DARE GRADUATES DOZENS OF LOCAL KIDS

Dozens of El Dorado USD 490 fifth graders graduated Tuesday evening - and
Molly Milbourn was their valedictorian.

Elementary graduation for DARE (Drug Abuse Resistance Education) was held
in the auditorium at El Dorado Middle School.

Milbourn, who attends Lincoln Elementary School, was announced as the
overall winner in the DARE essay contest.

In USD 490 DARE (a program aimed in helping children avoid drugs, alcohol,
tobacco and violence) is taught to fifth graders for 11 weeks.

This year the program started in November and wrapped up the first week of
this month.

Milbourn's pledge to her classmates was to "live a drug-free life.

"I promise to keep my body healthy," she said. "I will not do drugs, be
involved in violence or be pressured to do things I don't think are right.

"I will get a good education and find a job I enjoy. I will treat others
how I want to be treated. I will cherish every day I'm alive and live my
life to the fullest."

Milbourn said "I feel great" about DARE.

"I think it is very important for kids to learn about drug abuse, staying
drug-free, avoiding violence and many more things that could help us in the
future," she wrote in her essay.

"Kids should learn about drugs and violence at a young age so they know how
to deal with encounters with those things in the future, when they are
totally shoved into reality."

For her, Milbourn said, "DARE is teaching a lot - from avoiding a sticky
situation to getting out of one."

This year's guest speaker for DARE graduation was Phil Stephenson, brother
of Wichita State University baseball coach Gene Stephenson and former NCAA
College Baseball Player of the Year.

"It's very important for youngsters at this age to hear the message" they
receive through the DARE program and to learn about the dangers of drugs
and alcohol, said Stephenson, who played professional baseball for 14
years, including four years in the major leagues.

In his own life, Stephenson said, he has witnessed first-hand how
destructive those kinds of substances can be.

When he was in the fifth or sixth grade, he recalled, a new student moved
into his school in Guthrie, Okla.

That youngster used sports as his way to make friends and meet people, he
said, and eventually became an outstanding athlete.

"We had a lot of fun and a lot of good times" together, Stephenson said -
but in ninth grade, he said, his friend became "one of the guys who decided
it was maybe more advantageous" to experiment with drinking alcohol and
sampling marijuana.

By the time he was a junior, Stephenson said, that youth was no longer in
school or playing sports - and by the time he was 18 he was in a federal
penitentiary in Oklahoma.

"I knew him for six years and watched him just throw away his life," he
remarked, "and no matter who stepped in people couldn't stop him.

"To this day I still don't know what happened" to him, he said, adding
"those things can happen when you get involved with the wrong people and
the wrong crowd and get some of the wrong ideas."

Stephenson said role models "don't have to athletes or someone you never
meet; sometimes you just need to look in the room next to you" to find one.

"You may have a role model - a parent, a brother, a sister, a grandparent -
right there in your own home," he commented.

"This is not an end; this is actually a very small beginning of a large
process," El Dorado Police Chief Tom Boren told the families who had come
to support the DARE graduates.

It's a process, he said, to "make sure your kids can come to you and can
talk to you honestly and openly" about drugs, alcohol, tobacco and violence.

"They don't take this job lightly," Boren remarked of the school resource
and DARE officers working in USD 490 schools, "and we (the police and
sheriff's departments) don't take this responsibility lightly either.

"These are our young people; these are our youth; these are our best resource."

Boren told the fifth graders "now that you've been informed and have an
idea" about the realities of harmful substances which might come their way
"you know what it is and what it can do to you.

"Leave it alone; let it lay."

"You guys are headed into the unknown," remarked Kurt Spivey, who is school
resource officer at El Dorado Middle School.

"You may be offered different things along the way - drugs, alcohol,
cigarettes.

"We don't know; it's going to be your life. But you'll be going down this
road of life headed toward your goals, and there's going to be roadblock in
your way."

At that point, Spivey said, "you have a choice" to remember the directions
around those barriers which they received from James Smith, who is USD
490's elementary DARE and school resource officer.

"If you don't listen it could be very dangerous," he said.

"You've been given those directions; you know what they are."

Spivey remarked parents and other adults are the "state troopers" who can
give children the directions around violence and harmful substances.

Scott Starkey, school resource officer at El Dorado High School, talked
about the importance of respect in steering clear of harmful influences.

"We often talk about respect for others," he remarked, "but we don't talk
very often about respect for yourself" and about self-worth.

"There's not a single person in this room who doesn't do something well,"
Starkey said, asking the DARE graduates to each find that for themselves
and then work on it.

Starkey also asked the children to think about respect for their community;
"if you respect your community you're not going to want to dirty it up," he
remarked.

He also said one of his goals has become helping young people respect their
schools.

Smith directed a phrase he heard during a training session he attended
early this year - "to the world you may be just one person, but to one
person you just may be the world" - to all the adults in the audience.