PINKSTON STUDENTS CELEBRATE RED RIBBON WEEK

Pinkston Middle School students celebrated Red Ribbon Week Wednesday
morning with an assembly that included the Mountain Home Junior High
Pep Band and drama skits from Mountain Home High School Drama Club
students under Karen Richard.

D.A.R.E. Officer and Baxter County Sheriff's Sgt. Ralph Bird spoke on
the history of Red Ribbon Week.

After a couple of pieces of music by the Pep Band, the drama students
took the floor and performed several skits showing the dangers of
tobacco, drinking and driving and on making bad choices.

Bird reminded students that Red Ribbon Week was started after a Drug
Enforcement Agent, Enrique "Kiki" Camarena was kidnapped and killed by
drug lords in Mexico, where he was working undercover trying to get as
much information as possible on drugs that were coming into the United
States. He also had done undercover work in several other Latin
American countries.

Before being executed, he was tortured and beaten.

People in a small town in California became outraged when they heard
about what happened to Camarena, and they planted tulips in his honor.
This was changed to wearing red ribbons, and the idea took off around
the nation and eventually around the globe.

Bird estimated that more than 80 million students world-wide would
participate in Red Ribbon Week this year.

"What you do today, will make a difference for the rest of your life,"
Bird told the students, warning them about making the right choices to
not use tobacco, alcohol, and to pick the right friends.

He recounted a true story of a young man who was in high school and
was planning to go to college the following year who died a senseless
death because he and his friends used alcohol. The boy was a family
friend, and Bird had to go tell the family that their son and brother
was dead, after having fallen off a ladder which led up to a tower.

Many of the students at the assembly wore red.

Bird urged the students to become what they can by reaching their full
potential, and to stay away from drugs and alcohol.