Photograph by Kara Chalmers
Lynda Davis, Red Cross coordinator, gives directions to Safe Rides volunteers (from left) Katie Avondet, Taylor Teerlink, Scott Lewis, coordinator for the shift, and Chris Mak.
Saratoga youth are serious about providing 'safe rides'
By Kara Chalmers
The call came in around midnight. Someone was stranded and needed a ride. At the Warner Hutton House in Saratoga, Safe Rides volunteer Taylor Teerlink, 17, hung up the phone and within minutes, her co-worker Scott Lewis, 18, was out the door and in the van, on his way to pick up the caller.
Chris Mak, 17, and Katie Avondet, 17, were also working Safe Rides on Saturday night, March 25. All are students at Saratoga High School, as are the majority of Safe Rides volunteers. They routinely give up weekend nights to work for this program that they believe in so strongly.
"Thanks for the ride," the caller said, climbing into the gray, unmarked minivan at about 12:10 a.m.
Saratogan Betty Morse read about the Palo Alto Safe Rides program in a newspaper and pushed to start a similar program in Saratoga. Safe Rides runs every Friday and Saturday night from 10 p.m. to 1:30 a.m. Safe Rides is an American Red Cross program, but the city of Saratoga pays for the toll-free phone line, gas for the van and provides the Warner Hutton House for phone calls.
The program had its test run last June during graduation weekend for Saratoga High School, and since it went well, it was allowed to continue this school year. The program will receive its second round of funding for the next year from the nonprofit Sand Hill Challenge. The Challenge is a soap box derby race that helps fund all Safe Rides programs in San Mateo and Santa Clara counties. The funding helps pay for the services of the Red Cross coordinator and the van.
The program's goal is to provide free, confidential rides to teens who have been drinking, or to those who need a ride because their driver was drinking, or whose car broke down.
As long as the calls come from within Safe Rides' boundaries--Saratoga, Monte Sereno, and parts of Los Gatos--volunteers will respond. According to Red Cross coordinator Lynda Davis, the program gives rides home to 10 to 15 teens per weekend. Between September and December 1999, and including graduation weekend last year, 178 teens received rides from Safe Rides.
Teens run the entire program. Each night, one teen coordinator, whom Davis has trained, is in charge. It is up to that person to find three or more teens to work.
While the volunteers admit they would rather be out at parties on weekends, they all say they volunteer partly for the social aspect of hanging out with friends, or sometimes, meeting new people.
"It's kind of fun to drive around and help out people," Avondet said. "When you work with your friends, it's just fun to be here." But Avondet said she's also worked with people she didn't know, and it's still fun, like the time she got stuck working with 12 sophomore boys (she's a junior). "You totally bond when you're in the van," she said.
On March 25, coordinator Scott Lewis said there was not much going on in the way of parties, and he didn't expect Safe Rides to get many calls. When the few calls did come, the volunteers were extremely professional in the way they handled them. According to Davis, they always are. But between calls, the volunteers played pool, listened to music, talked, ate and even danced.
According to the volunteers, the program mainly helps those people who can't drive themselves because they have been drinking. Sometimes callers are rude or act really "out of it," but usually, the rides are pretty uneventful. Volunteers say they have never experienced any violence or other problems while working.
According to Mak, the rides are always nice and quiet, and the people he has picked up have always said thank you, if not at the beginning of the ride, at the end.
Although one adult is required to be present at the Warner Hutton House every weekend night (Davis was the designated adult on March 25), teen volunteers answer all calls and teams of one male and one female teen go out together on rides. Davis said she always makes sure the adults understand how important it is for the program that whatever happens at Safe Rides is kept within the four walls of the Warner Hutton House.
According to Mak, the teens that call are confident that the volunteers will respect their confidentiality so they give real names. But if an adult voice answers the phone, it's a different story
Davis said that on March 25, she arrived five minutes early, before any of the volunteers, and the phone rang. She felt she should answer it. The caller, upon realizing it was Davis, would not even give a number for a teen volunteer to call back, before hanging up.
Through word of mouth and advertising with flyers, posters and laminated business cards when the program first began, Safe Rides is well known at Saratoga High School, according to the volunteers.
Avondet thinks one of the reasons Safe Rides got off the ground so easily last year was because of Every 15 Minutes, a program sponsored by the Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control and presented at Saratoga High School last on April 5. The program graphically depicts the consequences of a drunken driving car accident by involving high school students in a dramatization. The program will be presented at Los Gatos High School on April 4 and 5.
Avondet, who was one of the students involved and who doesn't drink at all, said Every 15 Minutes was the best thing to ever happen to the school.
Today, Safe Rides is so localized that users and volunteers almost always recognize each other, the volunteers say.
Davis wants to expand the program eventually, so that teens can call for a ride from anywhere and be connected to volunteers in their respective cities. "Once we fill in the gaps, teens will have service all the way up to South San Francisco," she said. But in the short term, she is just looking at connecting to the Safe Rides in Palo Alto.
Safe Rides volunteers, whether teen or adult, have one issue they both contend with regularly--people in the community who don't agree with the program and who say it encourages drinking.
Davis said she gets more positive than negative feedback, but mentioned one man who asked her, 'how do you address the problem of making responsible choices?' Davis said she responded that Safe Rides is all about making a responsible choice.
Teerlink, who doesn't drink, said that at first she thought the program might encourage teens to drink a little more than they usually would.
"People are going to drink no matter what," she said. "As long as we give them a safe ride, I think it's worth it."
Saratoga, California Since 1955
