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LAKEPORT – A Thursday morning assembly brought an emotional lesson in choices to an end for Clear Lake High School students and parents.
Day two of the school's Every 15 Minutes program concluded Thursday with a mock funeral to commemorate two dozen students who participated as casualties in this year's program.
High school students had watched the previous day as 21 of their classmates were whisked out of class by the grim reaper, with police and Every 15 Minutes student coordinators reading fictional obituaries.
Then, just before lunchtime, they watched as four students were involved in a staged collision behind the school, with three of the students becoming fatalities and the fourth being arrested on suspicion of driving under the influence. One student watching the reenactment fainted.
If the presentation is grim, it's one that's carrying an important message that young people are hearing, because officials reported that now, instead of a young person dying every 15 minutes from an alcohol-related collision or incident, deaths now occur about every 32 minutes.
Seniors Alexandra Wiggs, 17, and Martin Diaz, 18, chose to do the Every 15 Minutes program as their senior project in an effort to help – and to warn – as many people as possible about the dangers of alcohol and drug use.
“This can happen to anyone,” Diaz told the gym filled with students, parents, teachers and law enforcement. “You don't realize what you had until you lost it.”
Nearby was a casket that had been brought by Chapel of the Lakes Mortuary in a horse-drawn hearse, to represent lost lives.
Wiggs said her brother took part in the program four years ago when it last visited the school, and it had a powerful impact on her family.
She said the student participants in this year's program – who stayed overnight together at the National Guard armory – bonded in what was an emotional experience.
Participating parents and students also wrote each other emotional letters, confronting the nightmare of losing each other.
A tearful Tammi Silva described in a letter to her son, Daniel, how she was pulled by a coworker into a meeting on Wednesday with law enforcement officers who came to deliver the teen's death notice. Even though she had agreed to take part and thought she was ready, she said the staged notification caught her unprepared.
“In a flash, I thought of the things I was unable to say to you,” she said, reading her letter.
“Do you know how much I love you?” She asked her son.
She added, “This is the nightmare that haunts parents.”
While it was a traumatic time, Silva said there also was joy in knowing her son is truly alive after the exercise is over.
“Live it, learn from it, share the message,” she told him, adding that the situation was an “intensely real” one for all of the parents.
A video of high school activities, students and the crash reenactment figured prominently in the presentation. It followed the crash scene victims to the hospitals and then to the morgues, where parents went through the exercise of body identifications. The student arrested for DUI also was followed through the booking process.
In her letter to parents, student Alissa Iaccino said she was sorry for the fights she'd had with them. She told them, “I couldn't ask for better parents.”
California Highway Patrol Officer Adam Garcia explained that, in a close knit community like this one, tragedies like the one staged Wednesday affect everyone.
He urged students not to roll the dice with their lives or the lives of others. The impact on families of such choices can't be measured.
“Don't waste this second chance,” he said. “It could be your last.”
Sheriff Rod Mitchell thanked parents for their courage in taking part, and thanked students for being willing to show their vulnerability by participating.
The entire effort, he said, constitutes a large commitment of local agencies and the school district, which he said clearly loved its students to put on the program.
As veteran law enforcement officer who has witnessed many tragic scenes where lives have been lost, Mitchell shared the agony he's seen people experience.
“The program is what happens today, the process is what happens next,” he said, explaining that young and old alike need to keep the promise to make the right choices.
Clear Lake High Principal Steve Gentry said they can see the result of DUI crashes every day, referring to a young professional baseball pitcher who was killed by a drunk driver, and a fatal boat crash in Florida that involved some former Clear Lake High students. He also recounted a fatal DUI crash that claimed the lives of three promising Lower Lake High students 20 years ago.
Lakeport Police Chief Kevin Burke congratulated students and parents for taking part.
“We really try hard to make this program real,” he said.
Burke recounted the death of a college classmate, killed in a drunk driving crash. “The real thing is much, much worse,” he said, adding that he hopes the program will keep young people and their families from experiencing a real tragedy, because that nightmare never ends.
Burke offered a simple message – the choices people make in the future will either save lives or take them. Good choices involve not getting behind the wheel of a vehicle if you've been using alcohol or drugs, and not letting anyone under the influence drive either. He ended by thanking them for their future good choices.
Lakeport Police Officer Jarvis Leishman, one of the event's coordinators, also emphasized, “Choices change lives.”
He said the community worked together through the Every 15 Minutes program to give its young people second chances, and hoped as a result that the community will be a smart, safer place.
