Parents and teens advocate for the return of Safe Rides

By Oakley Brooks

Saratoga's Safe Rides program, which bailed local teens out of unsafe driving situations, has shut down in recent months, the victim of a soft economy.

The program's funding dried up this fall when its main revenue source, the annual Sand Hill Challenge soapbox derby benefit in Menlo Park, failed to provide enough assistance this year.

Safe Rides coordinators say the Sand Hill Challenge was deeply affected by the slowing economy and the events of Sept. 11.

The economic downturn put a stop to the program, which was controversial at its inception in 1999. During the last school year it carried 266 people home between 10 p.m. and 2 a.m. on weekends.

Safe Rides not only offered rides to students intoxicated or traveling with intoxicated drivers, but to any teen feeling unsafe about his or her company or ride home.

"People have been calling and saying 'How come it's not running? This is something we want in the community,'" says Betty Morse, a local parent and nurse who helped coordinate Safe Rides in Saratoga.

From the beginning, Safe Rides received the support of Saratoga High School and the Saratoga Fire District. Saratoga High School Vice Principal Karen Hyde, who helped provide rides to teens through the Boy Scouts starting 15 years ago, recently pushed for Safe Rides' return.

"Not every kid feels he or she can call a parent and not every parent is home," Hyde says. "It's a widespread problem and this is a potential solution."

Morse and Bay Area Safe Rides Foundation Director Lynda Davis kept the program minimally active this past fall by maintaining a toll-free line and by arranging for the Yellow Cab company to pick teens up in an emergency at Safe Rides' expense.

The Warner Hutton House, where volunteers would receive calls and then head out for pick-ups, also remains available should the program get back up and running.

But because the foundation cannot pay the steep insurance costs for the teen volunteers to make runs with the Safe Rides van, the service has been dormant this school year.

"Everyone is bummed that it's not going," says Ben Morse, 18, Betty's son and a Saratoga High School senior who has helped staff the program since its beginning. "I don't even think people have used the cab program this year."

Betty Morse says that her group paid $10,000 for insurance and van upkeep last year and another $40,000 to Davis to run the program. After helping start Safe Rides in Saratoga under the umbrella of the Red Cross, Davis left the Red Cross to start Bay Area Safe Rides Foundation with Morse's help in 2000. The Saratoga area was the foundation's main focus, before Davis got Cupertino's Monte Vista High involved at the end of the 2000-'01 school year.

She had hoped to spread Safe Rides throughout much of Santa Clara County before the foundation fell on hard times.

Davis says she is prepared to come back and coordinate the Saratoga program on a volunteer basis. Meanwhile, Morse is trying to secure grant money to cover the most basic costs of Safe Rides.

She says she would like to keep the effort going not only as an emergency service, but also as a way for volunteers to get leadership and organizing skills and to lay the foundation for behavior throughout students lives.

"We're saying, for the rest of your life, don't drink and drive," Morse says.

Safe Rides student leaders past and present worry that the continued suspension of the program, combined with a slight decline in volunteer interest last year, might hurt Safe Rides' leadership in the future. A cadre of Saratoga High School seniors who helped staff the effort from its first night--Saratoga High graduation night in June 1999--is set to graduate this spring.

"Most of the underclassmen don't know what Safe Rides is," says Mike Anousos, who graduated from Saratoga High in 2000 and now attends West Valley College. "I needed many rides in high school. You're blind if you don't think there are kids out there drinking."

Hyde, the Saratoga High vice principal, says she faced community criticism about a rides program 'encouraging' drinking, when she first started the Boy Scouts' rides a decade and a half ago.

She says those sentiments still exist among residents, along with the peer pressure among teens to drink.

"We'd like everyone to walk the straight and narrow, but I can't control that," Hyde says. "We need to teach responsibility."

Betty Morse says she also has heard of interest among parents and students at Los Gatos and Prospect high schools. When and if the program restarts, she would like to eventually have a combined Los Gatos-Saratoga rides effort.

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Contact the Bay Area Safe Rides Foundation at 408.268.4963.

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