Twelve students and one teacher from Central Catholic died on April 20, 2009 in mock alcohol related car accidents. The accidents were part of the Grim Reaper Project put on by Project Extra Mile members, sophomores Carlie Pfeifer, Lauren Cantrell and Sarah Golka.
“I thought [the Grim Reaper Project] would be a good program so that people could learn and see what happened to them if they made bad choices. I wanted to teach kids that underage drinking and driving not only hurts them but others who care for them and love them. It’s a very serious problem in the United States and many teens are being killed because of underage drinking,” Golka said.
The message of the project was that once every 32 minutes someone is killed in an alcohol related car accident. So every 32 minutes during school, a student or a teacher was pulled out of class and given a black Grim Reaper Project shirt. Once the person had the shirt on they were considered dead and other students couldn’t talk to that person.
Pfeifer, Golka and Cantrell also had Deputy Donavon Fowler aid with the Grim Reaper Project.
“This is the first year I’ve done the Grim Reaper Project. I’ve done some other student projects to inform students about [drunk driving],” Fowler said.
Fowler has arrested around fifty drunk drivers in the last five years and has worked numerous accidents involving alcohol, several in which people have been killed. Fowler said the consequences of drunk driving are having to pay fines, doing jail time, losing driving privileges for three months to fifteen years and in some cases people have to live with the fact that they killed somebody for the rest of their life.
Fowler also helped with some of the behind the scenes work. When students were pulled out of class they would be escorted to the conference room by the grim reaper. Once there, Fowler would have the students put on goggles that impaired them to see how a drunk person sees. He then issued a number of sobriety tests that had students trying to catch a ball that was thrown directly at them, throw the ball back and then walk a straight line. After the tests, Fowler would show the students what they might look like after a car accident and read them a letter from their parents.
“[The sobriety tests] were kind of weird and alarming. [The letter from my parents] made me realize how much they care about me,” Junior Michael Houdek said.
The Grim Reaper Project helped raise awareness about the seriousness of underage drinking and driving. Kids make good decisions because there are people out there that care about you.