Making the wrong decision: My story Published June 30, 2006 By Senior Airman Charles Velazquez 319th Maintenance Squadron Grand Forks AFB, ND -- Are you one of those people that have at times considered driving under the influence? If so, read my story before you make a mistake you’ll regret for a long time. I am Senior Airman Charles E. Velazquez and I consider myself a motivated, hard working Airman who enjoys being in the Air Force. Unfortunately, I recently made a decision that could jeopardize my career. Since I enlisted four years ago, I have always tried to do my best by adhering to standards, learning all the things I need to perform my job at the highest level and following the lead of my supervisors. It took just one wrong decision to overshadow all of that. One night I decided to drive under the influence of alcohol and before I knew it, four years of hard work and a lot of money went down the drain because of it. I am telling you from personal experience; it is not worth it! I have reflected on my experience as a convicted DUI offender and have decided to use the incident as a learning opportunity. I have researched the consequences of alcohol abuse and drunk driving and was surprised by the severity of the problem. According to one web site on DUI Statistics, www.nh.dwi.com, 25,000 people are killed each year in alcohol-related accidents and one American life is lost every 20 minutes in alcohol-related car accidents. Mothers Against Drunk Driving offers these four disturbing facts: 1) drunk driving is the nation's most frequently committed violent crime 2) drunk driving endangers everyone on the road and nearly 13,000 deaths annually involve a driver with a blood alcohol concentration of at least .08. 3) the earlier young people drink the more likely they will become alcohol dependent and drive drunk 4) alcohol-related traffic crashes cost society more than $114 billion a year and people other than the drinking driver pay more than $70 billion of it. These tragic numbers knocked the wind out of me. How could I have made such a stupid decision? I visualized all the people that I put in danger. How could I be trusted to make a rational decision ever again? I hope that sharing my experience and this information with all of you will help prevent you from experiencing the same predicament I went through. I urge everyone not to drive under the influence: you will be caught and more importantly, you could endanger your life as well as someone else’s! Take a moment and think about how many people you put in danger when you drive drunk. Don’t become one of those 25,000 people that die every year in our streets. Don’t make the same mistake I did.