Random chance, as family and friends of 17-year-old Danny Yetter
realized in August 2001, can alter lives.
Random chance, as family and friends of 17-year-old Danny Yetter realized in August 2001, can alter lives.
He died in a skateboarding accident while not wearing a helmet – a tragedy that sent shock waves through the community.
Subsequently, the city in 2002 adopted an ordinance requiring all minors riding anything on wheels to wear helmets. And months later, the state passed a law essentially mirroring the city regulation.
Before Danny’s accident, most kids hadn’t been wearing any type of headgear. Going on three years later, most minors still ride without helmets.
“I think with anything,” said Linda Yetter, Danny’s mother, “people don’t think it’s going to happen to them.”
Despite the law, police have handed out only 12 citations since January 2003 and none so far this year, according to police records. Police officials say the department is under-staffed and officers respond to violations on a complaint basis.
When kids are caught once, police send a warning letter to parents. With a second violation they’re fined $25.
At Monday’s City Council meeting, Councilman Robert Scattini raised the issue of helmet law enforcement, particularly that of Skate Park. He requested that Police Chief Jeff Miller compile a report on helmet law enforcement in Hollister.
When told Wednesday the number of citations issued since early 2003, Scattini expressed discontent with the local enforcement.
“That doesn’t show a lot, does it?” Scattini said. “That’s all?”
Sunny days at Skate Park make it clear that most kids there don’t seriously consider the possible consequences. Skaters at the Veterans Memorial Park site glide through its cement bowls, fly over its mounds, without any protective gear. Kids ride bikes there, too, although that practice is illegal.
Occasionally, they fall. Or they land awkwardly on metal rails raised a few feet off the ground, mechanisms especially conducive to dangerous tricks.
Statistics on skateboard- and bike-related injuries reported to Hazel Hawkins Hospital could not be obtained by press time. But nationally, about 26,000 people each year receive emergency room treatment for skateboard-related injuries, according to Kidsource, a pediatric health database.
From Skate Park this week, Dustin Rist, 15, said about 15 or 20 kids show up most days after schools let out. A majority of skaters don’t wear helmets, he said, because it’s not fashionable.
“My grandma warns me about wearing helmets,” Rist said, as another boy a few feet away fell off his skateboard at the bowl’s ridge and lay groaning playfully.
Periodically, Hollister Police patrol cars enter Veterans Park’s gates. When they do, skaters peer – like guilty hawks – in the direction of the cop car. If it turns toward Skate Park, minors without helmets sometimes bolt through an exit, and scatter.
“The officers know about the problems out there,” Miller told the Council on Monday, “and they do patrol the area and look for kids.
“Part of the problem we run in to – they scatter when they see patrol cars,” said Miller, a comment that incited a round of chuckles throughout the Council Chambers.
From his observation, Scattini believes, “at most,” 30 percent of juvenile skaters and bikers in town wear helmets, he said.
Scattini, who doubles as county marshal, said he sometimes drives by Skate Park and “chews out” kids for not wearing protective gear. But he hasn’t done that for a long time, he said, “because it would be every day.”
Hollister Sgt. Ray Wood, whose teenage son is a also skater, often “eyeballs” the park when he’s in the area, he said, and has noticed a lack of helmet use.
Wood acknowledged the problem has endured throughout the community – not just at the park, and not just among skaters.
“I think it happens all too often,” he said. “Whether on bikes or skateboards, I think we still have the same problem.”
Hollister Police, like other city departments, has and likely will continue to face cutbacks caused by the city’s budget shortfalls, officials say. That, police say, has made it more difficult to enforce helmet law violations.
“We’ve been unable to give it 100 percent enforcement,” said Wood, who is acting as the department’s public information officer. “At this point, we don’t have the staffing or resources to chase (kids) at Skate Park or stay there all day long.”
There’s no easy answer, Scattini said, as to whether police are doing enough to force kids into wearing helmets.
“That’s a hard question to answer, because I know they’re under staffed.”
Sheriff Curtis Hill feels the Police Department, he said, does “everything they can” to stop the problem. It’s not just a local issue, either, Hill said. He drove by a skate park in Monterey last weekend, and fewer than half the skaters were wearing helmets, he said.
Hill’s jurisdiction includes unincorporated areas of the county and San Juan Bautista. His department does not maintain statistics on helmet law citations, according to Lt. Pat Turturici.
Hill believes it’s the parents’ responsibility for kids to obey the law, he said.
“The parents have to continually pound that into their kids all the time,” Hill said.
Wood said schools should also carry some of the obligation. And many school authorities, he said, don’t enforce the issue.
The county Health Department recently has increased its presence at schools to spread awareness on the dangers of riding without a helmet, said Muree Reafs, director of public health nursing. Schools, she said, should confiscate bikes or skateboards if kids don’t obey the law.
Still, she believes minors’ often ingrained attitudes – that helmets aren’t socially acceptable – can be overcome.
“Some of the helmets are pretty cool,” she said. “I think the important thing is developing the habit.”
On Danny’s 18th birthday in January 2002, Linda and Ron Yetter, in remembrance of their son, purchased and gave away 100 helmets at Skate Park. They were all taken, Linda said, in about 30 minutes.
Proof that awareness, once out of tragedy, had been raised.
