It doesn’t take long. A couple of minutes. New Mexico’s judicial system is helpful that way, putting its cases online. The database includes drunken-driving cases.
Just type in the name.
Enter.
And there they are. Two of my father’s drunken-driving cases, one 11 years before the other. He told us he had been arrested for DUI three times, but when he appeared in court, only one other citation showed up. He considered this a lucky break. We didn’t.
I stare at the results page. At his name, date of birth, driver’s license number. I can’t bring myself to view the details. My dad died in 2001. He was 61. We always feared his drinking would end with him killing himself or someone else. It got him first. Cirrhosis. Not the violent death we, his children, pictured. Tire skids, twisted metal, miniature Crown Royal bottles under the seat.
When my dad was drinking heavily, his bartender stopped serving him the hard stuff. He’d stop at Walgreens and down some minis before hitting the bar, taking his usual stool, ordering beer. I don’t know why he never bought larger bottles of liquor. I imagine for the same reason I don’t sit on the couch with a whole bag of potato chips. It offers the illusion of control. He kept a computer log of what he drank, how much he spent. We found it after he died. It was down to the penny. Another mechanism by which he sought control.
When I was in college, Albuquerque police arrested him for drunken driving. He called my mom from jail. She told him he could stay there for the night. I don’t know if she followed through. I don’t remember talking to her about it. This was long before we ever thought to call my dad an alcoholic.
It never occurred to me to look up my father’s record. David Olinger and Kevin Vaughan’s Sunday story resurrects this anguish — there’s no other word for it. The two reporters found that of the 195 vehicular homicide-DUI cases in Colorado since 2005, at least 30 percent of the drivers previously had been arrested for DUI.
Think of that: Fifty-eight people killed by habitual drunken drivers in fewer than four years.
The story featured Richard Strock, who was arrested 18 times over 27 years for driving under the influence. His blood-alcohol level was three times the legal limit when he crashed on Jan. 29, 2005. The impact flung his ex-wife, his passenger, into the windshield. She died on the highway.
The story included a photo of Strock in prison. He’s serving a 48-year prison sentence. He’s 66. On the opposite page was a photo of his children and stepchildren, who said they have lost both parents now. They said Strock was a loving father. They said his alcoholism had never been treated effectively.
I read this and know what the story does not say, what is shared by so many families of alcoholics and addicts. We watch the people we love destroy themselves. We plead. We get angry. We blame ourselves. Disaster awaits, and we feel helpless.
The last time my dad was arrested, he rear-ended the car in front of him at a stoplight. He was driving at a crawl, thank goodness, because the car held two people, a couple. The woman was pregnant.
My siblings and I talked exhaustively about what to do. The drinking picked up after our mother died. We implored our dad to get help. He went into an out-patient treatment program after the accident. He went because he believed the judge would go easier on him. Manipulation was part of the disease. The man was mortified by what he had done. The man swore he was done with drink. The man was, in fact, a good man and we loved him very much. The disease told him he could sit in his bar and drink club soda. The disease told him a beer wouldn’t hurt.
Strock racked up five hit-and-run charges before he killed ex-wife, Patricia Trujillo. One of the women he hit was Dawn King. She said: “It’s just crazy. I feel that the justice system is not seeing them as criminals but as diseased.”
They are both. It’s why this problem is so tough. It’s why anger competes with sadness. I believe in treatment, the more available and affordable, the better. But a person arrested time and time again for drunken driving belongs in jail. I don’t know for how long.
I’ll say this too: When my dad started drinking again after the last DUI, we thought about calling the police. He’s at this bar and when he gets in his car, he will be drunk. Arrest him. Put him in jail for two or three or four nights. Because we did not know how to help him. Because he refused treatment, and we could not force it on him. Because he was both a man worth saving and man who was a danger.
I weep for Strock’s family as I weep for my own. And when I finally pull up the details of my dad’s cases, I don’t find much. Dates, charges. Nothing else.
Tina Griego writes Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. Reach her at 303-954-1416 or tgriego@denverpost.com.
