Like wrecked cars after an accident, tragedy litters the lives of drunken drivers' victims.

Byline: The Register-Guard

Fate has not been kind to Marie Armstrong. Drunken drivers have crashed into the Eugene woman's life not once, but three times.

In 1953, when Armstrong was 4 years old, a drunken driver collided head-on with the car that a beloved cousin was riding in, killing her on a two-lane highway near San Francisco just hours after her wedding in Los Angeles.

In 1963, Armstrong's father, Mike Ferraro, was driving home from his job in Los Angeles when he was broadsided by a drunken driver. His hip was crushed, and he wore a body cast for months. Now 87, he has fallen three times in the past year, breaking bones each time, because of his bad hip.

But it is the most recent tragedy that stings Armstrong, who works for Levi Strauss in Eugene, the most.

On March 8, 1996, Armstrong's 20-year-old son, Chance Friedhoff, was a passenger in a car driven by his girlfriend, Sara Edwards, along London Road east of Cottage Grove. The two were on their way to a gathering near Cottage Grove Lake when they saw three vehicles racing toward them at high speeds on the two-lane road. The oncoming cars were friends playing "chicken," Armstrong said. Two of the cars struck Edwards' 1988 Nissan Sentra. Friedhoff was killed instantly. Edwards survived but suffered a severe brain injury.

The driver of the pickup that caused the accident, Timothy Allen Hedrick, who was 19 at the time and witnesses said had been drinking, served only three months in jail for criminally negligent homicide, although he lost his license for eight years. That didn't stop him from driving, though. A subsequent driving under the influence of intoxicants charge, followed by a charge of illegally possessing a firearm, put him in prison.

Armstrong thinks that's where he belongs. "The grief doesn't go away," Armstrong said.

However, she does not sit around and feel sorry for herself. "All you can do is educate," said Armstrong, who was already a member of Mothers Against Drunk Driving when her son was killed.

As a member of MADD, Armstrong is part of a team of parents who have lost children to drunken drivers and who have successfully pushed for stiffer drunken driving laws in Oregon. Armstrong also is a speaker at the Lane County Victims Impact Panel, a session in which about 200 DUII offenders are directed by the court each month to listen to the stories of people whose lives have been affected by drunken driving.

Besides Armstrong, speakers include a 28-year-old man who almost killed himself and his friend after driving drunk; a 31-year-old woman who hit and killed a man three years ago on Delta Highway while driving drunk; and a woman whose husband is now behind bars because he, too, killed someone while driving intoxicated.

So, what does Armstrong tell them, these new - and sometimes old - faces she sees every 30 days?

"I tell them about my son's life," she said. `I tell them how it impacts me. I tell them that the grief is 24/7. I tell them, `If you drink, have a plan.' '

Then she asks them three questions:

`One, when you go home tonight, and you look at your family, which one could you live without? Two, I know you're sitting there saying, `This will never happen to me.' But look around the room. Can you say that all 200 of these people are safe drivers? And three, could you walk in my shoes?'

David Hanson, 28, of Eugene is another regular speaker on the panel. And sometimes, when the weather is nice, he brings his car along. It's a 1996 champagne-colored Ford Contour. It sits on a flatbed trailer at his parents' neighbor's house on Royal Avenue. And it looks just like it did on Dec. 19, 1999, when Hanson wrapped it around a tree on a curve of West 18th Avenue near Churchill High School.

The right front tire is crushed in, as is the windshield and the driver's side door. And you can see right where the car wrapped around the big tree trunk. The car looks like half a bagel, like a giant hand heated it up and then formed the melted metal around the tree. There is hardly any space for a body to sit in the driver's seat. The crash crushed the entire left side of Hanson's body. Twenty-two broken bones. Fractured skull. Brain injury. Chest injury. More than 200 stitches in his face.

He had to learn how to walk again. How to speak again. How to chew food and swallow again.

Paramedics resuscitated him three times. He should be dead. His longtime friend who was riding in the passenger seat sustained a fractured skull, a broken jaw and a broken eye socket. Then he sued Hanson for more than $1 million. They settled out of court. They're no longer friends.

Hanson, who owns a Mountain Man Nut & Fruit franchise he operates from his home, hasn't had a drop of liquor since he left a Eugene brew pub that night five years ago.

After three years of probation, Hanson's life is good today. He met his wife, Melissa, in Bible study 16 months after the accident, and they have two young girls. His complete recovery from the crash has been nothing short of miraculous.

"They can't explain it," he said. He wonders if maybe he was left on this earth for a reason. And what does he tell the DUII offenders when he speaks on the panel?

"About how my selfish decisions affected other people," he said. "Just in hopes of saving one person from going through what I did."

- Mark Baker

CAPTION(S):

Marie Armstrong holds a photograph of her family, including a son, Chance, whose death helped spur her activism. Armstrong's car bears a reminder of her loss. "CW" stands for Chance Wayne Friedhoff, the son who died in 1996.