California

Mom Who Lost Daughter Seeks to Steer Teens Away From Street Racing

Single mother Lili D'alessandro had barely even heard of street racing when she got a gut-wrenching call just past midnight.

Only hours earlier, her 16-year-old daughter Valentina, an aspiring fashion designer, had gone out with a group of friends. Val was planning to stay over with one of her friends in Wilmington.

D'alessandro had gone to sleep expecting to see her daughter again in the morning.
Then the phone rang. There had been an accident — a horrific collision on Avalon Boulevard at Anaheim Street. Five people were injured and one did not survive: Val.

"You just feel dead inside," D'alessandro said of the emotional paralysis that enveloped her on the worst night of her life. "You don't have time to get angry. You just feel it's unfair."

D'alessandro learned Val and her two friends were headed to Wilmington after a party. A 17-year-old boy was behind the wheel of the car they were riding in -- a red Mustang. Heading south on Avalon, the driver of another car challenged him to race. At Anaheim Street, the Mustang blew through a red light, striking an SUV in the intersection.

The boy faced proceedings in juvenile court, and at one point, D'alessandro had a face-to-face talk with him. She said he acknowledged what had happened on that night in December 2013.

That Val's death could have been prevented is the thought that D'alessandro said never goes away.
She knew she needed to do something, but what?

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Then she got a phone call from the office at South High School in Torrance, attended by one of Val's friends. Administrators wondered if D'alessandro would feel up to speaking to an assembly of students, sharing the tragedy of Val's life being cut short as a cautionary tale.

"She did not choose to be an example, but now she is one," D'alessandro said of her beloved Val. "And she's going to save lives."

D'Alessandro has now spoken half a dozen times to assemblies at different schools, including Torrance High, where Val was a junior.

She's refined her PowerPoint presentation, plans to put together a video, but her message is the same: "Be as responsible as you can. Live for her. Live for yourself, because you're worth it."

She founded the organization called Street Racing Kills.

"She's going to have an impact," said Don Galaz, himself a drag racer who acknowledges he once raced on the street before committing himself to stopping others from doing the sname, and getting them on legal tracks with safety precautions.

"She's going to have a lot of people behind her. She's got a bunch of people behind her right now that she doesn't even know about yet," Galaz said, explaining that several car clubs are coming together to denounce street racing.

There were also other troubling factors in the chain of events that led to Val D'alessandro's death. There had been underage drinking at the party, her mother said she learned. Also, under California law, drivers under 18 are not permitted to carry passengers younger than age 20, nor to drive between 11 p.m. and 5 a.m.

Two weeks ago, on Interstate-5 in Commerce, three people were killed in a fiery crash that investigators concluded had been triggered by cars racing. A day later in Downey, a pedestrian was struck and killed by a car authorities allege was racing another.

D'alessandro feels the pain of those families, and motivation to share her message with as many as she can. She's designed and ordered wristbands she plans to share with the teens to whom she speaks, so that her message of personal responsibility stays with them: "Street Racing Kills. Live for Val."

A website for Street Racing Kills is in the process of being built, D'alessandro said. She's raising funds for the site and the wristbands. She can be reached at StreetRacingKills@Yahoo.com.

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