‘Every 15 Minutes’ Leaves Sobering Message

Last week, Palisades Charter High School juniors and seniors observed ‘Every 15 Minutes,’ a national experiential program that challenges students to ponder the consequences of drinking and driving. The program’s name emphasizes the statistic that every 15 minutes, someone in the United States dies from an alcohol-related traffic collision.   The program started on Wednesday morning, when students were seated on bleachers in the faculty parking lot. Suddenly, the sounds of a crash are heard and a screen is removed to reveal the aftermath of a fatal two-car accident. Students and a teacher played the roles of the eight crash victims, two of whom died. Two LAPD motorcyclists arrive, followed by Fire Station 69 firefighters and paramedics. A student is pronounced dead and taken away in a coronor’s van, while others are taken by ambulance to the hospital. One student, after failing a sobriety test, is handcuffed and transported to police headquarters.   The staged scene was frighteningly real and it was eerily quiet as the 1,500 upperclassmen watched firefighters extricate the victim and survivors from the two vehicles. The next day, students attended a memorial service for the two people killed in the crash (a student and teacher), and also viewed a film that provided the background, then the aftermath of the crash, including the trial and the jailing of the student who was driving while drunk. Directed by Letia Clouston and produced by PaliHi parent Gail Schenbaum Lawton, the film is a chilling tale of how one bad decision’drinking and texting while driving’can affect so many people. The contrast of the happiness of the students and their bright future before the accident and the bleak reality afterwards is sobering. The students were chosen from a cross-section at the high school and the acting is amazing and believable. ‘Both the crash and the film were frighteningly realistic,’ senior Lexi Rubaum told Clouston by e-mail afterwards. ‘Seeing my own friends involved in such a horrific accident made the dangers of irresponsible driving more apparent than ever. The film was pieced together so professionally, everyone was stunned. The letters read were heart-wrenching, I couldn’t help but cry.’ Prior to the accident, one student is removed from a classroom every 15 minutes and his or her obituary is read, which has been written by the ‘dead’ student’s parent(s) explaining the circumstances of the teenager’s demise and the contributions the student made to the school and the community. A few minutes later, the student returns to class as the ‘living dead,’ complete with white-face make-up, a coroner’s tag, and a black ‘Every 15 Minutes’ T-shirt. From that point, the ‘walking dead’ do not speak or interact with other students for the remainder of the school day, and then join the mock accident victims at an overnight retreat at Aldersgate. At the memorial service for the deceased student and teacher, ‘a grieving mother spoke in front of a coffin about losing her beloved son, the teacher that died sobbed that he could not watch his child grow up, and a father spoke about his beloved daughter,’ Cecila Bernstein Kesden wrote in an e-mail. ‘All through the service, photographs of the deceased students were shown in a continuous loop’the deceased students as babies and little kids, along with family members and goofing around with friends. It was all too real and all too familiar. ‘We all grieved together because we knew that while this memorial service was simulated, we’ve all attended the real ones not too long ago.’ ‘There were times when I had to remind myself that this was all not ‘real’ and that my son [senior Preon Evans] would be coming home to me that night,’ mom Nickie Evans wrote in an e-mail to producer Lawton about the ‘Every 15 Minutes’ program. ‘We heard about the program and thought that if we could even save one life by educating [students] it was worth it,’ PaliHi interim principal Marcia Haskins said. ‘There have been an inordinate number of deaths at this school.’ California Highway Patrol spokesperson Travis Ruiz said the CHP supports the program because it has lasting effects on student drivers. ‘We do think its effective,’ Ruiz said. ‘We work with schools, so they can secure a grant.’ Through CHP and the traffic safety office, almost $10,000 is allotted to help present the $30,000 program, meaning the balance of the expenses must be covered by the community. Lawton said she received donations from Palisades residents whose children attend private schools, who wished their own private-school children could attend the program. Ruiz said last week was the first time ‘Every 15 Minutes’ has been presented in the Los Angeles Unified School District (it has been done in Malibu, Culver City and Beverly Hills) and that it required a year of planning. He praised PaliHi parent Cheryl Wada, who spearheaded the effort, and the parent volunteers. ‘The CHP plans to take the film to Sacramento and use it as a teaching tool,’ Lawton said. ‘Our goal was to have a far-reaching effect.’ Senior Lauren Gustafson, one of the students in the video, wrote in an e-mail to director Clouston, ‘You need to look all over Facebook to see what kind of impact ‘Every 15 Minutes’ made. Friends are reuniting and grudges are forgotten. You made a difference. I realized that I actually have so much in my life, more than I realize and that I should love life and appreciate it more and more every day.’