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Nicole by Ms. Lalime, her mother |
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I am writing to you to share my story so that you may understand the importance of being actively involved in MADD, Mothers against Drunk Driving. My name is Valoree Lalime. My husband and I had a fairly normal and happy life with a grown, married daughter and a 13 year old daughter, Nicole. We live in the Cyfair area of Houston and we both work. We didn't think much about drunk driving except to say that it was a terrible thing when we heard about a person being injured or killed in a drunken driving incident. WE did not get involved until drunk driving affected US.
On December 16, 2008, a little over 6 months ago, our lives were changed forever because of a drunk driver. Nicole had just stepped off her school bus at 3:00 in the afternoon when a man was speeding down our street at a very high rate of speed, ran two stop signs, hit the school bus and then ran our sweet child down, just two houses down from our home. She was left unconscious on the road as this man kept driving to escape his crime. When he was caught, thanks to people like you and me calling in their concerns about his erratic driving, he resisted arrest. His blood alcohol level when finally checked was .19, nearly 3 times the legal limit!
Our daughter was an incredible teenager with a heart of gold. She was always putting other's needs ahead of her own. In 2007, when she came home from our church youth group, she was excited about a program the youth group sponsored through Living Water International, "The Advent Conspiracy." They had asked for each youth to raise money by saving lunch money and by giving up one Christmas present to build a water well in an underprivileged country. Nicole came home and said to us "Can you imagine that people don't have clean water to drink, to cook, to bath? They have to use water out of streams and rivers and it is contaminated! I can't think of anything I want or need that is more important than people having clean water! PLEASE don't get ANY presents for me for Christmas and donate ALL of the money you would spend on me to build water wells!" She did the same in 2008 before her death. This was only one example of our sweet 13 year old's compassion for others.
The morning after Nicole died; my husband and I decided that the only way we could be ok would be to work as hard as we possibly could to fight in her name. We discussed how we never dreamed we would be touched by people who drink and drive and how much we wished we had been more involved in trying to stop this behavior. We got in touch with MADD and found out that this organization has been doing great things for years and has had a huge impact on legislation and on supporting victims of drunk driving. They provide education to schools about underage drinking, they have advocates to help victims wade through the court system, they provide counseling to victims and their families and they tirelessly work to educate the public and lobby for tougher laws to get the impaired drivers off the street. It is only through the generous contributions of the public that this organization can continue to protect all of us from the types of incidents that killed our child.
Nothing can bring back our daughter. Her loss has left a hole in our hearts and our lives. Every day we must wake up and find a way to continue to make a difference in this world. It is something I would not wish for anyone to go through. And we aren't the only victims. Every day we hear about another incident with injury or death. Drunk driving does not discriminate by age, religion, sex, race or socioeconomic status. All of us are at risk. Please think about yourselves and your loved ones and do something different than we did before Nicole was killed by this senseless act, GET INVOLVED! There are so many ways you can help. Please just do it, don't think about it, just do it!
Thank you for listening to our story.
Kind regards,
M. Valoree Lalime
 Canis Baileyi Lupus · Sun Oct 18, 2009 @ 05:32am · 0 Comments |
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