When the assembly ended, it was time for tearful reunions for those students, their parents and families who had been part of the program.
Burke said afterward this was the first time he had seen Every 15 Minutes firsthand.
“It's an extraordinary program,” he said. “I have no doubt it makes an impact.”
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On Saturday, members will travel to Sacramento to receive the “Heart of MADD” award, offered by the Mothers Against Drunk Driving, at the Statewide Law Enforcement & Community Recognition Dinner.
Team DUI, founded in 2007, includes numerous local citizens, community leaders and officials who have held student assemblies, shared their stories and worked to educate the community about the dangers of mixing drugs and alcohol with driving.
Team members Judy Thein, Clearlake Police Chief Allan McClain, Capt. Russell Perdock of the Lake County Sheriff's Office and California Highway Patrol Officer Adam Garcia will accept the prestigious award. Thein reported that it's the first time a Lake County group has received the award.
In a letter to Thein, MADD State Executive Director Matthias Mendezona reported that nominations for the award were submitted from MADD affiliates and community action sites, law enforcement agencies and other partners around California.
“You were selected to receive this award because of your commitment to MADD's mission and your involvement with the law enforcement community,” Mendezona wrote.
Thein told Lake County News that Team DUI's members are honored to have MADD California show their appreciation for the team's work in the good fight against drinking and driving – with the focus on underage drinking.
She said a MADD California official told her that Team DUI is what the Heart of MADD award is all about.
Team DUI has received several accolades for its efforts, including a 2008 County Alcohol and Drug Program Administrators Association of California Prevention Award, and the 2008 Stars of Lake County Award for best idea, as Lake County News has reported. Last October, Congressman Mike Thompson honored the team with special recognition during a visit to Clearlake.
Thein, whose daughter Kellie was the victim of a drunk driving crash, also was honored in January 2008 with the California Friday Night Live Partnership's Super Star Adult Ally awards for her work to reduce drinking and driving.
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The property tax amounts represent full and timely payment of property taxes due for the period from January 1 to June 30, 2009,the company reported.
Lake County will receive a property tax payment form PG&E in the amount of $465,488.39. Neighboring counties received the following amounts: Colusa, $590,298.91; Glenn, $429,108.75; Mendocino, $760,564.92; Napa, $1,096,917.16; Sonoma, $3,364,088.44; and Yolo County, $1,227,034.25.
San Luis Obispo County received the most property tax money from PG&E of any county, with $12,580,786.14, while Lassen County, with $39,170.52, received the least in payments.
The company’s tax payments to counties for tax year 2008-09 increased by more than $19 million over the tax payments made one year ago. This was a result of an increase in assessments due to PG&E’s infrastructure investments and an overall increase in tax rates.
This week PG&E also paid franchise fees and franchise fee surcharges to the 48 counties and 244 California cities in which it operates.
The 2008 payments total about $62 million for gas and about $89 million for electric service. This represents an increase of more than $11 million above the previous year, including more than $5.2 million to cities and counties in the North Coast region.
Local jurisdictions received the following amounts for electric services: city of Clearlake – $115,869.46; Lakeport – $33,628.97; unincorporated Lake County, $406,132.63.
A franchise fee is a percentage of gross receipts that PG&E pays cities and counties for the right to use public streets to run gas and electric service.
The franchise fee surcharge is a percentage of the transportation and energy costs to customers choosing to buy their energy from third parties. PG&E collects the surcharges and passes them to cities and counties.
“PG&E’s payment of franchise fees and property taxes is a stable source of revenue local governments can count on during tight budgetary times,” said Nancy E. McFadden, PG&E’s senior vice president of public affairs. “In recent weeks PG&E paid more than $267 million in franchise fees and property taxes. These payments support important services including police and fire protection, education, public health and environmental services.”
Editor's note: The following story recounts a reenacted fatal crash scene, with staged rescue and arrests. No students were actually harmed, killed or arrested.
LAKEPORT – Dylan Rose is a bit of a cut up, and used to getting laughs from his fellow students at Clear Lake High School.
But no one was laughing when, during third period class on Wednesday, the grim reaper strode into classroom 119, his sickle looming in his hand, and plucked the 16-year-old junior out of class.
“I usually cover up things with laughter but I felt like crying,” Rose said.
An obituary for the teen was then read, describing his death in a fatal auto collision – along with two other teens – which was caused by alcohol. A red rose was left in his seat.
