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Teens warned against drinking and driving

Heather Charleton asks the assembly to think about how they feel about their best friend.

They might always have a door open for you, and take you in like you’re their own family.

It was a feeling she had years ago with her friend, Maria.

“We were going to be friends forever,” Charleton said.

The smart, funny Maria, the kind of person who could charm anybody, of any ‘clique’, wouldn’t end up being Charleton’s best friend forever.

Today, Maria rests in the Vancouver-Burnaby graveyard, in a casket bought by Heather.

Charleton was speaking to a packed crowd from Smithers Secondary School last week, invited by ICBC to discuss safe driving.

Charleton’s message is, at its core, quite simple; it could have been avoided, like the many deaths that occur with young people. today.

Maria was the victim of a car accident; Charleton was at the wheel of the vehicle after a night of drinking.

Yet the message goes much deeper than simply telling kids to keep straight and off of drugs and alcohol.

The problem really began, for her at least, when she started high school.

Going from middle school to a high school of 2,200 kids can be quite intimidating, Charleton said. All of a sudden her self-esteem was based on what was “in”: if a certain item of clothing was the cool thing to have, she’d have it, if drugs were being passed around, she’d try that, too. Partying on a Friday night was always fun, and the power of having your own licence, your own car, made it even more so.

“I had this attitude that I could talk, walk, drive any which way I wanted and still get home safely,” Charleton said. “I had no idea that partying could go so bad.”

On November 18, 1998, it did turn bad, and she made a bad decision, one that ended in the death of her best friend.

She said the evening was a typical Friday. They were out, having a good time at a club. In fact, they’d just returned from Mexico on a vacation celebrating their recent high school  graduation. Charleton said things couldn’t have been better.

Five drinks later, it was time to go home. She was still talking, still walking, not stumbling like a “drunk.” She was fine to drive home, she thought. She had, after all, done it before.

So she hopped in the driver’s seat, Maria in the passenger seat, and two friends in the back of her shiny new car.

Charleton can’t remember what happened that night but here is what the police told her: at 150 kilometres an hour, she lost control of her vehicle, which skidded, slammed into the first hydro pole, before careening on, hitting another pole, flipping onto its roof, sliding until flipped back onto its tires, coming to a complete stop two blocks later.

It was that first pole that she believes took the life of her friend, who bore the weight of the pole slamming into the passenger side door.

“That was 16 years ago and I’m still paying for that decision,” Charleton said. “My community, her parents, they’re still paying for that decision.”

Charleton’s head was torn open, one of her cousin’s in the back broke both of her arms and had to get skin grafts, while the other still suffers back and knee problems today.

Among those in the assembly listening to Charleton, there is shock. She asked the crowd to think of their best friend.

Then think about finding yourself dazed and covered in blood in a jail cell, and being told something you did got them killed.

“This is still the worst day of my life,” Charleton said.

She is the first drunk driver who has stepped out to visit a school and to tell her story. She isn’t a victim, a first responder, a family member; she was the one whose mistake ended in tragedy.

Her speeches haven’t been easy, and started as a court-ordered service, but 16 years later, if there’s still a student who will listen, she will share her story, in the hopes audience members make better decisions.