FREMONT STUDENTS HEAR PEERS WARN AGAINST DRUG USE

Visitors From Drug Treatment Center Share Experiences At
Robertson High

FREMONT -- Sitting before hundreds of students in the Robertson High
School auditorium, Chase Waikiki described his painful descent.

As a high school student, he was on track to graduate early, he said.
But when he became an alcoholic, he got so out of control that he once
ran into the door of a store where he had stolen a bottle of liquor.

"Someone asked me, if I could go back and do it over, would I go
back?" Waikiki told the students. "Heck, yeah, I would."

Waikiki is one of three teens from an Oakland drug treatment center
who spoke to Robertson students about their personal experiences with
substance abuse during a mandatory all-school assembly that was part
of Red Ribbon Week.

As part of the annual nationwide campaign to prevent and curb drug
abuse, the school also held voluntary sessions with drug experts on
hand, gave students an opportunity to sign drug-free pledges.

Of all the events, the presentation by the young people from the
Thunder Road Adolescent Treatment Center makes the greatest impact on
students, Robertson Principal Bill Lincoln said. Young people from the
center have been speaking at Robertson for the past 15 years, he said.

"Our kids can relate to kids that are in treatment," Lincoln said.
"When they listen to their stories, they get to see how things could
turn out for them."

Indeed, the three speakers, who wore baggy pants and used plenty of
slang, were virtually indistinguishable from the students in the audience.

A Robertson junior said, "It was interesting to hear what they had to
say," she said. "I respect them because they are trying to change."

A friend, a senior, agreed. The two girls said the speakers' stories
resonated with what they had learned through personal experience. The
first said she stopped drinking and using Ecstasy when she tired of
their aftereffects. The second said she stopped using Ecstasy after
her mother caught her and threatened to begin testing her randomly for
drugs.

The words of the speakers reinforced her views.

"It's just not worth it," she said.

But another student, a junior boy, had a different
view.

"It keeps me on the mellow," he said of his daily drug use. If he
stopped using drugs, he said, "I'd be dead, kill someone or be in juvie."

He was unimpressed by the stories of the presenters.

"I thought (the presenters) were full of" it, he said.

Lincoln said that the number of students entirely resistant to the
anti-drug message was small but consistent over time.

"You're always going to have the student that doesn't want to be told
what to do," Lincoln said. "That's a problem we have every year."

The girls agreed.

"There are always students that are not going to care," one said.