By JJ Bowman
News Editor
She was supposed to go party in Mexico for Spring Break.
Instead, the Seaver College junior found herself under arrest for a hit and run while driving under the influence of alcohol. The woman she hit was in the hospital with a concussion, a fractured shoulder blade, three cracked ribs, a fractured pelvis, a contusion to her lung and a broken leg, among other injuries.
According to Detective Hugh Wahler of the Lost Hills Sheriff’s Station, Renea and Robert Lacy arrived in Malibu from San Ramon, Calif., just before 3 a.m. Feb. 21 and began unloading their car to visit their daughter, a graduate of Pepperdine. Robert Lacy looked up the street and saw a car traveling by his estimate at 60 mph westbound on Pacific Coast Highway, heading toward his wife. Lacy told police that after yelling at his wife to get out of the way, Renea Lacy closed the car door and pressed up against her vehicle.
She could not get out of the way.
A GMC Yukon barreled toward her and struck her with the passenger-side mirror. The impact of the collision forced the mirror to break off the car and fall by Lacy’s injured body.
Officers found the car with a missing mirror traveling north on Malibu Canyon Road about 20 minutes later and arrested driver Leah Wright, a Pepperdine junior, Wahler said. Her passenger, Robert Campbell, also a Pepperdine junior, was cited for being drunk in public but has no charges pending against him. Wright, on the other hand, awaits arraignment.
The student faces charges of felony hit and run and driving under the influence of alcohol. Wahler said Wright, who is under 21 and therefore required by law to have a blood alcohol level of zero, had a .19. The detective also said the charges levied against her could result in jail time, particularly if the Malibu district attorney chooses to add on that the driver caused great bodily injury.
Lacy is expected to recover. She was airlifted to UCLA Medical Center after the accident and received surgery to repair her leg, Wahler said. Both her tibia and fibula had been broken.
Wright did not return requests for comment.
She is not the only Pepperdine student who must face the consequences of drunk driving. Two other students have dealt with lesser charges of their own drunk driving, while other students have been the victims of drunk drivers. Recent statistics, coupled with such vivid personal accounts, have escalated the issue in the eyes of administrators who are currently researching the prevalence of the problem at Pepperdine.
Last month, freshman Mark Brinkerhoff faced a drinking and driving situation on campus. According to a Public Safety report, a student later identified as Brinkerhoff was pulled over on campus for a traffic violation. After officers spotted alcohol in his car, the student fled the scene and crashed into a curb on Banowsky Boulevard and then fled on foot. Los Angeles County Sheriff’s deputies arrested Brinkerhoff in Alumni Park for driving under the influence of alcohol.
This week’s Public Safety reports have another instance of a student being caught driving under the influence of alcohol. The report said officers pulled the underage student, who also had fraudulent identification, over for a traffic violation.
The university does not release information about disciplinary proceedings, but Brinkerhoff is not currently attending classes at Pepperdine. Wright was attending classes as of last week.
From zero to 22 immediately
Adam Holdridge was a world traveler. Working as a store manager and for an international dot-com company while maintaining a solid GPA at Pepperdine, the sophomore had done more in his 22 years than many people accomplish in a lifetime.
After one night of drinking with some co-workers, Holdridge crashed into a tree, one block from his house.
The crash sent him into a coma for two-and-a-half weeks. After waking up from a Glasgow level three coma — a coma so deep the patient’s brain damage is often fatal — he spent the next six weeks in the hospital working with speech, physical and occupational therapists. He had to leave his job, but more important, he had to learn how to live again.
“(It was like) having to go from zero to 22 immediately,” he said.
Holdridge has been working with Dean of Student Affairs Dr. Mark Davis to help the Pepperdine community learn about the effects of drinking and driving. He volunteers at Cedars Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles working with patients who have experienced serious brain damage. He plans on bringing a speaker to Pepperdine who had been hit by a drunk driver herself while at the University of Southern Calif-ornia, causing serious brain injuries.
Holdridge said that although he is a friend of the woman, she harbors animosity toward him for recovering so well from his accident after she wasn’t so lucky.
“She thinks she should be in my situation and I (should be in her situation),” he said.
