I have a little story I'd like to share with you. Get comfortable, because it's a doozie. And, I'm going to let each of you decide whether the ending is a happy one.
I feel compelled to state by way of clarification that I'm not sharing a personal and painful story from my life here in print because I'm narcissistic. Far from it, same way the North Pole is far from the South Pole. At any given time and in any given situation, I would rather fade into the background as I go about my business.
Nah, I'm sharing this story because the Standard-Examiner ran two stories in the last few months that caused said personal trauma to scuffle and clash and brawl inside my brain like a wrestling match between two pythons.
I had put story #1 out of my mind, "Woman Arrested For Multiple DUIs" {Sunday, October 30, 2011}, until story #2, "Bountiful Woman Facing Multiple DUIs {Friday, January 6, 2012} ran, followed by a small segment on local nightly news stations. Both stories featured women. Both had made appallingly bad decisions. Both put many other innocent people in harm's way. Both were arrested, and both went to jail.
My heart pounded. My palms went sweaty. My throat went dry. I began to shake all over. Why?
Because the stories were very, very up close and very, very personal to me.
On Friday, September 18, 2009, I was driving to a doctor's appointment in South Ogden. I was scheduled to have an EEG, or nerve conduction test, to figure out why my hand had suddenly dropped and had no function. But I was also going to talk to my doctor about a puzzling symptom that had just started that week: I had begun to twitch. The twitches were getting stronger and branching from minor finger and foot twitches to involving my whole arms and legs.
I was about halfway there when a massive twitch fired in my right arm. It happened in a split second; my arm jerked the steering wheel to the right. I ran off the freeway, onto the shoulder. Fortunately, there was no traffic around me. I took a few minutes to catch my breath.
In hindsight, I should have called someone to take me there. Although hindsight, as the old saying goes, is 20/20, I urge anyone reading this to have someone else take you or find a way to get somewhere if your body isn't behaving as it should.
I felt slightly disoriented, but I was less than 10 minutes away, so I got back on the freeway. Less than five minutes later, however, disaster struck, though I didn't know it yet. My left arm fired a twitch so strong that in a split second, I realized that the truck had been forced to take a hard left. I hit a cement barrier, went up two feet and then the truck came crashing down. The accident caused me to hit my head. I screamed, and then sat, dazed, terrified that I had lost control over my body. I got out, surveyed the damage and was relieved that I had only smashed one headlight on our new truck.
Now I was only a few minutes away, so I made up my mind to get there so they could help me. I got in, and with a quick prayer, drove as carefully as I could. I don't remember getting to the neurologist's office, but suddenly I was at the check-in desk, telling them that I was sorry that I was late, but that I'd had a car accident. I wanted them to call an ambulance, and was just about to ask them when a man materialized next to me and asked to speak with me in private.
He was at first kind and polite, and as we descended in the elevator, he asked me if I was feeling okay. The elevator opened, and as we stepped outside, I told him no, that I was at the doctor's office precisely because I was not well, that I had just had an accident. He replied, "Yeah, that's the problem."
His demeanor abruptly changed. Still dazed, I barely noticed the police cruiser and a UHP officer talking to an older man in a van. That's when he sprung it on me: he, along with a driver who'd called 911, believed I was intoxicated. The fog cleared in my head. I immediately informed him that I don't drink, ever. He asked me to take a Breathalyzer test. It hit me with a thunderclap what all of this was about.
I don't drink for spiritual and physical reasons. I wanted to tell him that. I wanted to tell him about my heart conditions--yes, plural--and about the double digit heart and blood pressure and other pills I take each day. I cannot consume alcohol with these medications, but also alcohol would tax an already damaged heart.
I wanted the misunderstanding to be over with right away. It had turned into a scene now--me, him in plain clothes, a UHP officer in uniform, two police cruisers with lights flashing, a witness staring at me as if I were some sort of apparition, and now, cars slowing as they drove by the parking lot, soaking up the show. I couldn't decide what was more humiliating--that I was obviously in need of a doctor, or that such a situation had mushroomed out of an easily cleared up presumption, or that I was being grilled in a parking lot in full view of the public.
I blew into the Breathalyzer. He looked at it, hesitated, and then seemed very surprised that it registered zero. He began to ask questions, including what medications I was taking. I gave him the list I kept in my purse. Nothing revealed that I might be even remotely intoxicated.
Then began the "drunk" tests.
I couldn't do what he was asking, which was to keep my hands down, against my sides, and lift my leg up and out. I have severe back problems, have had multiple surgeries, and despite years of physical therapy, have little strength in my back. But even a person with a healthy back would have trouble with such a test. Afterward, I asked many of my tea-totaler friends to perform the test and most could not do it.
He was openly upset with me, because, his report read, he had to tell me no less than six times to stop raising my arms. Even high wire walkers at a circus use a long rod for balance; it's normal when your manner of strides are changed to find a way to balance yourself.
