Doing Good, Doing Well

It was 7:30 in the morning, the day after the prom for some. But instead of sleeping in, more than three dozen Orange County high school students met up with some off-duty sheriff’s deputies at the El Modena home of Amalia Escamilla, 71.

The stucco, one-story house has been in Escamilla’s family for 45 years, and now she’s too frail to care for it. So 15-year-old Sahar Doostzadeh and the others did it for her.

“I’m blessed with everything, and other people aren’t,” Doostzadeh said while painting a wall. “It’s important that I help out.”

Doostzadeh is a member of the Insight program, an unusual effort by the Orange County Sheriff’s Department aimed at steering students away from drug use.

Unlike more traditional programs where uniformed officers lecture students about the perils of drug use, Insight tries a more active approach. High school students go rock climbing with deputies, chat candidly about rave drugs and organize community volunteer projects like Saturday’s rehabilitation project, in which students painted Escamilla’s home, sodded her yard, built a block fence and planted flowers.

“We don’t run around [in] uniforms with gun belts on,” said Sgt. Randy Sterett, who has worked with the Insight program for four years. “We sit with students at meetings, eating pizza and acting as close to a peer or mentor as we can.”

The program also differs from many antidrug efforts because it attracts some of the best students in the county, many of whom would never think of taking drugs. Officials said their goal is to both give these student leaders a forum to better understand the dangers of drugs and also carry the message to others at their schools.

Insight has been operating for more than a decade. Students said Insight is now an institution in local public and private schools, with a long list of alumni who continue to serve as antidrug activists.

Brenda Gonzalez joined Impact at age 14 and eventually was elected president of the group.

Now she’s a student at Saddleback College, but she returned to Impact for last week’s house rehab project. Gonzalez hopes to become a sheriff’s deputy or probation officer.

“When you talk to people who take drugs, they say, ‘Oh, they make you feel so good,’ ” Gonzalez said. “But what can be more satisfying than helping those in the community? To me, that’s my drug, helping my community.”

Each year, students organize a holiday party for the children of substance abusers. About 16 of the approximately 150 members travel to Washington, D.C., to meet politicians and discuss ways to fight drug abuse.

Students volunteer ideas on how to spread antidrug messages and help the community.

“These kids are just wonderful,” said Marilyn MacDougall, executive director of Drug Use Is Life Abuse, the nonprofit organization that runs Insight in cooperation with the Sheriff’s Department. “They want to help any way they can.”

Emma Casella, 16, of Santa Ana planted flowers near Escamilla’s front steps last Saturday.

“I didn’t know how much a group of us could do, I didn’t know what a difference we could make,” Casella said. “It makes me feel good. It makes me want to do something like that for the rest of my life.”

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Times photographer Karen Tapia contributed to this report.