Untimely ‘Deaths’ : Students Play Grim Roles in Program Aimed at Curbing Drunk Drivers

When Dana Bell saw the rows of bodies Monday evening at Westminster Memorial Park, she decided she had seen more than enough death that day.

Earlier in the day, Bell had become one of Westminster High School’s walking dead when the Grim Reaper tapped her shoulder during a U.S. history class. As she left the room, receiving a black T-shirt that identified her as dead, her obituary was read to classmates. And at home, her parents waited for the two police officers who would soon tell them their daughter had been involved in a fatal drunk-driving accident.

Bell and about 50 other students at Westminster and Huntington Beach high schools “died” Monday as part of a three-day, intensive anti-drunk-driving lesson called “Every Fifteen Minutes.” As the day drew to a close, the students visited areas of Westminster Memorial Park used to store bodies and prepare them for burial.

“A lot of my friends go out and get drunk every weekend,” said Bell, 17. “They’ll either call me to pick them up or I’ll follow them to the party and give them a ride home. But I hope me doing this will give them a rude awakening and help them see that what they’re doing is wrong.”

At each high school, students were taken out of classes every 15 minutes (the average length of time between drunk-driving deaths nationally), and lunchtime accidents were enacted.

The students involved in each accident, staged with firefighters and fake blood, either were whisked away in an ambulance, zipped into a body bag or arrested for drunk driving. And in an emotional role-playing exercise, the parents of those who were declared brain-dead had to identify their children at Columbia Huntington Beach Hospital and Medical Center and decide whether to take them off life-support.

“When I left the [hospital] room I thought, ‘I’m in control now, but if I play-act any longer I’m going to lose it,’ ” said Jeanine Laird-Davies, whose daughter Monica Laird was lying in a bed and looked as if she were on a respirator. “The longer I stayed in that room, the more real it was becoming.”

All of the action was videotaped to be shown at other high schools in the district.

The Huntington Beach students who participated stayed in a hotel Monday night, where they listened to speakers and discussed substance abuse. After the cemetery tour Monday evening, the Westminster students also were sequestered in a hotel for the night.

The students, all of whom volunteered for the program, will return to their schools today for assemblies, to discuss the impact of Monday’s events.

Among the most haunting parts of the day, many students said, was having the Grim Reaper tap their shoulders, or seeing it happen to their friends.

“I thought of my mom,” said Brandy Bailey, 18, of Westminster High School. “I knew they were telling her about me at the same time.”

Several parents said they became extremely emotional while writing their own children’s obituaries, which were read as the designated dead left their classes.

“It was the most difficult thing I’ve ever had to do,” said Cathy Glasby of Westminster. Adding to the impact, Glasby said, was her daughter’s absence Monday night.

“My husband’s home and we’re getting ready for dinner, just the two of us, thinking about what it would be like not to have her here,” she said. “And there are many little reminders, like taking out clothes that she left in the dryer.”

Doug Johnson, a Westminster police officer, contacted several parents at home and work--as prearranged--to tell them their children had been “killed” in drunk-driving accidents.

“You can see the emotions right on their face, even though they know it’s coming,” Johnson said. “I think it’s going to make parents communicate more with their kids about what they felt when we told them their kids were dead.”

Several parents hesitated when asked to participate. Jennifer Kikawa, 16, of Huntington Beach, told her mother that being involved in the exercise would do more than any speech to help her friends stop drinking and driving.

“Your peers don’t really listen to you when you just tell them what you believe,” Kikawa said. “But them seeing me do this, I think, will really help.”

Westminster Traffic Officer Bill Schultz said he was confident the day would have an impact.

“Even though you know it’s all acting, it gets your attention,” he said. “If it works on one student, then it was worth it.”

Many students agreed that the program had more effect on their families than they had anticipated.

“It hit me more than I thought it was going to--kind of a wake-up call,” said Jennifer Sewell, 18, of Huntington Beach High School. “I think everybody’s point of view is, ‘It will never happen to me.’ But after watching this, there is no way I’ll ever put myself in that position again.”

Times correspondent Steve Carney also contributed to this story.