Murrieta Students Get Dose of Reality Through Story of One of Their Own

Tiffany Amber Breslin, 14, loved to laugh. Those who knew her agree she never stopped smiling. She had just graduated eighth grade and was excited to start high school at , with all the adventures it would bring. She would have graduated with the Class of 2012.

However, her life was cut short when a summer vacation to the Colorado River turned tragic for her and her friend Desiree Hobill, 19. On July 5, 2008, both were killed when a boat struck the watercraft they were driving on the river.

On the day of the accident, the two teenagers were riding a Sea Doo personal watercraft. The girls stopped to change drivers when a boat collided with the Sea Doo and proceeded to run them over. They were rushed to the Colorado River Medical Center where Hobill was pronounced dead. Tiffany was airlifted to a hospital in Las Vegas where she died a day later.

While the driver of the boat had consumed alcohol earlier that day, he insisted he was not intoxicated at the time of the accident and has never been charged for his participation in the accident. 

“Imagine going on vacation with your whole family and not coming back with all of your kids,” said Debbie Breslin, Tiffany’s mother. “Or going on vacation and coming home without your brother or sister.”

These words and the Breslins' story seemed to hit home for many Murrieta Valley students who attended a ThinkFirst assembly on Monday.

The ThinkFirst National Injury Prevention Foundation educates young people about their personal vulnerability and the importance of making safe choices. The foundation insists “You can have a fun-filled, exciting life, without hurting yourself if you "think first."

The program was brought to Murrieta Valley by the Murrieta Firefighters Association. In 2010, the Fire Prevention Education Program budget was cut resulting in programs like ThinkFirst no longer being offered to students of Murrieta--until the association donated $5,000 to have the program reinstated.

Sean DeGrave, an engineer with the and a graduate of Murrieta Valley, spoke at the assembly.

"Each year, an estimated 500,000 people in the United States sustain a brain or spinal cord injury and it is the leading cause of death among children and teens," DeGrave said. "We want to be proactive, not reactive."

DeGrave knows all too well the pain tragedy can cause. As a firefighter he has had to tell parents their child has died because they weren't wearing a seatbelt. As a friend, he has lost several people to accidents. 

"My best friend died because he didn't think first," DeGrave said. Brandon Beach, a fellow class of 1999 graduate, died while riding his bicycle in Temecula. While it is unknown if a car was involved, Beach was not wearing a helmet, DeGrave said.

"He sat in the seats you sit in, ate in the cafeteria you eat in and changed in the locker rooms you change in," DeGrave said. "Things can happen anywhere--they can happen in the school parking lot." 

He went on to say that a spinal chord is injured, it never truly heals.

DeGrave has faced another personal struggle--cancer. He has been in remission for seven years.

"I thought 'I had three months (to live), time to say goodbye, to spend time with my family and to think about my mistakes and accomplishments.' When you are in an accident, you don't have time to say goodbye; an instant can change your life."

The audience consisted students in Peer Leaders Uniting Students (P.L.U.S.) program, many of them juniors and seniors who knew Tiffany or went to school with her or her older sister, Lauren.

“We really wanted to reach out to our juniors and seniors,” said Jaime Zarate, P.L.U.S. teacher. “Now is the time they start to drive, go out and get in trouble. This puts the dangers into perspective.”

“It wasn’t just Tiffany that was hurt,” Debbie Breslin said. “Everyone knew her; she had family, she was involved with school activities, she had friends.”

While speaking to the audience, Lauren she admitted that while she begun to move on from the tragedy of losing her little sister, she has suffered not only with sorrow but in other ways.

“I have been graduated from high school for four years. I should be done with college, but I’m only now finishing community college because I had to deal with what happened.” She also said she lost her best friend over it, because her friend didn't know how to talk to her or what to say.

Each speaker agreed that while it may be hard to talk about, if one person hears them, if one person is saved, it makes it worthwhile.

“The goal of the ThinkFirst program is to make them [the students] think before they do anything that could hurt themselves or others,” said Jennifer Seitel, director of the Murrieta chapter of ThinkFirst.

Seitel suffered a spinal chord injury after a car accident left her quadriplegic. She had taken off her seatbelt, her stepsister following her lead. Her sister died. She was spared, but had fallen into a coma and was told she would never walk again upon waking.

“Initially I could feel nothing from my eyes down. I could only communicate with my eyes,” Seitel said. “I had to learn to breathe, to move my hands and eventually walk again. If I had an itch on my face, I had to wait until someone figured it out.”

She told the audience that initially, all sorts of thoughts were going through her head, but 16-year-old thoughts.

“While the doctors were running tests on my legs and feet, all I could think about was if my pedicure looked good, or what if a George Clooney-looking doctor walked in.”

While her initial thoughts got a giggle from the students, the experiences she went through after the diagnosis subdued them.

“I had to learn to use a catheter to pee and because I couldn’t use my hands or move, someone else had to do it,” Seitel said. “Who is going to be the one to pull your pants down; to stick a tube inside you, to clean you up? Knowing that in another three hours and 45 minutes, they would have to do it all over again.”

Fellow speaker Jake Robinson of Fallbrook knows the experience. Robinson, paralyzed from the waist down, has to use a catheter for the rest of his life.

Robinson introduced himself as the idiot who didn’t wear a seatbelt and chose to speed. He admitted the ThinkFirst program and Seitel had visited his school two years prior to his accident, but he was too busy thinking how hot she was to listen.

“I was a high school senior, a starter for the football team, I was on top of the world.”

As he shared his story, he described his decision to speed on that fateful day in 2008, and how his “man-instinct” kicked in when he decided to tailgate his friend at 55 miles per hour.

“Because I chose to prove my manhood, to speed and go around my friend, I changed my life forever," Robinson said.

Officials told him if he had been going 10 miles per hour slower, he wouldn’t have hit the telephone pole that caused him to partially eject from his vehicle.

“I thought that it wouldn’t happen to me, that I was invincible,” Robinson said. “You are not the exception.”