D.A.R.E. DAY CELEBRATES DRUG-FREE LIFESTYLE

The sun shone over Pratt Memorial Park with its tables, tents, firetrucks,
law enforcement and emergency vehicles.

It warmed the arms, legs and faces of about 2,200 Stafford County
fifth-graders whose reason for being there could be surmised by the print
on their T-shirts.

The students were celebrating completion of the Drug Abuse Resistance
Education program at the third annual D.A.R.E. Day.

The event is sponsored by the Stafford County Sheriff's Office, which runs
the 10-week program at the schools.

Teachers, parents and volunteers--eyes on the backs of the kids in their
group--strode from display tables to demonstration tents to keep up as the
guests of honor perused literature and collected trinkets from the many
different organizations that were represented.

"I love it," said Lisa Thorn, a parent eager to offer her opinion about
D.A.R.E. Her daughter, Jessica, completed the program through Falmouth
Elementary School this year.

Thorn welcomes help in getting the messages of healthy living across to her
children.

"We can only tell our kids so much and they don't believe us anyway," Thorn
said.

With D.A.R.E., she says, "You have all those other people telling your kids
other ways to say no."

The other people she referred to were the D.A.R.E. officers.

In Stafford County, Deputies Erin Carvajal, Rebecca Childress and Wally
Johnson divide up the work of teaching in 14 elementary schools.

The core curriculum is taught in fifth grade to prepare students for when
peer pressure exerts a greater force in middle school.

In the core curriculum, students learn about drugs and their effects. They
learn about making choices and how to say no to others who try to get them
to use drugs.

It's not surprising that students who have gone through D.A.R.E. are able
to instantly retrieve facts about drugs unknown to most adults. From a fact
sheet, they are asked to choose two to remember.

Ferry Farm Elementary School student Deion Smith, 11, picked a fact about
tobacco.

"There are over 200 poisons in tobacco," he said without pause.

The relevance of the fact he chose to put to memory was made clear at his
next statement.

"I have asthma," he said.

Although Deion doesn't have to deal with smokers in his family, Childress
said the No. 1 question asked by students is how to get their relatives to
give up tobacco.

The deputies teach the children a gentle, respectful approach. Express
concern to the relative and ask to share information about the effects of
smoking, she explained.

A number of parents, Childress said, have expressed to her their
frustration with being unable to kick the habit. But she has also had
parents tell her that they quit as a result of their child's participation
in the program.

One fifth-grader credits D.A.R.E. with helping her to understand her own
parents.

At first, hearing about drug addiction was painful. It reminded her of what
it was like when she lived with her parents who were caught up in drugs.

"I thought they were mean because that was the way they were," she explained.

But after awhile she began to understand that the meanness was a result of
their addiction.

Going through the program also helped her realize that her parents'
addiction was not something for which she needed to feel shame. She had
kept it a secret from her peers.

"If my parents did bad things, they would think I did bad things."

But her story came out when her essay was selected to be read to the class
and she found out that her peers were understanding and didn't judge her.

Because of D.A.R.E., she says, she is able to forgive one parent who is
working at recovery.