Rose was among 21 students pulled from classes – symbolic for being taken too early from their lives – and kept segregated from fellow students for the rest of the school day as part of the Every 15 Minutes program. The program takes its name from the statistic that a young person dies every 15 minutes from an alcohol-related incident.
Alexandra Wiggs, 17, a senior and a student coordinator for this year's Every 15 Minutes program at Clear Lake High, helped create the list of student casualties – along with fellow student coordinator Martin Diaz – in her work with the program over the last several months. She saw firsthand the reactions of her fellow students.
“I've gone into a lot of classrooms this morning, and I've seen a lot of disbelief, I've seen a lot of crying,” Wiggs said.
Diaz said they chose students of different backgrounds to serve as the mock casualties. Not all of the obituaries recounted deaths in DUI collisions; one student, said Diaz, was portrayed as having become drunk and drowned in a swimming pool.
Only the students working on the program in various capacities – either as coordinators or “casualties” – knew the Every 15 Minutes program was taking place on the school beginning on Wednesday. So Wiggs said it was a surprise to everyone.
The element of surprise is important to the program, which hammers home the message of how quickly, and unexpectedly, young lives can be lost when alcohol and vehicles mix.
The last time the two-day program was held at Clear Lake High was 2005. It's scheduled every four years so that every student experiences the program at least once in their high school career. This year's event was coordinated by Dale Stoebe and Jarvis Leishman, officers with the Lakeport Police Department.
Student casualties continued to be pulled out of classes all day, but the day's main event was held just before the lunch hour – a reenactment of a fatal two-car collision, staged on Hartley Street, which runs behind the high school.
Hundreds of students watched as police and fire department personnel responded to the scene, where three classmates were trapped in the crumpled cars.
The grim reaper hovered nearby, running his hand over the blade of his sickle, as firefighters pulled the teens from the cars, using saws and axes.
Several of the “living dead” – including Rose and fellow students who had been pulled out of class earlier in the day – looked on, their faces painted with heavy white makeup, their eyes ringed in black.
One of the mock collision victims was reported to be dead at the scene. Two others were listed as critical, with one of them suffering an amputated hand in the staged crash.
A fourth student was arrested for driving under the influence, and was taken to the jail and processed as he would be in the case of a real arrest.
A Lake County Sheriff's unit showed up to do coroner duties. Two coroners documented the scene, examining the body of the mock casualty, covered in a bright yellow sheet, while a sheriff's chaplain looked on. Chapel of the Lakes Mortuary later came to transport the body.
One of the staged collision victims was transported via Lakeport Fire ambulance to Sutter Lakeside Hospital's emergency room, where they were pronounced dead. REACH air ambulance landed at the school's football field and transported another victim to Sutter Lakeside also, where that student became the third “fatal” of the day.
Death notification teams were later dispatched to contact the parents of the students involved in the staged collision.
What followed was a painful 24 hours, in which parents and children, and friends and classmates, were separated.
The students spent the night away from home at the local National Guard armory, where Wiggs said they'll have team building exercises. There also will be the heart-wrenching work of writing goodbye letters to their families.
The separation will end with a Thursday morning assembly, where a mock funeral will be held, and some of those goodbye letters will be shared, both by students and parents. Guest speakers at the event will include Josh and Laura Farris, California Highway Patrol Officer Adam Garcia, Sheriff Rod Mitchell, Clear Lake High Principal Steve Gentry, Lakeport Police Chief Kevin Burke and Leishman.
Afterward, parents, friends and the “living dead” will be reunited in an emotional gathering. In a sense, it's a second chance for those who have experienced a degree of loss in a temporary, but still traumatic, setting.
Leishman said the Every 15 Minutes presentation at Clear Lake High is the result of eight months of planning. A 15-member committee guided the effort, which was assisted by 30 law enforcement officers and 20 fire personnel.
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LOWER LAKE – On Tuesday evening, the Konocti Unified School District hosted a celebration of the new Lower Lake High School gym, a massive state-of-the-art facility that embodies the community's willingness to invest in a vision of better facilities for its children. {sidebar id=139}
The new building – which provides the largest indoor event space in the county – has been open to events since January, but Tuesday marked the gym's official dedication and ribbon-cutting.
District Board President Mary Silva wielded the ceremonial big pair of scissors as other board members held a ribbon in front of the main entrance.
The accomplishment inspired one board member, Carolynn Jarrett, to call Konocti Unified “the little district that could.”
