EVERY 15 MINUTES

For the past 2 days at MHS Sarah has been involved in a program called Every 15 Minutes (which refers to the statistic that a person in the U.S. is killed every 15 minutes by a drinking driver). The activities have been many weeks in planning. The newspaper article from yesterday's Star News explains:
Sarah was one of those who were unexpectedly pulled out of class by a Grim Reaper every 15 minutes throughout the school day and their "obituary" read as a "living dead". Taken, these students spent the rest of the day, and night and next morning away from home and school, and friends with no contact (no cell phones even).
The next morning, Thursday, there was an assembly. After the first few minutes it was one of the most subdued high school assemblies ever. A video was shown of the crash scene and those who were "taken", etc... (put together by Tech overnight of what happened the day before - a great job). A few family members read letters they had been asked to write overnight, being without their departed child.

A few departed students read letters they had written the night before (which they had spent at a local church). Sarah was one of those few who read her letter to her family ... from "heaven" (a.k.a. the sound booth) while a looping slide show of pictures Sarah put together was shown. Sarah's reading starts at 5:46 into the video, and if you don't watch the whole production, which is snippets throughout the assembly, you will want to watch these last couple of minutes highlighting our Sarah.

The video is mostly for Mom. She would have been there with all the other parents to be part of the assembly and to be reunited with their child. (But Mom is in Portland, focused on the OTHER bookend event of mortality-- this one, wonderfully real.) Although the high school events were all staged, the emotions of many were very genuine.

p.s. Sarah's tee shirt in the last video picture says "CASEYS PLEDGE". This refers to a related program based on a young woman, by the name of Casey, who was killed a few years ago by an 18 year old drinking driver. Casey's mother was the keynote speaker at the assembly.