Kara Cockerill, left, makes a point while she and others talk about underage drinking during a roundtable discussion. With Cockerill are (from left) Michael Hoppstan, Keri Fish, and Nick Loya. (Jerry R. Tyson/News-Sentinel)

Students tell stories of drinking at parties, rural areas

By Nick Grudin
News-Sentinel staff writer

Trashed. Wasted. Ripped. Smashed. Screwed-up.

The list goes on and on, but the variations all mean the same thing: Drunk.

And when Lodi teens go out on the weekends, several local high school students said, those are many of the words used to describe how they end up.

Despite the minimum drinking age of 21, more than half of Lodi high schoolers drink, said Michael Hopps, 16, a junior at Lodi High School.

And Hopps wasn’t alone in his evaluation of Lodi teens’ drinking habits. Hopps and other members of a panel of teen-agers drawn from Lodi and Tokay high schools all agreed that the majority of their peers like to drink on weekends.

However, according to the teens and authorities, very few of those young drinkers are getting behind the wheel after the parties finish.

“Not too many of my friends drink and drive. People get designated drivers — it’s usually me,” said Nick Loya, 16, of Lodi High, a member of a discussion group which gathered recently at the News-Sentinel.

“I can only think of one person who drinks and drives regularly,” Loya said. He wouldn’t comment further about that acquaintance.

But Christina Ritchie, 18, a senior at Lodi High, said she knows numerous teens who drink and drive regularly.

“The majority of kids are not responsible,” she said.

Tokay counselor John Hunt estimated that around 35 or 40 percent of Tokay students are social drinkers. And he wasn’t surprised by the high figure, even though the legal drinking age is 21.

“There’s not enough for kids to do around here so they go out and find something,” Hunt said.

And the teens agreed with Hunt.

“Kids don’t know how to entertain themselves here,” Keri Fish, 17, a senior at Lodi High School said.

At a recent meeting of Lodi High School’s Friday Night Live, a program that organizes alcohol-free social events, other Lodi High students expressed similar concerns about Lodi’s lack of engaging social activities for their age group.

“Everything closes at 8 p.m.” junior Elisabeth Newman, 16, said.

“We go to the movies, go strobe-light bowling and go cow-tipping,” said Stephanie Barriento, half-joking.

Barriento, 16, is a junior and a member of Friday Night Live.

Friday Night Live and other Lodi and Tokay high school clubs like On Fire, a Christian group that organizes non-alcoholic events, make it their goal to provide alternative forms of entertainment.

“We try to get kids involved,” said Dyan Yanez, the Friday Night Live adviser at Lodi High.

But despite the clubs’ best efforts, Lodi’s teen-agers still drink more than other California youth, according to a 1999 California Healthy Kids Survey done in the Lodi Unified School District.

Forty-four percent of high school juniors and 25 percent of freshman admitted to having been drunk or sick from drinking at least once in their lives.

Compared to the rest of California, those numbers are high. Statewide, responses by juniors and freshmen to the same survey were 38 and 21 percent respectively.

Regardless of the exact statistics, however, the most convincing indication of the amount of underage drinking is the teens themselves, who consider alcohol a normal and welcome guest at their social events.

“If you go to a party, you expect to see alcohol,” Loya said.

“It’s more unusual if you go to a party and there’s not drinking,” said Sunny Morehead, 17 and a senior at Lodi High.

“And it’s not just a single group that drinks — it’s people from all walks of life, from all social groups,” said Kara Cockerill, 17, a senior at Tokay High.

Daniel Congrave, 17, a Lodi High School senior, agreed.

“It’s all over the place!” he said.

Hopps said the drinking starts as soon as students enter high school.

But how do these youngsters get their hands on the booze and where do they drink?

“People drink at parties or, if there’s nowhere else to go, out in the country,” Cockerill said.

For the most part underaged drinkers get their alcohol from older friends or siblings, she said.

“It’s really easy for teen-agers to get drugs and alcohol in Lodi,” said April Bethke, 16, a Lodi High junior and member of Friday Night Live.

And the high schoolers interviewed for this story agree: Most parents are in the dark about things.

“Adults forget how it was to be a teen-ager,” Hopps said.

The attitude that “adults just don’t understand” is shared by many Lodi teens. Several students at both Lodi and Tokay said there is little honest talk about alcohol on the campuses.

But Hunt said counselors at Tokay are always available for students who have issues with alcohol or drugs.

“In general, adolescents perceive a huge difference between their friends and authority figures, and they put counselors in that basket, too,” Hunt said. “But if a student comes to us with an issue, we are not in a position to turn them in or get them in trouble.

“They think it’s normal to drink, and I’m trying to fight that perception.”

Yanez agrees it’s important to teach students about alternatives to drinking, but her main goal is to steer them away from drinking and driving.

“If we teach them young, it may keep them off the streets when they’re older,” Yanez said.

And according to Lodi police, over the last 10 years, underaged DUIs and other drinking infractions have fallen considerably.

“It used to be an every-weekend occurrence, but now people seem to be more responsible,” Lodi police Officer Chris Piombo said. “The schools, MADD, the changes in the laws and stepped up enforcement have all contributed to that improvement.”

Piombo speculated that it could be a result of the stricter underaged drinking laws which dictate a one-year license suspension if a minor is driving with any alcohol in his or her system.

A minor convicted of a full DUI will lose driving privileges until the age of 21.

The Lodi Police Department issues very few underage DUI citations, Lt. Gary Benincasa said.

Law enforcement agencies in all of San Joaquin County have issued 100 youth DUIs since Jan. 1, said Chuck LaCroix of the county’s Probation Department.

“That’s a low number,” LaCroix said.

But that number doesn’t mean underage drinking and driving is not a serious problem in the area. Earlier this month, a Galt teen died from injuries he suffered in a DUI-related car accident.

Jesus Ochoa, 18, a student at Galt High School, was the passenger in a car driven by a 17-year-old friend. They were travelling west on Peltier Road the night of Dec. 3 when the driver swerved off the road and into a wooden pole just east of Bender Road, California Highway Patrol Officer Paul McClellan said.

The driver was arrested for driving under the influence and was booked at Peterson Hall Juvenile Detention Center.

“It is a straight stretch of roadway,” McClellan said.

Contents

» High number of drinking and driving arrests in Lodi raises questions
» The .08 debate: Does low standard net social drinkers?
» Students tell stories of drinking at parties, rural areas
» Family copes with tragedy of drinking and driving
» Embarrassment, fines just the start when getting a DUI
» Tips on how to avoid a DUI charge, or to stop drinking altogether