PAYING THE PRICE OF DRUNK DRIVING STUDENTS GIVEN A FEEL FOR 'REAL' DEATH AND GRIEF.

Byline: Carol Rock Staff Writer

SANTA CLARITA - The teenagers, each in a body bag, arrived at the cemetery to pick out their caskets.

Six others were given white gloves and quietly instructed how to carry a heavy oak casket with dignity.

Nervous laughter soon subsided as the ``pallbearers'' walked toward a waiting hearse with their burden. After a short drive to an empty section of the cemetery, they placed the casket over an open grave.

This heartbreaking scene at Eternal Valley Memorial Park in Newhall marked a new facet to the dramatic Every 15 Minutes, a national program that involves police, firefighters and ambulance crews in combating teen drunk and reckless driving. Conducted last week at Canyon High School, the presentation gave students who had ``died'' in a crash on campus mock death certificates, burial permits and a morbid shopping trip for eternal resting places.

Every 15 Minutes is held every other year at Santa Clarita's high schools. The program features a simulated bloody collision, the ``Grim Reaper'' pulling out students, emergency room scenes with grief stricken parents beside their ``dying'' sons or daughters and obituaries.

The program is aimed at giving high school students first-hand experience at the chilling prospect of losing a friend, classmate or teacher to alcohol-related traffic crashes.

Since the program has been in effect, the average of drunk-driving related fatalities as improved from one every 15 minutes to approximately every 36 minutes, the credit spread between the program and tougher laws plus increased enforcement.

``To be honest, we're tired of burying kids who have made bad decisions,'' said sheriff's Deputy Mike Lorenzi, who coordinates the program for the valley. ``We see this on a day-to-day basis. You simply cannot drink and drive, and we'll do anything we can to put a stop to it.''

Still Every 15 Minutes has its detractors.

Andrew Smith, a government teacher at Canyon, thinks Every 15 Minutes ``tortures kids'' and is a ``gross infliction of emotional distress.'' He doesn't allow the Grim Reaper to visit his class to remove students and turns off program announcements.

``It's akin to snake oil salesmen, lacking serious, scientific proof,'' he said. ``It's not sound educational theory to teach lessons when you are unable to measure the learning outcome. Learners respond to a positive stimulus, but this program is loaded with negative stimulus.

``I'm all in favor of expanding kids' awareness of the consequences of bad choices, but I would rather see them establish an incentive that rewards graduates who have perfect driving records with some cash similar to the perfect attendance award than see them fund nonsensical programs like this.''

The program is so complete that students who ``die'' are taken to a hotel where they spend the night isolated from families and friends, part of the continued effort to drive the point home. The group talked with bereaved parents, counselors and police officers who witness the death and destruction of reckless driving every day.

The students tapped by death were made up to look like ``the living dead.'' They returned to their classrooms, but were not allowed to speak or interact with their classmates.

Around lunchtime, students went to an athletic field where they viewed a crumpled and bloodied black sedan with four student passengers and one drunk driver.

Paramedics and firefighters worked to extract ``victims,'' placing Kendy Taylor and Nini Loucks in an ambulance for a trip to the hospital, and loading Jeff Shalem and Alyssa Woodhouse into a coroner's van.

Driver Mora Sandeen, wearing a pair of intoxication-simulator goggles, was given a field sobriety test and placed in handcuffs to be booked at the sheriff's station. Wearing a jail-issue jumpsuit Wednesday afternoon, she appeared in court, where she was sentenced to 14 years in prison for vehicular manslaughter.

Taylor's parents were summoned to the hospital, where she lay on a gurney in the emergency room. And in the company of nurses, doctors and the hospital chaplain, Ben and Wendy Taylor and their daughter Kylie watched Kendy ``die.''

``I kept telling myself that we were role-playing, but the hospital was just too intense,'' said Ben Taylor on Thursday after being reunited with Kendy at an assembly. ``I just kept thinking that I'd never see my daughter again.''

Kylie said that seeing her sister on the gurney with her eyes closed was shocking, but the next morning, getting ready for school without her there was hard.

``I slept on her pillow last night,'' she admitted.

``The whole time I was saying it was not happening to my daughter,'' said Wendy Taylor. ``In the emergency room, her legs and face were cold. I didn't want to leave her, but they made us go. When we walked out, we were one less person in our family.

``Our family will never be the same after this.''

Five years ago, three Canyon students and a motorists died when student Marcus Lellan lost control of his car on Soledad Canyon Road.

Alice and Tom Renolds, who lost their sons Danny and Tim in that crash, are dedicated to programs like Every 15 Minutes. They can't bring their sons back, but they can keep their spirits alive by telling their story, which they do at every opportunity.

``What can we do so they haven't died in vain?'' Alice said. ``If I can touch one child and tell them, make them stop and think that this could be the last time they would see their families and friends, then it's worthwhile.''

Also taking part were Santa Clarita City Council members Frank Ferry and Bob Kellar.

``I'm here as a dad, a soccer coach, a councilman and an assistant principal,'' said Ferry, a Saugus High assistant principal. ``And I can guarantee that, this year, I will go to a funeral of someone in this room and have to hear the cries of your moms and dads and anguished peers because of bad choices you will have made.''

Kellar was just as vehement in his message, recalling his response as a young police officer to a crash involving a 16-year-old driver who killed an 11-year-old girl - and the pain he still feels for both.

But all the words of the experienced adults couldn't come close to the emotional letters read by the students chosen to simulate the unthinkable.

``In the E.R., it was hard to play dead,'' Kendy Taylor read. ``I felt my mom's hand on my foot, and I knew the doctors were going to tell them I had died. I braced myself for what I was going to hear, but when my mom bent over and whispered in my ear, 'Mommy loves you,' the tears welled up behind my tightly closed eyes. All I wanted to do was follow my family out and tell them it was all OK.''

A small group of students laughed during the presentation, prompting ``victim'' Jason Kivi to extend an invitation.

``Imagine looking into a dark coffin for eternity because of a stupid mistake you made. Those of you who think it's just a program, close your eyes and think about it.''

Carol Rock, [phone]

carol.rock(at)dailynews.com

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2 photos

Photo:

(1 -- color) Student ``victims'' during a drunk-driving program are remembered at a memorial park.

(2) Canyon High School students act as pallbearers in a mock funeral, part of the Every 15 Minutes program, at Eternal Valley Memorial Park & Mortuary.

John Lazar/Staff Photographer