Students at Robert E. Lee High School in Springfield strained to make out the mostly garbled words of the morning's featured speaker.
"I had the world at my fingertips," Brandon Silveria said, struggling with every syllable in a speech he has delivered hundreds of times to students across the country. "It all changed with one stupid mistake."
Robert E. Lee High School sophomore Kimia Keshavarz, left, and senior Emily Young applaud Brandon Silveria, who told them how, as a teenager in 1987, a night of partying and resulting crash changed what had seemed his charmed life.
(Gerald Martineau -- The Washington Post)
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The 600 freshmen and student leaders packed into Lee's cavernous auditorium knew what was coming. They were prepared for an apocalyptic story about teenage drinking and regret.
They were not, however, prepared for Silveria.
A week before Silveria's junior prom in Los Gatos, Calif., his life was the stuff of teen-movie legend. Along with heartthrob good looks, Silveria was revered as a jock and was dating a cheerleader. In his estimation, he had it made.
The fantasy ended March 1, 1987, when Silveria, then 17, fell asleep behind the wheel of his car. He'd been partying, drinking beer. Later the police told his family he had crossed the double-yellow line and smashed head-on into a tree.
The accident nearly ended his life. It put him in a coma for more than three months. A painstaking two-year rehabilitation followed, forcing Silveria to learn everything -- "and I mean everything," he joked -- all over again.
Although Silveria was clearly the accident's biggest loser, he took great pains yesterday to explain the far-reaching repercussions of his decision to drink and drive, ripples that are still felt today.
It sent a close friend into therapy, traumatized that he hadn't taken the car keys away from Silveria. It devastated his family's finances as his parents struggled to pay the uncovered portion of more than $2 million in medical bills.
"I thought I was invincible," he warned the students, who were attending the lecture as part of a day devoted to "freshman ethics." "Peer pressure will force you to make foolish choices. You'll pay for those choices for the rest of your lives."
In 2003, 113 people under 21 were killed in alcohol-related traffic crashes in the Washington area, and there were 46 deaths among 15- to 20-year-old drinking drivers, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
At 34, Silveria is profoundly changed. He suffers from brain damage that plays tricks with his memory, plagues him with dangerous seizures and makes clear speech a never-ending challenge, particularly when he's tired. He travels the country talking to teenagers under the sponsorship of the Century Council, a national group that fights drunken driving and underage drinking and is funded by leading U.S. distillers.
His 10-minute lecture is followed by a 1992 segment of the television show "Rescue 911." The clip re-creates Silveria's accident, with tearful reenactments by his parents, Tony and Shirley Silveria. The show details his recovery as the atrophied teenager learns to use his hands and walk.
Among those assembled yesterday to introduce Silveria was Virginia Attorney General Jerry W. Kilgore (R) and former representative Susan Molinari (R-N.Y.), Century Council chairman. She lauded the presentation as life-changing. "Every time I see it, I cry," she said.
Many girls in the audience were still weeping at the end of Silveria's last wave from the stage.
"We thought it would be a lot of lecturing, but it got through," marveled freshman Janet Sung, 14, as she and her girlfriends wiped away tears and comforted each other with hugs. "It connected."
"Wow," Candace Muramoto agreed. "I'm glad my friends heard this, too."
"It changed something" in me, echoed Erin Malapit, 15.
The boys, while not necessarily crying, seemed to get it, too.
"I wasn't expecting something so big," said Usman Mirza, 14. "It was really sad."
But Silveria's father, Tony, had cautioned the students not to think of his son as a hero. "What Brandon did was illegal," said Tony Silveria, 63, who travels full time with his son. "This is the price he paid."
Brandon Silveria nodded in agreement.
"Look at me and ask yourself," he told the kids, still struggling to put together clear sentences: "Is it worth a couple of beers?"
Without hesitation, the crowd stood to reward Silveria and his struggle with an ovation.