Measure G, an $18 million bond voters passed with 71.6 percent approval in 2004, provided some of the funds for the $9.5 million gym, which officials said came in $750,000 under budget but took a little longer than expected to complete, with about 16 months between groundbreaking and it being open for use.
Cliff Lantz, who retired last year from his post as district assistant superintendent, said the district put together about $40 million in bond funding, modernization funds, developers fees, Clearlake redevelopment funds and state grant funds to carry out districtwide facilities improvements. The bonds were originally supposed to be sold in three rounds but the higher property assessments at the time allows them to sell the bonds in two sales.
Lantz, a member of the management team that helped guide the project in its initial stages, said those funds paid to remodel classrooms and multipurpose rooms at each of the district's school campuses – Lower Lake High didn't get a new multipurpose room because it got the new gym – and build new libraries at each school.
Lower Lake High's gym is the capstone in the series of projects.
Lantz said that $1 million still remains in the form of funds to be reimbursed by the state. When the district eventually receives that money, Lantz said the old Lower Lake High gym will be modernized to include a fitness room, and the school's old auto shop will be renovated and turned into a wrestling room.
During the ceremony, attended by about 250 people, Superintendent Dr. Bill MacDougall said the new gym is a testament to community involvement.
“Last year I asked a group of students what they liked best about Lake County and Clearlake,” he said.
Their answer: “In Clearlake, we help our own.”
MacDougall thanked the district's board members, local dignitaries and leaders, parents and students for their work to make the gym a reality.
Silva told the crowd, “This is such a great day.”
In the five years since the district decided to build the gym, it's faced numerous obstacles, including recent budget cuts, she said.
“Our district and community chose to invest in the future of our schools,” said Silva, noting that it's amazing what can be accomplished when people work together.
Silva said the district's schools exist and thrive out of hope for a brighter future for the community's children.
Former Superintendent Dr. Louise Nan said that dreams, when brought out into the daylight, become visions.
She noted that Tuesday was the 81st anniversary of the dedication of Lower Lake High School.
Nan said the district's board started the project after deciding that the children deserved better than what they had.
“I love you Lower Lake,” she said. “Enjoy what you have.”
Marty Udy, the school's athletic director, called the gym “something the kids can take pride in,” and said he's seeing them take care of the building.
It's also a point of pride, said Udy, to have a facility that is the envy of other schools.
Lower Lake High Principal Jeff Dixon – who called himself the luckiest principal on earth – noted the gym's use not just as an athletic facility but also as a great performance space, and the school's drama and music students proved Dixon right with several songs and skits. The school's jazz band even played a composition of Dixon's called “Play Ball,” to celebrate the building's sports use.
Lower Lake Elementary's “Confused Souls” band also rocked the house, with second grader Gabrielle Murray singing a solo and fifth grader and singer Megan Smith, 10, of Lower Lake leading the bad through numbers that included “Twist and Shout,” a song she suggested that “some of you might have heard of.”
After the ceremony, Associated Student Body members offered tours of the facility as the band continued to play on.
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CLEARLAKE – St. Helena Hospital Clearlake has appointed Jennifer Swenson, who has been part of the hospital’s management team for the past five years, to vice president of operations effective May 2.
Swenson succeeds Linda Gibson who is leaving Adventist Health following a restructuring of the leadership team.
As senior vice president of operations, Gibson has been instrumental in improving quality and patient satisfaction at St. Helena Hospital Clearlake, according to a Tuesday statement. She had made many positive changes, including the addition of a hospitalist program for in-patient care and a new physicians’ group to staff the emergency department.
Swenson, a Hidden Valley Lake resident, has worked for the hospital since 2004 as its chief financial officer and assistant vice president of finance. She joined Adventist Health in 1990 and has worked at four of its California hospitals, including St. Helena Hospital in Napa County.
“I am excited to continue our mission to provide top quality health care to the residents of Lake County. I really believe in that mission and the work we’re doing,” Swenson said.
Swenson was a key manager behind several major accomplishments at the hospital, including the designation as a critical access facility and the construction of projects ranging from the recent front entrance remodeling to the new $1-million Kelseyville Family Health Center that opened last month.
“Jennifer’s wealth of knowledge in managing hospital finances and operations is a tremendous asset to St. Helena Hospital Clearlake. Her commitment to the hospital and the community and to our patients, employees and physicians is inspiring,” said Terry Newmyer, St. Helena Hospital president and chief executive officer. “We appreciate Linda’s many contributions to our hospitals and wish her the very best.”
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