Liberty teens have sobering experience

By Emily Richmond

Friday, April 16, 2004 | 10:36 a.m.

There even were a few catcalls as Rep. Jon Porter, R-Nev., announced the day's topic -- the perils of mixing alcohol and motor vehicles.

"Oh, great," called out one girl from her seat in the bleachers.

Porter's grim statistics -- 32 Nevadans under age 21 killed in alcohol-related wrecks in 2002 -- didn't seem to sober the audience.

But when Porter passed the microphone to Brandon Silveria -- whose slurred speech and unsteady gait are the result of the brain damage suffered when he crashed his car as a high school junior in 1987 -- the laughter abruptly stopped.

"I don't want what happened to me to happen to you and your families," said a halting Silveria, who held tight to a microphone and carefully turned the pages of notes resting on a podium. "I had the world at my fingertips. I was invincible. Nothing could happen to me, right? Wrong."

At 17 Silveria was working toward a rowing scholarship at Boston University. He was a popular athlete at his Los Gatos, Calif., high school with a car, a job and a girlfriend.

Then he went to a friend's party shortly before their junior prom and had a few beers. He managed to ferry some friends home safely but then fell asleep at the wheel less than two miles from his own house. He drifted across the divided road and crashed into a tree. A passing car then struck his vehicle.

Silveria traded high school for a hospital, spending nearly three months in a coma and another three years in grueling rehabilitation.

"I had to learn to do everything again, and I do mean everything," said Silveria, now 33. "How to walk, how to talk, how to think. Do you have any idea how difficult it is to say things? People look at you like you're strange."

Accompanied by his father, Tony, Silveria has addressed an estimated 1 million high school students throughout the United States on behalf of the Century Council, a nonprofit organization sponsored by the nation's leading distillers. The Century Council, which pays the Silverias' salaries and travel expenses, promotes responsible alcohol consumption and discourages underage drinking.

Ashley Buckles, a senior at Liberty, said she was struck by Silveria's bravery.

"It's so sad, it's really hard to understand him when he talks," Buckles said. "I think this might change kids' attitudes. We hear 'don't drink and drive' all the time but when you see it like this it's different."

Josh Stokes, a junior and Liberty's student body president, said Silveria's visit was well timed: the school's prom is three weeks away.

"And tomorrow's Friday -- you know there are kids who are going to party," Stokes said. "Every kid out there should be thinking about what's happened to this guy's life and his family's life."

Tony Silveria told the students at Liberty High School, which opened in August, that they have a unique opportunity.

"You are the first classes here," Tony Silveria told the assembled juniors and seniors. "You can set the standard -- everybody graduates 100 percent healthy."

In 2003, 24 Nevadans between the ages of 16 and 18 died in automobile wrecks, with 13 of those fatalities in Clark County, according to the Nevada Insurance Council, a nonprofit consumer education group.

Josh Parry, Travis Dunning and Kyle Poff, all 15-year-olds from Henderson, accounted for three of those deaths. The Henderson teens died Nov. 10 when the car they were riding in slammed into a brick and cinder-block wall. The 16-year-old driver is serving two years in the Clark County Juvenile Detention Center for drunk driving.

Since 1994 the fatality rate for teenage drivers in Nevada is up 30 percent, six times the increase nationally, according to the group's statistics.

Brandon Silveria said he knows that peer pressure can be difficult to resist, but urged the students not to give in and make the same mistakes he made.

"Take one last look at me and ask yourself," he said. "Is it worth a couple of beers?"