Fifth-graders pledge to be drug free

Students participate in Red Ribbon Week

During Red Ribbon Week at Royalview Elementary School, approximately 150 fifth-grade students raised their hands and pledged to remain drug free.

These are the students of the Willowick school’s D.A.R.E class led by Willowick police officer Don Slapknicker.

The Drug Abuse Resistance Education program is a a nationwide program designed to help kids make informed decision and say no to drugs.

While participating in the program students learn about illegal drugs and the harmful effects they have, how to say no to drug use, and the many tools used by law enforcement agencies around the country to combat the drug issues.

During the week of Oct. 2331 every year, many D.A.R.E programs across the nation participate in Red Ribbon Week.

Royalview students

participated by taking the drug-free pledge and learning how Willowick Police K-9 Anchor and his handler, Officer Brain O’Toole are able to search out drugs and apprehend someone who is found with drugs on them.

They also learned about Enrique (Kiki) S. Camarena, a Mexican native who became a U.S. citizen and served with the U.S. Marines and was a firefighter and a deputy sheriff in California prior to joining the Drug Enforcement Agency.

Slapknicker told the students of his story.

Camarena was transferred by the DEA to Mexico where he spent four years on the trail of some of the country’s biggest

marijuana and cocaine traffickers. He was kidnapped on Feb. 7, 1985, while heading to a luncheon with his wife. He was surrounded by five armed men who threw him in a car. That was the last time anyone saw him alive.

Camarena was about to unlock a multi-billion dollar drug pipeline, and was kidnapped to prevent him from exposing that drug trafficking operation to public.

It was shortly after his death that Congressman Duncan Hunter and Camarena’s high school friend Henry Lozano launched the Camarena Kid Clubs in his hometown of Calexico, California.

Club members wore red ribbons and pledged to live drug free lives to honor the sacrifice made by Camarena.

It didn’t take long for the red ribbon campaign to gain momentum and reach the first lady at the time, Nancy Reagan, who brought national attention to it in 1985.

The Red Ribbon campaign was then formed in 1988 and is now an eightday celebration meant to show intolerance for drugs in schools, workplaces and communities.

Slapknicker believes that is important for children to learn about Red Ribbon Week, how it got started and how drugs affect people lives in all different ways.

“It’s just really important for them to learn how to be drug free,” Slapknicker said.

“It’s important for them (the students) to realize what drugs are so they know to stay away from them and be drug free,” O’Toole said.

KRISTI GARABRANDT — THE NEWS-HERALD Willowick police officers Don Slapknicker and Brian O’Toole answer questions from the fifth grade students in Royalview Elementary School’s D.A.R.E. Program following a K-9 demonstration.