Crash survivor teaches others to live

The last memory 18-year-old Scott Houim has of the day when a car crash nearly killed him two years ago is loading a backpack with alcohol before heading out the door.

The August 2004 evening would end with Houim in a coma at a hospital, his neck broken in two places. The driver of the car, his friend, was arrested. Both teenagers were drunk.

“I don’t like to call that an accident … because accidents are preventable,” Houim said. “I like to tell people life is fragile, and to remember we are impacted by the decisions we make every day.”

On Tuesday, Houim told his story to his peers at North Central High School for a drunken-driving awareness event for juniors and seniors. The event came after a mock crash put on by SADD (Students Against Destructive Decisions).

Houim, now a senior at NC, is the perfect example of what happens when good students make poor choices, school officials said.

He was ejected from a vehicle, stolen at a party, as it struck a North Side home. The driver was trying to elude police when he crashed through the house, sending Houim through the car’s side window.

In the school’s auditorium, pictures of a younger red-headed Houim from childhood flashed across a screen, followed by pictures of a mangled car.

The next pictures show the teen in a halo device used to treat neck injuries. It was screwed into his skull in four places to limit movement. Houim wore it for five months and made a full recovery, though the former varsity football player will never play football again.

“I consider myself lucky,” Houim said. “Others are not as lucky as me.”

A paraplegic injured in a drunken-driving accident was also scheduled to speak but canceled at the last minute.

“She no longer has the luxury of hopping in the shower and hopping in the car to be here,” said Kendra Juarez, prevention youth programs coordinator for the Greater Spokane Substance Abuse Council, who spoke on behalf of the woman.

She was getting ready to graduate 11 years ago when she went camping with some friends, got drunk, and got behind the wheel, Juarez told the students. The car rolled, she was ejected and will never walk again.

“Vehicle crashes are the number one killer of teens,” said Chuck Filippini, a teacher who has been helping produce NC’s mock crash event since 1993. “Add alcohol and drugs, and it’s a lethal mix.”

Filippini gets funding from the Washington State Traffic Safety Commission for the event every other year and help from local emergency crews, who arrive with sirens and lights blazing to the crash scene staged in front of the school.

Nine or 10 similar events are staged at high schools across Eastern Washington this time of year, said Washington State Patrol Trooper Jeff Sevigney.

“The weather is getting nice. It’s prom. It’s graduation. It’s the time when kids will have to make those tough decisions,” Sevigney said.

On Tuesday two mangled, smoking cars hauled in from a wrecking yard sat on Howard Street as hundreds of students crowded around. Girls in bloodied prom dresses ran screaming. Beer cans littered the pavement.

Students watched as the bodies of their friends were pulled from the wreckage and loaded into real ambulances. Some victims were freed from the twisted metal by the fire department’s Jaws of Life.

The unlucky ones, like students Doug Swanson and Kaylyn Kline, were loaded into body bags and put in a hearse courtesy of Hennessey-Smith Funeral Home.

Gawkers, who didn’t know it was a staged event, wandered up with hands over their mouths. “Oh my God, what happened?” one woman asked.

Then the students went back inside the school’s auditorium for a mock funeral, filing past an open casket with a mirror placed inside so they could see their own faces.

“It’s pretty powerful, some students get very emotional,” said Jaquie Forness, an alcohol and drug counselor at NC.

Houim stood in the back during the event. He lowered his head when the firefighters pulled Swanson, a close friend, off the car and put him in a body bag.

Houim said he hasn’t consumed alcohol since the accident. He is looking forward to graduation and, he hopes, college.

When he questions his decision not to drink, he reaches in his back pocket. He still carries a newspaper account of his accident, neatly folded inside his wallet and worn at the creases from repeated folding and unfolding.

“I’ll just pull it out and read it when I need to remember,” Houim said. “Drinking and driving is pretty dangerous. I know.”