Local service provides someone to get behind the wheel when you can’t

Kimberley McGee

Wednesday, July 5, 2000 | 9:24 a.m.

With the air conditioning cranked in his new Chevy S-10, Billy Smith rides to another "rescue," as he calls it.

Since launching his business, Desginated Drivers, in 1997 with a few friends as contracted drivers, Smith has picked up inebriated or, simply, drivers who can't drive and driven them home, with their own car, from local clubs and doctors' offices so that they aren't on the road endangering anyone else.

He's hyped up, talking to his employee in the seat next to him who will drive the car of the person to be rescued to their home.

"Everytime we go out on a rescue we feel we are saving their life as well as the people on the road they may have hit," Smith said. "We don't judge them, we just get them home safe."

The name of the business emblazoned on the side of Smith's truck speaks for itself: For a flat fee of $35, Smith picks up anyone who has had too much to drink or can't drive due to outpatient surgery but who doesn't want to leave their car behind. (If the mileage from place to place exceeds 15, an extra $5 is tacked on to the bill.)

The job, Smith said, continues to give him a little thrill. "We are saving lives, I know it," he said. "We realize that everybody we pick up, no matter what the situation, either drinking or if they had (outpatient) surgery, they are vulnerable," Smith said. "We try to make them feel as comfortable as possible."

Designated Drivers sends two drivers to a call so that one can drive the person in need home in their own car while another car follows.

Americans love their cars, Smith said, and they enjoy the independence of being able to jump in the car and go, anywhere, anytime. But the evening and early morning calls are the reason Smith is in business.

"I lost a couple of friends in drinking-and-driving accidents and that really affected me," Smith said.

He's not immune: He's gotten behind the wheel with too much tequila in him on occassion -- that is, when he still drank. "I didn't want to leave my car overnight, sometimes because of the neighborhood" the bar was in, Smith said.

First-time users of the service, Smith said, can be shy, even a little embarrassed that they need the ride. He hopes to quell that by educating the public, more bar owners and medical professionals about his service.

"They are not really sure how to take us," he said. "They don't know if we are a religious fanatic group (or) what's (our) angle."

Instead of providing an anti-drinking rant or any talk of God, drivers are trained to make a customer feel at ease on the ride home, something most of the drivers said is a bonus -- it makes them feel good, too.

"We get them to relax, put their seatbelt on," Smith said. "We get them home safe."

Getting started

The idea came to Smith in 1997 when a debilitating back surgery left him dependent on friends to drive him to and from numerous doctor appointments. "I was single and living in Las Vegas, like a lot of people, and I didn't have any family (here)," Smith said. "I didn't want to bother my friends."

Once back on his feet, he found that his friends relied on him to get them home after a long night of dancing and drinking. Smith turned out to be a natural designated driver among his group of friends: He hasn't had a drink in 15 years.

"I had a little drinking problem," Smith explained.

The "little" problem led to increasing hangovers, which led to poor job performance. A friend offered drugs to take the edge off the effects of alcohol. "I got hooked," he said.

Stationed at Nellis Air Force Base in the early '80s, Smith began selling drugs and was caught. He spent five years in Leavenworth Prison in Kansas. Before serving his time, he was sent to rehabilitation. He never turned back to drugs, he said.

When he was released from prison he mulled over his choices, which were to go home to a small town in Texas -- "and all there is to do is drink" -- or back to the last place he had been sober: Las Vegas.

Now that he has turned his life into something positive, he wants to continue to give back to a city where it all started.

The service receives from five to 15 calls a day from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., the majority coming from surgery centers and eye clinics.

The "drinking calls," as he puts it, usually come in from 8 p.m. to 8 a.m., and average about 10 calls a night. Around holidays that jumps a little. The service had 220 calls between last Christmas Eve and New Year's Day.

Many bars will pay for the Designated Drivers if a patron has imbibed one too many. Smith will even show up and verify for legal purposes that the establishment attempted to offer the inebriated person a ride, because sometimes they refuse.

