Tony Friese awoke to a knock on his door on an early Saturday morning five years ago and found police officers standing on his doorstep.

“They said there’d been an accident and that she’d lost her life. I identified her by her purse,” Friese said about his 20-year-old stepdaughter, Jessie Rind, who was killed in a drunk driving accident that March morning.

Along with the oil boom, the number of impaired drivers is steadily rising in the Odessa area.

As of Thursday, the Odessa Police Department reported making 384 arrests for driving while intoxicated this year, a 40 percent increase from 2008.

In 2013, there were 462 DWI arrests made by OPD, 405 arrests in 2012 and 340 arrests in 2011, according to police records.

Kevin Lee Hulsey, 39, of Midland, was sentenced 10 years in jail after pleading guilty to an intoxication manslaughter charge in connection with the accident that killed Rind.

“A 10 year sentence was not at all justice, and for Hulsey to walk out of prison after only five years is absurd,” Jessie’s 30-year-old brother Clay wrote on “Justice for Jessie,” a Facebook page the family made in her honor and to raise awareness on drunk driving. “Everyone who has been affected by a drunk driving incident knows the pain and suffering we have gone (through) and are still going through.”

Hulsey had a 0.23 blood alcohol level, three times the legal limit, at the time of the collision, according to a Midland Reporter-Telegram story.

During the trial, a Midland Police Department lieutenant told court officers Hulsey was allegedly at Jaguars Gold Club in Odessa and received e-mails shortly before midnight asking if he wanted to come and get high, according to information gathered from Hulsey’s cell phone, the MRT reported.

When he was taken into custody, Hulsey became aggressive and swore at hospital staff and officers, court documents stated.

Rind, a nursing student at Midland College, was pronounced dead at the scene of the accident at about 4:30 a.m. after Hulsey hit her vehicle head-on when he drove his black, Ford truck the wrong way on Loop 250 and tried to exit off the northbound entrance.

Rind was coming home from dropping off a coworker from Buffalo Wild Wings where they worked earlier that evening, her family said. Rind was six months away from her 21st birthday.

Friese recalled opening the door to the officers and vividly remembered their exchange. They questioned him if he had a daughter, and after giving both of his daughters’ names including Rind’s, the officers asked him to sit down. Two hours earlier, Friese heard sirens near his neighborhood and later learned they came from the vehicles that responded to his stepdaughter’s crash.

“You take Jessie’s grave – that’s where we get to visit her for Christmas, for her birthday, for Valentine’s Day, for Easter,” Friese said.

“That’s all we have - we have nothing,” Rind’s mother, Rhonda Friese, said. “I will never be a grandmother from her, I will never be the mother of the bride, I will never fill in the blank. He still has his life, he can go to college. My daughter doesn’t have that.”

The Frieses said they became frustrated to see Ruben Hernandez, an Odessa man, sentenced to eight years after pleading guilty to an intoxication manslaughter charge Wednesday.

“Those kinds of sentences are showing that it’s meaningless for the person that they killed,” Tony Friese said.

The family asks through the page for the public’s support in sending letters or emails to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice as Hulsey is set to appear for parole near the end of this year.

“This is the year that he gets his first parole. We want to speak out to people to write letters,” Tony Friese said.

Jason Clark, Texas Department of Criminal Justice public information officer, said the board of pardons and paroles goes through the information relayed by the public, family members, community members and even the offender’s family.

“They’re the ones that do the process of going through the submission and being the ones that they vote,” Clark said.

Clark said the board looks at several factors during a parole hearing, including information submitted by the victim’s family members, the seriousness of the offense, the adjustment of attitude within jail of the offender and whether a weapon, drugs or alcohol were involved, among other factors, Clark said.

The Frieses said they believe more drunk driving accidents would be prevented if law enforcement had a heavy presence near bars after closing, especially on the weekends.

OPD officer Paul Hurley says in the two years he’s started patrolling, the number of DWI arrests he’s made has increased.

“I know what I’m looking for. There are certain indicators that could lead to driving while intoxicated,” Hurley said. “Being behind a vehicle and they’re not maintaining a single mark lane, you conduct a traffic stop and they stop very abruptly after traveling for a little while, if they have a heavy odor of alcohol on their breath, they’re slurring their speech or they’re having trouble finding their driver’s license – those are certain indicators that you look for.”

Hurley said DWI arrests “seem to happen every day of the week,” and despite the majority of the offenders being young males, all kinds of community members commit drunk driving.

“Driving while intoxicated is something everyone no matter race, age, religion, anything, there’s no certain age limit or anything else,” Hurley said. “It’s all encompassing – the majority of the time, yes it’ll be young men, but you’ll find 60-year-old grandma and she’ll be driving intoxicated. It was 11 o’clock in the morning when that happened.”

Motorists can be arrested with a class B misdemeanor for a DWI if the breathalyzer registers .08 blood alcohol level or higher.

An officer can arrest a driver even if the BAC reads lower than .08 if there are other indicators the motorist is driving impaired, Hurley said.

“As long as you have facts that make that officer believe that he’s intoxicated to the degree that his mental and physical abilities are impaired, then yes, he is intoxicated,” Hurley said. “But the Intoxilyzer is a good indicator where that person’s at.”

If officers believe the driver is intoxicated on something other than alcohol, the motorist could be asked to provide a blood sample.

If the motorist refuses, the officers will then check if there are any prior convictions. For two previous convictions, the motorist can be charged with a felony “even if they refuse you do an automatic blood draw,” Hurley said.

If a motorist has at least one prior conviction or have a BAC count of .15 or higher, they can be charged with a class A misdemeanor.

“If they’re driving while intoxicated and they have an open container in the vehicle, that actually holds them longer inside the jail,” Hurley said.

If a child under the age of 15 years is in the vehicle or a crash results in injury to another person due to the driver being intoxicated, it becomes an automatic state jail felony, police officials said.

“Ultimately the goal of finding someone who’s intoxicated is not necessarily just to punish them, we’re concerned about their safety because honestly it’s one of the most selfish decisions you can make,” Hurley said. “It’s not only putting themselves in danger, it’s putting everyone else on the road and even houses because we have cars that go into houses. It’ll surprise you every day.”

Rind’s family and police officials urged the public to know their limits and to have a designated driver if they plan on drinking to prevent any harm.

“The main message we want to send and remind the public if they see or suspect there is an intoxicated driver on the road, then we encourage them to report it immediately,” OPD spokesman Cpl. Steve LeSueur said. “It can potentially save that person’s life as well as several others.”