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### Joan Ryan # Kids who make fatal mistakes ## Joan Ryan Thursday, November 17, 2005
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Joan Ryan
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### I tell myself I could still turn the car around. I could call the Van Hootegems and the Hunts. Say there has been a change of plans. Be careful. Isn't that what I say when my son walks out our door? I love you. Be careful. Isn't that what the Van Hootegems and the Hunts said to theirs on Friday night? And still. You think you have control. You know it's irrational. But you believe as a parent, through all those talks and making them read the news stories of kids who made stupid fatal mistakes, that you have armored them against danger. You couldn't let them out of your sight otherwise. Even when they're taller than you and even when they're in college. I pull up to the Van Hootegems' sprawling Tudor home in Novato on Tuesday afternoon just as they arrive home. Cindy Van Hootegem is wearing sunglasses. She is carrying a flat box. Inside are papers from the mortuary. Mostly legal documents about Scott's cremation and ashes. They had to choose an urn. By what criteria do you choose an urn for your 18-year-old son? They went with black marble. "Have you met my husband, Gene?'' Cindy asks me as we sit at her dining room table. She had introduced me to him in the driveway. She doesn't remember. There is a paper plate in front of her with untouched falafel and a wedge of pita bread with hummus. Her friends Leslie and Susie stack plates and wipe crumbs from the counter in the kitchen. The food and the flowers keep arriving. Gene pours himself a glass of white wine. Cindy has a Pepsi because she's not supposed to mix alcohol with the tranquilizers. A history teacher from San Marin High, from which Scott graduated in June and where Scott's sister is a freshman, rings the doorbell. "I'm so sorry,'' he tells Cindy. "I know,'' she says. Her voice is kind but flat. "It's devastating,'' he says. "I know.'' A fireman who responded to the accident on Indian Valley Road told the Van Hootegems that the impact of their son's Ford F-250 truck against the tree killed him instantly. Police say he was driving 70 mph on the dark winding street and that there were open containers of alcohol in the vehicle. He was a great kid, everyone says. Who made a horrible mistake. One moment on a Friday night. A stupid, frighteningly ordinary misjudgment of a teenage brain. He had been at a party at which law enforcement officers, responding to complaints, threatened to impound the cars of anyone who didn't leave immediately. So Scott left with three friends in his truck. One friend was Alex Hunt. The Hunts live a few miles from the Van Hootegems in a small condominium. Sue Hunt LeMay is sitting on a stiff kitchen chair she has pulled into the living room. Alex's stepfather, Tom LeMay, his father, Edward Sampolski from New Jersey and Ed's wife, Donna, Sue's uncle and Sue's friend Lynn are there. The room is quiet in that heavy way rooms are after being emptied of a large crowd. Hundreds of teenagers had packed the place the night before, spilling onto the patio and into the condo complex's parking lot. Sue says she feels funny that she laughed so hard at their stories about her son. She wonders if there's something wrong with her. She catches herself glancing at the screen door sometimes when the house is full, expecting Alex to walk through and ask what all these people are doing here. I am supposed to be asking questions. I bring up the idea of control. I am asking for myself. Is there something these parents missed, some now-identifiable flaw in the plans that allowed this to happen? Sue says Friday was like any day. Alex had no classes at College of Marin because it was Veterans Day, so they had slept in and hung out together at home. They talked about what spring-semester classes he was going to take. Photography again, definitely. He talked about having to get up the next morning for an early shift at SportMart. He left around dinnertime while Sue was in her room. Then he returned a few minutes later to retrieve something he had forgotten. "Hi, mom,'' he said as he entered. "Bye, mom,'' he said seconds later. "Bye, Alex,'' Sue said. "Be careful.'' Be careful. We don't say act careful. Or make careful decisions. We say be careful, like "be happy,'' as if it could be a state of existence: a happy life, a careful life. Sue says she is starting a fund with Novato Taxi called "Alex's Free Ride Home.'' She wants to make sure kids who have been drinking can get a ride home even if they don't have cab fare. She wants to produce key chains with Alex's picture and the phone number for Novato Taxi. She wants the Department of Motor Vehicles to hand one of the key chains to every kid receiving a driver's license. "Until we came up with the free ride idea, I kept wondering, How am I going to live? How am I going to go on?'' Sue says. Alex was her only child. I drive home. I think about my son taking driver's ed over the Christmas break. I will do what the Van Hootegems and the Hunts did. Teach him and warn him. Talk to him about drinking and driving. Set an example. Tell him to be careful. But he is a teenager. He will make stupid mistakes, just as I did as a teenager. I was lucky. He will be lucky, too. I say this out loud, then I say it again, as if stacking the words between me and the grief of two families a few miles apart in Novato. For more information about Alex's Free Ride Home, contact Novato Taxi at (415) 898-8484. E-mail Joan Ryan at joanryan@sfchronicle.com. Her column will run on Thursdays while she is on assignment. Page B - 1 Get 50% off home delivery of the Chronicle for 12 weeks! |  |
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