(Sarah Butero is a senior at Gustine High School. She shared her experience of participating in the powerful “Every 15 Minutes” program last week at GHS.)

Every 15 minutes someone in the United States dies or is seriously injured in an alcohol-related incident. On April 1, 2008, I “died.”

My fellow classmates and I participated in the Every 15 minutes program at Gustine High School. This is a program to let students know how serious it is when you make the choice to get behind the wheel while intoxicated.

Every 15 minutes a student was taken out of their classroom to represent a person being killed. The 27 students, including myself, were taken to a hotel to stay the night. We were not allowed to have any contact with friends and family, which made the whole process uncomfortably real.

At the hotel there were two guest speakers. They were able to share with us how they lost some of the most important people in their lives because of one person’s bad choice to drink and drive. I think their stories made an impact on all of us. It was a very surreal feeling to listen to their stories and have them right in front of us. They weren’t on television or in a movie, it was real, real-life accidents that changed their lives forever.

As the retreat continued I could see a huge change in everyone. Writing good-bye letters to our parents was the hardest part. Each started with the introduction, “Today I died.” All of us were in tears. As the night came to an end everyone was able to share how they felt about the whole experience one last time. We all were very thankful that we were able to be a part of the program.

The next day was our mock funeral where our parents and the junior and senior classes were able to see the whole accident.

As the “walking dead” entered the auditorium the whole room was silent. The video played and everyone was able to see not only the accident, but everything that happened afterward.

We saw Justin Zalinski (who played the role of a drunken driver in the staged accident that started the program last Tuesday morning) get booked and go to jail and being sentenced to 10 years in prison.

We saw the doctor telling Jillian Gardner’s parents that her heart stopped and she had died.

We had to watch Jordan Avila’s mom identify his body.

After a couple of students and parents read the letters that they wrote, we were finally reunited with our family and friends.

I am so grateful to have been a part of the Every 15 Minutes program. It made all of us realize that by making one bad choice it not only affects you but everyone around you, especially when you are part of a small community.

At first getting into the program was just a way to get out of class, but it became a whole lot more than that.

It became a life lesson that hopefully none of us will ever forget.

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