At this, he became more agitated with me, and then asked if I had taken anything at all that day that I normally don't take. And here I made a serious error. I was honest, but how I responded sealed my fate. I told the officer that yes, today, I took a muscle relaxant--but I should have prefaced it by telling him that both my neurologist and another doctor advised me to do so, in part because the procedure is uncomfortable and in part because any stress on my heart can raise my blood pressure. Sometimes patients are prescribed a Valium because the test involves a technician taking a metal probe and shooting electricity in dozens of places until the nerve responds with a reflexive jerk.
I was stunned when he grabbed my wrist, jerked it around to my back, and handcuffed me. He read me my rights. I was speechless. I felt so sick. My head was aching. My extremities were twitching. He asked if I understood my rights. Yes, I did, but when I tried to tell him that I had health issues, he said that first I had to be "processed," whatever that meant.
I was living a nightmare, but the one comforting thought that repeatedly pierced through my dazed brain was that I would make a few phone calls and this would be straightened out in a matter of hours. I had no record. I had never been arrested, been to court, nothing. I don't smoke, don't drink, don't do drugs, go to church on a regular basis--well, you get the picture. I am your basic, law abiding citizen.
I don't remember riding to the jail. I vaguely remember making the requisite phone calls, and at the top of the list, trying to get a hold of my doctor so he could clear it up. I was further stunned when my hysterical husband told me there were five charges {four were later dropped within a day or two due to lack of evidence}. Bail was denied because it was a DUI. Being fingerprinted, changing into prison gear, and escorted to my cell was a blur.
Jail is a not-so-little Shop of Horrors. In jail, you aren't innocent until proven guilty: you are treated as if your guilt has been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt. You immediately lose an individual identity. You get to ask very little when in jail; it's assumed that you know what you should know. If you fail to do what you're supposed to do, there are consequences. If you talk when you shouldn't--which is most of the time--you will be ignored. There is no privacy. Showers have a transparent curtain. Cells are designed so that whoever needs to see you can do so from any angle, at any time. You are always watched.
For me, it was the most demoralizing, humiliating, scariest, bleakest place I have ever been.
For the first 24 hours, you are alone. You are given nothing to read and nothing to do, including television. There is a small button to communicate with the people who monitor inmates from the main booth, but it is only for emergencies. You are in your cell 23 hours a day, and given only 1 hour outside of it, but DUIs are still not allowed any reading material. When it was time to eat, they unlock a small rectangular door set into the door, and slide a tray of food in, so you can't touch them and they don't touch you.
Because of my health problems and otherwise clean record, I qualified to be moved to a less restrictive section where you could come out of your cell, watch television, and read books. I spent 3 more long, lonely, endless days there where time has little meaning. You are certain that an hour or two has passed, and you look at the clock and it's been 20 minutes. So you try to sleep the time away. Night and day are no different, because they never turn the lights off.
So I learned firsthand that Utah is very aggressive about punishing people who drive under the influence. I don't have a problem with that, or that the Influence is any medication, narcotic or not, prescribed or not. If you're drowsy because you've got too much Benadryl in your system, then you are under the influence of a substance.
I don't understand how with such strictness and obvious difference in dealing with most crimes versus the obvious set-apart nature of DUIs, how can some continue to rack up DUIs? Mine wasn't even a real DUI. How could Monica Lucero and Michele Gerrard Roberts, 50, commit multiple DUIs? How did they slip through the system? How are they getting back behind the wheel?
I was calm and compliant the entire time. When it came time for the blood draw, however, Ms. Lucero "resisted and had to be restrained." An officer stated that the woman's behavior was "typical of people who have received many DUIs." And Ms. Roberts' latest "incident" occurred the night before she was supposed to appear in court for a sentencing hearing on another guilty DUI plea.
I wish a number of things right now. I wish that they'd pass a law that if a person who can be proven to be under the influence keeps getting behind the wheel, then they are in jail longer and longer each time. Because jail is supposed to teach you not to break the law, endanger lives, and so on.
I wish they'd deny them bail, so they can't pay their dues, hop out and be trusted to show up for their court date.
I wish while they were incarcerated, county jails would offer rehab courses or something to help repeat offenders with their addiction.
I wish they'd make the consequences of drinking and driving excruciating, so maybe they'll get through to more people.
I wish that officer had asked me why I was at a doctor's office, even perhaps either working with the doctor or taking time to have me checked out to see what the matter was.
I wish every officer would be required to do the "drunk" test.
I wish that more officers would be trained to understand the difference between a person with a medical need and one who is high, especially when a Breathalyzer shows nothing. A few years ago, there was a big news story about a man who got pulled over for suspicion of a DUI; they were about to take him to jail when someone--not the officer I think--realized that he was having a stroke.
Finally, I wish that I could gather every driving teenager together and tell them every single detail about jail. I've left out a lot, trust me.
It's not cool, it's not something to laugh about, and it is definitely not something to say you're not afraid of. Kids--heck, nobody--wants to go through that.
Ms Conger lives in Clinton.
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