Smith contracts 70 drivers and hopes to hire more than 100 before the end of the year. No less than eight drivers are on call at one time, 24 hours a day, and can respond to a call within a half hour.

Doctor driver

Oral surgeon Gerald Hansen uses Designated Drivers for clients who don't have a friend to call and can't drive home after an outpatient surgery that required a serious anesthetic.

"In Las Vegas, especially, we have a lot of patients (who) have just moved here and don't have a large network of friends or sometimes family," Hansen said. "We can't allow them to drive after an anesthetic (is given for outpatient surgery)."

He found the service in May and uses it often. Although it's a taxi service of sorts, he said, Designated Drivers also takes care of patients. The service goes so far as to fill a prescription at the drugstore on the way home or buy snacks, such as ice cream or ginger ale that the patient requests, and drivers walk them into their homes to make sure they are comfortably snug in bed -- something a cab driver would not be able to do.

A female patient can request a female driver, another catering quirk that the doctor finds useful.

"It's something that for my purposes served a very unique (clientele)," Hansen said of his ride-less patients. "From my perspective that was a long time in coming."

On a recent morning Dale Hamilton had a sore tooth removed and his first ride with Designated Drivers. A newcomer to Las Vegas, Hamilton said that he doesn't have a lot of friends to depend on -- and those he does have he didn't want to lose by asking for such a big favor.

The dentist said: No riding, because there was no relief from the throbbing tooth.

The doctor mentioned the service, but Hamilton had reservations. It's tough to depend on someone, and strangers at that, he said.

"I felt a little uncomfortable, mixed with relief, that there is such an outfit as this," he said.

He found the service professional. A few hours after he drove to the oral surgeon he was home safe and sound with his car in the driveway.

Ron Hansen, owner of A-M Concrete Construction, found the service by accident. Hansen routinely has clients in town who enjoy a cocktail on the golf course. Heat and alcohol can make for fuzzy drivers so Hansen encourages his clients to use the service on his dime.

"It's great because when you get home you have your car with you," Hansen said. "That and the people are friendly, at least friendlier than the average taxi driver."

Drivers get down

With cell phones and a stack of detailed maps and wearing white shirts with the company's logo in bold black letters, drivers chip away at the number of possible drunk drivers on the road.

Debbie Walker has been a Designated Driver since the business began and plans to stay with the company as it branches out to other cities. "I know that we are doing the right thing," she said.

Drivers commit to the job with a $30 fee, which is used for background checks, emergency medical training, crisis management training and a crash course in getting to know the streets of the city.

The company has a lot of regulars, she said, both for medical appointments and those times when the liquor flows a little too freely. "When it's somebody new you have that anxious feeling," she said. "Are they going to be friendly or obnoxious?"

She's had her share of both. "We are kind of like bartenders, they tell you their life story," she said.

Then there are some who don't really appreciate what she is trying to do -- to get them home safely.

The longest run, as Walker describes it, was a three-hour ride with a man so inebriated he was throwing money out the window in some sort of bizarre show of his independence. Although he didn't want to be with the Designated Drivers service, he refused to give his address. He eventually grew tired of the game and allowed Walker to drive him home where he arrived safely and went to bed.

"I know we saved a life, or more, that night," Walker said.

As a truck driver who makes the five-hour trip to Los Angeles daily, Marcus Jurisch said that he started working for the service because it holds the Grim Reaper at bay for one more night.

"I see a lot of death on the road," Jurisch said. "If I can get one person home safe, it's worth it."

Admittedly he's still a little green, having only been with Designated Drivers since the end of May, but the rewards he receives from grateful guests of the service make it well worth it.

His first ride got a little hot, however.

A young woman out with her family had a bit too much to drink and was the only one who could drive her Jeep.

"It was fine, she was chatty," Jurisch said. "But she made me kind of nervous when she reached for the (dashboard) cigarette lighter -- and couldn't find where it went back in."

archive