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Photograph by Kathy De La Torre
LGHS senior Erick Sturm is 'arrested' after failing four sobriety tests at the scene of the mock fatal accident launching Every 15 Minutes.
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Crash and Learn
Grim reaper casts a shadow on the LGHS campus
By Shari Kaplan
It was not a good day to die. The sun shone out of a nearly cloudless sky, cooled by an occasional breeze rustling the new leaves that spring brought to the trees around Los Gatos High School. Even more promising, summer vacation was just two months away for the busy students, and, for seniors, so was the emancipation of graduation.
Despite these signs of light, life and hope, signs of the Grim Reaper's presence were also evident on campus last week. On April 4, death claimed a young victim every 15 minutes--snatching him or her out of the classroom without a chance to say goodbye to family or friends.
That's the way it is when the Reaper's scythe cuts short a life.
Photograph by Kathy De La Torre
Every 15 Minutes staged a mock fatal accident at LGHS April 4.
That's also the message of Every 15 Minutes, a two-day, interactive multimedia program held at Los Gatos High School on April 4 and 5. Making the rounds of California schools since its 1995 inception by the Chico Police Department, Every 15 Minutes realistically re-enacts not merely death, but death as a result of drunken driving. The program includes a dramatized car crash, an arrest and a funeral. Its name comes from the statistic that someone, somewhere, is killed every 15 minutes in an alcohol-related traffic accident in the United States.
Hoping to keep local students from adding to those statistics, members of the LGHS Parent-Teacher-Student Association and Community Against Substance Abuse worked on the program. They spent six months working with school staff, community volunteers, social services and public safety agencies to put together an unforgettable experience for students. The program also is aided by a grant from the State of California Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control. Last year, the same program took place at Saratoga High School.
Photograph by Kathy De La Torre
Sophomore Adam Rude played the role of the classmate who became a victim of the Grim Reaper. The DUI fatality kicked off the two-day emotion-packed program, but it wasn't the only DUI death. Every 15 minutes, the Grim Reaper entered a classroom and tapped someone.
Last week's program began as the entire student body convened around the football field to witness the aftermath of a simulated head-on collision between two cars. As frightened 911 calls blared over the public-address system, Santa Clara County firefighter/paramedics, Los Gatos-Monte Sereno Police officers and emergency medical technicians from American Medical Response began arriving on the scene.
The first firefighters and police declared sophomore Adam Rude dead on arrival. He had been thrown from the car in which he was riding. Senior Cortney Kelly was trapped inside her car, bloodied and critically injured, while senior Erick Sturm, the driver of the car which hit Kelly's, escaped the wreckage with barely a scratch.
With personnel from the Santa Clara County coroner's office en route to remove Rude's body, rescue crews worked on stabilizing Kelly and extracting her from her crumpled car--a task that involved removing the windshield and roof and using the Jaws of Life. In the meantime, police officers began questioning Sturm, with their growing suspicion that he had been driving under the influence of alcohol.
As Kelly was rushed by ambulance to Valley Medical Center with her vital signs falling, Sturm was administered four field sobriety tests, failing them miserably.
"I did OK, didn't I?" he mumbled while being handcuffed and led to an awaiting patrol car.
Photograph by Kathy De La Torre
Adam Rude, who died in the mock accident is rolled into a van for his journey to the coroner's office. In the background is the Grim Reaper played by Benn Winkelman.
What's ironic about this situation, Sturm's grandparents Claudia and Bob Nicolai later told the Los Gatos Weekly-Times, is that because Sturm's uncle was himself a victim of a drunken driver, the whole Sturm family stays away from alcohol.
"Erick had no idea how to act drunk; a police officer had to coach him beforehand," Claudia said. "It seemed very real. I was impressed with how they put the whole program together. As a grandparent or a parent, it really raises the hair on your arms. I was close to crying, especially when police pulled him from the car and he was just standing there. I thought 'gosh, that really could be one of our kids!' "
"My husband said 'what a reality check it was when those handcuffs were slapped on Erick!' I said that the real reality check would have been seeing him zipped into a body bag like the other boy," Claudia added.
Throughout the entire scene, the black-cloaked Reaper and the somber row of "living dead" students he had claimed earlier that day stood like silent sentinels, privy to the fact that alcohol and driving are a deadly mix that change lives forever. Rude's family would soon identify his body at the county morgue and Kelly would later die in the Valley Medical Center emergency room. Sturm would be booked on suspicion of drunken driving--and likely vehicular manslaughter--and locked in the county jail.