Although Holdridge is back at school now, last semester wasn’t easy for him. He dropped all his classes except for his Religion 101 course.
He also had to face the courts. He was cited for reckless driving and given a three-year suspension of his driver’s license. Holdridge said he didn’t face the typical drunk-driving sentences because of the trauma he faced after the accident and the ambiguity surrounding his fateful night — Holdridge said he remembers nothing about the day he crashed into the tree.
Typically, people convicted of drinking and driving must attend alcohol anonymous courses, attend classes and visit a morgue to see death face to face.
Holdridge said the experience completely changed his life.
“I went from a man of the world to a man of the bus,” he said. Holdridge, living in Santa Monica, is one of the few commuter students who takes the bus to school.
“It’s one of those situations where you think it could never happen to you,” he said.
Nate Bollacker, another Seaver student, also had to face the affects of driving under the influence, but he was on the receiving end of a drunk driver’s mistake. Driving with his uncle near Allentown, Pa., last May 31, Bollacker followed a two-lane road around a bend when his Nissan Sentra crashed head-on with a larger Jeep.
Bollacker was told later — he too remembers nothing of the accident that landed him in a coma — that the driver of the other car had made the turn too wide and then overcorrected, slamming into Bollacker’s car.
The student’s uncle had a few broken bones, but Bollacker’s injuries were more serious. His coma lasted six days and afterward, he had to deal with a crushed femur, a broken knee and a broken wrist. Furthermore, the left side of his face practically collapsed under the force of the accident.
Bollacker could not walk until October, more than 16 weeks after his accident. After returning to his Seattle home, Bollacker learned that he would need knee surgery to keep him from having a limp for the rest of his life. He returned to Pepperdine this semester and takes a full course load, but not without some trouble. Bollacker said the injuries to his brain have given him memory problems and has made him tire more easily.
After months of reconstructive surgery and rehabilitation, Bollacker has only a few visible signs of the accident, but he does bear a seven-inch scar on his right arm, reminding him of how close he came to death.
The driver who hit him, on the other hand, has a cell-block to remind him of how close he came to killing Bollacker. In his early twenties, he received a six-month jail sentence, Bollacker said.
As the victim, he said he didn’t spend too much time dwelling on the man’s punishment.
“I hate what he did,” he said. “But it wasn’t a personal attack on me.”
Although Bollacker said he finds it harder than before to focus on his schoolwork and manage good grades, he won’t dwell on the accident.
“Bad things happen to everyone,” he said. “It’s not normal if you don’t have hardships.”
The University’s Goal
Pepperdine participated in a Harvard University study about alcohol use between 1993 and 2001. The 2001 results found that 41 percent of Pepperdine students admitted within 30 days of being questioned to driving after drinking alcohol, which is well above the national average of 27.4 percent, but on par with the national average for college students. The study found that Pepperdine was on par with other colleges with the percentage of students who drove after having five or more drinks (9.3 percent) and driving in a car with a driver who was high or drunk (22.1 percent).
Although the study raised concern among university officials, the 47-percent response rate of the selected students raised concern over the study’s accuracy.
“The Harvard stats are alarming,” Davis said. “There’s no doubt about it. We need to be cautious in our interpretation of the results, however, because of the low response rate.”
Dangerous roads in every direction from campus magnify the seriousness of drinking and driving at Pepperdine, Davis said. Malibu Canyon Road, Pacific Coast Highway and other roads in the Santa Monica Mountains can make driving difficult for the most sober of drivers.
The administration decided to participate in another study this semester. Each Seaver College student received a comprehensive survey last week about alcohol and drug use. Davis said that after collecting the results of this study and comparing them to the Harvard study and to various focus groups that have met this year, the university should have a more complete picture as to how widespread cases of drinking and driving are.
Such specific cases of driving under the influence of alcohol as the ones above, coupled with information already gathered, has enhanced concern over these issues.
“If it’s true that we have as many students drinking and driving as the national average — or more — then we’re not immune from the consequences, the serious injuries and death that have hit college campuses across the nation as a result of drinking and driving,” Davis said.
Many students have found hardships from drinking and driving, whether they were intoxicated behind the wheel or not. Leah Wright is the latest Pepperdine student to realize that.
March 27, 2003