Alive Performance

Combing the dusty auto lot for his dream car, Mike Shapiro stopped short at the sight of a blue Honda Accord--its driver’s door a tangle of contorted metal, the wrecked windshield a maze of cracks.

“Hey, what about this one?” he called, admiring the pulverized front end. A real gem.

Shapiro, a Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy, craved the worst junkers that Wolf’s Towing and Auto Repair could cough up. The more the cars resembled shredded tinfoil, the better.

The wrecks will be key props in an elaborate morality play opening today at Valencia High School after seven months in production. More than 100 supporting actors, including students and their families, have a role in the grisly two-day scenario, meant to hammer home the dangers of drunk driving.

The main act--a scene depicting the bloody aftermath of a car crash--will be staged for about 1,200 juniors and seniors in front of the school.

Shapiro estimates that the whole production will consume at least $100,000 in staff time and other costs to make the drama as realistic as possible.

There’s the Los Angeles County Fire Department helicopter, on hand to fly a badly injured “victim” to the hospital. Ambulances and the county coroner’s van will be there too, ready to help the wounded or carry off the dead.

But what sets this program apart--and what Shapiro and others say make it so powerful--is the role played by students and their parents.

Twenty-six students have been chosen to play “victims”--or, in one case, a drunk driver--in the drama. School officials asked kids from a range of social cliques to participate, in an effort to reach a broad cross-section of students.

Some have starring roles in the crash scene, but most will suffer a less graphic demise as they are removed from class to symbolize other drunk-driving deaths.

The student playing the drunk driver will be handcuffed and taken to jail. One victim will wind up at Henry Mayo Newhall Memorial Hospital, where nurses plan to chill his hands in an ice bucket--so that when his distraught parents come to bid him goodbye, he’ll be stone-cold.

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While other parents won’t go to the hospital, all those whose children portray drunk-driving victims were asked to write obituaries summing up their children’s lives--a task so harrowing that a few have declined to do it.

“My poor secretary spent two days in tears, typing up the obituaries,” said Marie Yagmur, Valencia’s assistant principal. “You start off going, ‘Oh, this is a program, this is a show.’ And you read someone’s obituary and it doesn’t seem so distant and pretend anymore.”

The program may hit particularly close to home in Santa Clarita, a suburb of wide-open roads and a large population of youth--nearly 40%, compared with 26% nationally, according to city officials. Four teenagers have been killed in car crashes here in the last two months, although the incidents weren’t alcohol-related.

But the city is not alone in its efforts.

The Every 15 Minutes program, named for the frequency of drunk-driving deaths nationwide, is steadily spreading to schools across California after being pioneered by the Chico Police Department in 1995.

“It’s catching on big-time,” said Stuart Thompson, an investigator at the state Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control. In the last year, the number of programs statewide has jumped from 54 to 65.

Over sandwiches at Valencia High last week, more than a dozen firefighters, paramedics, sheriff’s deputies and school officials hashed out the details: Where should the helicopter land? How many backboards does the ambulance need? Should the coroner bundle victims into body bags, or just drape them in sheets and plastic?

There is no hard data that show these efforts reduce the numbers of alcohol-related traffic deaths. But surveys suggest the hard-hitting scenarios make kids less likely to drink and drive.

“What we’re seeing is pretty positive,” said Judith Bordin, an associate professor of child development at Cal State Chico, who is studying the program’s effect.

In a survey of 223 high school students, Bordin found teenagers were “statistically less likely” to drive drunk or ride with a driver who has been drinking after going through the Every 15 Minutes program.

“One of the marks of adolescent development is that they believe they’re invulnerable,” she said. “That’s why they scream down the road at 95 mph . . . [The program] really pulls a mirror up to kids and says: ‘You are vulnerable. Death is permanent.’ ”

It is unknown whether such programs--with their emphasis on gruesome scenes and emotional anguish--could cause students any long-term ill effects. But Steve Sussman, a USC professor in the department of preventive medicine, said it is unlikely that participants would suffer any harm.

“In terms of injuring them in the long run, it’s probably not going to traumatize them,” Sussman said. “It’s probably going to inoculate them. If it doesn’t do that, it won’t have an effect.”

By provoking fear, however, the program increases the odds that it will have an effect on teen behavior, he said.

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The Every 15 Minutes program offers plenty of scare tactics. Beginning in first period today, two black-robed Grim Reapers will stalk Valencia’s classrooms, hauling a teenager out of class every 15 minutes, all day long, as the school announces that student’s death over the intercom.

The dead will return to class after a visit to Debbie Hillman, a makeup artist who will paint their faces a ghostly white. Hillman is also in charge of the blood and gore at the accident scene.

“This year, I’m hoping to do a torn nose and a split chin,” she said. “The kids want to see the visuals. So we certainly add as much blood as possible.”

The students taken out of class to “die” are not permitted to speak for the rest of the school day. They will spend the night at a local hotel, forbidden to call home.

At the hotel, they will be met by school counselors and speakers who will talk about the very real price of driving drunk, including a local couple who lost their 18-year-old daughter in an accident two years ago, Shapiro said.

Leah Bingham, 18, played the role of a victim last year at Saugus High School.

“It had a really big effect on me,” said Bingham, recalling how hard it was to walk around school that day, her face painted white, unable to speak.

“My friends started crying when they saw me walk by and I couldn’t acknowledge them at all,” she said. “It was a really big thing at our school. People talked about it for the next month.”

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The mock tragedy packs a punch for parents too. This afternoon, sheriff’s deputies will visit the homes of students who are “killed,” breaking the news to mothers and fathers who know it isn’t true--but often choke up when they hear the words every parent dreads.

On Friday morning, the parents and their children will be reunited at a school assembly, where students will read aloud letters they wrote to their families the night before.

After that, everyone involved can only hope that the message will stick.

“What we’re looking for is to find just one kid who will say, ‘Wait. He shouldn’t drive,’ ” Yagmur said. “We’re just hoping we get more people who will be the voice of caution.”