When Kelly took the podium, she closed her eyes and took a deep breath.

She talked about being struck in a head-on collision by a businessman who had gone to a University of Wisconsin-Madison Badgers football game earlier that day. Kelly had one more class before she finished her bachelor's degree at UW-Madison. The day she was hit head-on was her 24th birthday. She was just married. She was eight-and-a-half months pregnant.

Kelly's right leg was shattered. Her unborn-son, Dean, didn't survive the crash.

Had Dean been born on that day under any other circumstances, Kelly said he would have lived. He had fully developed lungs. He weighed 6 pounds and was 19.5 inches long.

"You don't know how old they're going to be when they walk. You don't know what kind of person they're going to grow up to be. You don't get to know any of that," Kelly said. "Every moment of his life was taken from his family because of somebody else's decisions."

In the two decades since her crash, Kelly has learned to walk again. She graduated college. She had more children. She received her master's in addiction studies.

Kelly now works as an addiction counselor and manager for a treatment center in northwestern Wisconsin.

Kelly doesn't know whether the person who hit her was an alcoholic, she said.

"But I do know that his drinking ruined his life and it changed mine and everybody that knows me permanently," Kelly said.

For the last 15 years, Kelly has helped people in Wisconsin recover from addiction — while she, too, heals from damage done by alcohol.

"If I told you that I never drank and drove before this accident, I'd be a liar. If I told you I probably wasn’t sometimes way too drunk to drive, I'd be a liar," she said. "I grew up in Wisconsin. I know how we view drinking and driving here."

But she also knows what can happen.

Banding Together To Eliminate Drunken Driving

When Marla Hall, of Waterloo, lost her son to a drunken driving crash, she decided to take action.

Hall’s only son, Clenton, was killed by a drunken driver on Nov. 2, 2016 on Interstate 94 by a repeat drunken driver. Katey Pasqualini, Clenton's fiance and co-worker, and co-workers Kim Radtke and Patrick Wasielewski were also killed. The driver of their vehicle, Brian Falk, somehow survived.

The driver who struck the group survived with serious injuries.

As Hall grieved, she researched. She said she was "appalled" by Wisconsin’s laws around drinking and driving, as well as the number of repeat offenders.

Eventually, she founded the advocacy group Eliminate Drunk Driving, which has become the most visible group in Wisconsin fighting to improve drunken driving laws.

Hall testifies before lawmakers at the state Capitol every chance she gets, sharing her story and advocating for reforms such as ignition interlocks for offenders.

She's made herself and her mission known, and she’s become a source of inspiration and support for others in Wisconsin who have lost loved ones to drunken driving.

Donna Rosol Johnson, of Lake Geneva, connected with Hall after Johnson’s father and family friend died in a drunken driving crash. Johnson found videos of Hall testifying online.

"I was just amazed at how much strength she had and conviction," Johnson said. "She stayed so calm and direct that I was like, 'I have to meet this woman.'"

Johnson became a member of Eliminate Drunk Driving, and helps out however she can.

"I do anything that she asks," Johnson said of Hall.

On March 19, members of Eliminate Drunk Driving gathered in Madison to meet with lawmakers as part of a day organized by Mothers Against Drunk Driving. March 19 was, they knew, the same as the Tavern League of Wisconsin’s legislative day.

"I lost my baby and he was the world to me," Hall said at a press conference that day with state Rep. Jim Ott, a Republican from Mequon, and state Sen. Chris Larson, a Democrat from Milwaukee. "It's hard to go on, but I'm going to keep up this fight because I'm doing it for them."

Eliminate Drunk Driving has several legislative goals: to make a first-offense operating while intoxicated a crime, to install ignition interlocks for all offenders, to implement sober server laws, to expand the number of wrong-way detection devices and to establish sobriety checkpoints.

"Drinking and driving should not be our culture," Hall said.

A Strong, Statewide Influence

Addiction is widely recognized as a disease, but Wisconsin's drinking culture is potent.

City groundbreakings and baby showers serve kegs. Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, Gov. Tony Evers and others drank beers at the contract signing for the Democratic National Convention.

The DNC signing is celebrated with beer (including a little spilled on the contract). pic.twitter.com/LMpZjVoioq — Mary Spicuzza (@MSpicuzzaMJS) March 11, 2019

"Wisconsin has a very complicated relationship with alcohol and with drinking and driving," said Foley, of victim services at the Dane County victim impact panel.

Wisconsin is, after all, the only state that classifies first-time drunken driving as a civil offense.

It’s led some treatment organizations to call out the problem by name.

IMPACT, a Milwaukee-based agency that serves southeastern Wisconsin, has a campaign called "Stop Drinking So Much, Wisconsin."

John Hyatt, IMPACT's president and CEO, said the state's drinking culture is generational and ingrained. He's trying to raise awareness about the amount and frequency of alcohol consumption that puts people at risk, whether for addiction, health issues or injuries.

Five drinks in a single sitting for men and four drinks for women constitutes binge drinking, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Women who consume three alcoholic drinks per week have a 15 percent higher risk of breast cancer — and the risk increases by 10 percent for each additional drink women have each day — compared to women who don’t.

"I just don't think that, particularly in Wisconsin, we have a sense of how much drinking is too much drinking," said the Hope Council’s Brown. "With alcohol, we think it's not a problem because it's legal, and we talk about it all the time and we make jokes about it."



Jake and Lauren Szeflinski snuggle beneath the family Christmas tree in 2001, Lauren’s first and last Christmas. Photo courtesy of Szeflinski family

Kathy Szeflinski, who lost her children, Jake and Lauren, in a drunken driving crash, grew up in Wisconsin. She said she comes from a family of alcoholics. Her father worked in a bar and, she said, drank himself to death. Her brother served several years in prison for drunken driving, after Jake and Lauren's death.

"You would think that the death of Jake and Lauren would stop someone, somebody, my family," Kathy said. "The night of the crash my dad and my brother were drunk in my basement and I'm sure one of them, if not both of them, drove home."

Kathy refuses to call her collision an accident. She said it was entirely preventable.

"How do you kill these cute little kids?" she said, referencing Wallace Stenzel. "I know you didn’t mean to, but again, you had two drinks and it cost them their lives."

Jake and Lauren were just two of 292 people killed in alcohol-related crashes in Wisconsin in 2002. More than 4,000 people have died and 70,000 people have been injured since, according to the DOT.