at South County Safe Rides at Mission Hospital Regional Medical Center in Mission Viejo.

Reidel Post, executive director of the Orange County chapter of Mothers Against Drunk Driving, said schools, parents and the community still bear responsibility for making sure zero-tolerance laws are followed. But she said she supports Safe Rides.

“It’s a peer-to-peer program,” Post said. “The young people are deciding to take care of themselves.”

Each weekend at Mission hospital, an adult volunteer directs teams of teens who work in groups of three: a driver, a navigator and a dispatcher. The students are allowed to pick up callers who attend local schools and live in the area south of Irvine to San Clemente, but excluding Laguna Beach.

According to Safe Rides statistics, 811 rides were given last school year, nearly twice as many as the year before. Organization officials said they expect the total to keep rising as more students hear of the program.

To get the word out, students pass out Safe Rides key chains with the group’s hotline: (800) 273-RIDE.

The reward for the volunteers who give up their weekend nights is knowing that they are making a difference in the community, said Kristine Poptanich, 17, a Mission Viejo High School student.

“If even one kid the entire year is kept alive,” she said, “it’s worth it.”

Information: (714) 364-7754.