"We don't call them 'accidents,' because if there's alcohol or substances involved, it's not an accident. It's a very serious crime," LGHS assistant principal Don Hand said in a brief speech while tow trucks removed the totaled cars behind him.
Photograph by Kathy De La Torre
LGHS senior Erick Sturm, who failed four sobriety tests at the scene of the fatal mock accident, looks at the carnage created by the collision.
Even as students began filing out of the bleachers to their fourth-period classes, uniformed police officers and local clergy were calling on the parents of each of the nearly 30 students who joined the living dead that day. The students spent the rest of the day and night at a retreat in the youth hostel at Saratoga's Sanborn-Skyline County Park. After completing their simulations at the morgue, hospital and jail, Rude, Kelly and Sturm also attended the retreat.
Together with police and fire personnel, school staff and representatives of various social service agencies, students participated in team-building activities and mixers, talked about their experiences and wrote letters of farewell to their parents--letters true victims of drunken driving never get to write. Parents also wrote similar letters that day. Both groups would share some of these at a memorial service the following day.
"A lot of the students chosen by the Reaper didn't know each other at first," says LG-MSPD school resource officer John Campos, who was part of the retreat. "Our whole group that evening was on a roller-coaster ride of emotions. By the end, everyone came together as a family."
Photograph by Kathy De La Torre
Seniors Jande Keyes (right) and Lesley Schiefelbein (left) watch the DUI accident. Jande said the scene made her think of Jeff Peckler who was killed by a drunken driver.
The next morning, the entire school reconvened in the gymnasium to attend a memorial service for the living dead and view a videotape of the previous day's proceedings edited by LGHS teacher Bob Peck and his student film crew. They also listened to various guest speakers, including Los Gatan Judy Peckler, whose husband Jim and children Jill and Jeff lost their lives in early 1997 to a drunken driver while on their way to Lake Tahoe.
"[Every 15 Minutes] is as close to the experience [of drunk driving] as you can have without actually experiencing the tragedy," said LG-MSPD Chief Larry Todd, setting the tone when he shared one of his most memorable experiences--an accident he happened upon 27 years ago as a rookie cop. When a truck driven by an intoxicated driver collided with a station wagon, something small flew from the wagon and hit the ground. It turned out to be the driver's baby, whose skull, Todd recalled, felt like a dozen broken eggs when he picked her up.
"To this day, I can still see that baby flying from the car and still remember my desperate attempts to breath life back into her body," he told a completely silent gymnasium. "The Every 15 Minutes program is as close to the real world as we can make it. The question is, what kind of real world decisions will you make when you leave here today?"
Photograph by Kathy De La Torre
LG-MS Police Chief Larry Todd adds a sobering note to the day when he recalls witnessing a tiny baby being ejected from a car that had been hit by a drunken driver.
Following on Todd's heels was young firefighter/paramedic Jason Falarski, who fought back tears as he told students that in spite of his dangerous career, the mock crash was one of the most emotional events he's gone through.
"It was only 10 years ago that I was one of you, feeling invincible, thinking this could never happen to me. Now I see it every day," he said. Falarski left students with just one order--to tell their parents that they love them.
More tears flowed when parents of the living dead and the dead themselves read from the letters they had composed the previous day.
"No one ever told me how lonely death would be, or how petrifying," student Jessica Jardine read to her parents and the whole school. "I have so much left to do. I'm so mad--mad that I can't be there anymore! This isn't fair; you both deserve more than I'm putting you through."
Student David Surwitz summed up similar feelings with his simple: "Mom and Dad: I love you so much that I feel this letter is a disrespect to you."
Each student who was tapped by the Grim Reaper every 15 minutes made his or her own tombstone which was placed in front of the school.
Photograph by Kathy De La Torre
For student Nicki Anderson, the experience of letter writing filled her with remorse as she realized, too late, that she had been pulling away from her parents' affection and had failed to be a best friend to her sister.
"You could hear a pin drop in that gym," Campos said after the assembly. "It's been awesome over the past two days how serious and responsive the kids have been."
"If we can just save one kid from not getting involved in drinking and driving, who knows how many other lives that will save?"
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Los Gatos, California Since 1881
