'Just wiggle your toes'

Imagine if you woke up one day and you couldn't wiggle your toes.

Kevin Brooks - a leading speaker on suicide prevention, destructive decisions and overcoming obstacles - spoke to students at Chester and Steeleville schools last week as part of a seven-day, 18-presentation "Drive to Save Lives" tour through Illinois that included stops in Monroe and Randolph counties.

Brooks took his listeners on an emotional roller coaster ride starting with his reckless youth, the night a DUI accident killed a childhood friend and changed his life forever, and the later suicide of another friend he had known since eighth grade.

"I kept pushing my luck, pushing my luck and one night, my luck ran out," Brooks said to a group of seventh through 12th-grade students at Steeleville High School last Friday.

Brooks, 37, grew up in Canada as a snowboarding, skateboarding, hockey-playing kid who was nicknamed "The Creature" for his partying and adventures ways as a high schooler.

"I got in a really bad habit of when I partied, I drove," he said.

The oldest of three children, he was a frequent partier and loved things that could go fast. Then, on June 24, 2000, he left a party drunk and got behind the wheel of his Chevrolet Cavalier Z-24.

His friend, Brendon Beuk, hopped in beside him.

"I never thought that something that night would change my life forever," Brooks said. "I didn't think that way, I didn't see it coming and I had gone out to a party with some old hockey buddies I hadn't seen in awhile."

Brooks was speeding, going 130 km/h (80.8 mph) in a 70 km/h (43.5 mph) zone. He failed to negotiate a curve and struck a divider, causing the Z-24 to roll over several times and leaving the vehicle a nearly-unrecognizable, mangled mess of steel.

Brooks's injuries included a dislocated left shoulder, separated right shoulder, two broken collarbones, collapsed lung, a fractured vertebrae where his neck meets his back and damage to his spinal cord.

The accident left him paralyzed from the sternum down, but he was alive thanks to the seat belt he decided to wear that night - which kept him restrained upside down, preventing blood and fluid from pooling in his lungs and killing him.

Beuk, however, suffered fatal head injuries.

"My friends were smart enough to call a taxi to get home safe," Brooks said. "They chipped in a few bucks each, they got a safe ride home."

Brooks said he could have taken a taxi, walked home or stayed at the party.

"There's so many better options than driving," he said.

Brooks said his parents - whom he said didn't get along, but both agreed he shouldn't be drinking and driving - both offered him a ride home, but he chose not to take it.

"I look back and I take 100 percent responsibility for all my choices," he said.

Brooks spent six weeks bedridden in the hospital learning how to breathe again on his own. It was in the hospital that Brooks's mother finally told him the news about his friend.

"I pretty much woke up in the hospital weeks later, tubes, machines, you name it, not moving," Brooks said. "Also on a lot of medication for pain, morphine and everything.

"I was more or less out of it, little glimpses where I would know things weren't going well, but I didn't know what happened."

It took Brooks four months before he could shower and dress himself without someone helping him.

"I was calling my buddies 'Yo dude guess what? I showered and dressed myself today, only took me two and a half hours,'" Brooks said. "Most random phone call ever for sure."

Brooks said he was "consumed by guilt" about Beuk.

"One day, my mom handed me a piece of paper and on the piece of paper was a phone number, the phone number was Brendon's parents," he said. "She said 'Kev, they're ready for your call when you're ready to make it.

"That piece of paper and that phone number sat beside my hospital bed, I looked at it every single day, I don't know how many times a day."

Brooks said when he finally made the call and told Brendon's mom who it was, there was silence.

"And I hear sniffling," he said. "She's crying. I'm not made of stone, I break, I cry, we're both bawling our eyes out.

"I don't know if anyone in this room has ever tried to have a conversation where both participants are bawling their eyes out, I couldn't even get in a word."

Brendon's dad later had to help Brooks get through the call and invited him over to the family home, where they had a heart-to-heart talk about the accident.

Beuk's father took Brooks outside and reminded him that Brendon also made a choice that night, to get into that car with him.

"I don't need to know you to not wish this upon you," Brooks told the students. "For anyone."

Brooks started telling his story at elementary schools before being approached by the Insurance Bureau of British Columbia about getting involved in its road safety program.

Brooks began speaking to high school students and has since spoken to thousands of students in 24 states in the U.S. and eight provinces in Canada.

It was prior to one of those presentations that he learned that another childhood friend, Jordan Baker Fisher, had killed himself.

"A new mission was born," Brooks said.

Brooks now travels across the U.S. and Canada speaking out about not only destructive decisions, but suicide prevention. His presentation locally was sponsored by the Monroe-Randolph Regional Office of Education.

"I'm here to start this conversation," Brooks said. "You need to have this conversation. There's help out there.

"It's OK to ask for help."

During a media interview after the presentation, Brooks was asked where the emotion goes after continually keeping the memories fresh with each presentation.

"I'm really passionate about this," he said. "Every one I do, I want it to be better than the last. Even though I've done a thousand, I'm still trying to top the last one.

"Whether it be wording, or even the style of how I speak."

At nearly every presentation, Brooks has three chairs set up next to him on stage. Those represent the buddies he has lost over the years, Beuk (1980-2000), Fisher (1979-2004) and Christopher Roy Whitmee (1979-2009).

"I come in here, I want to make them laugh, I want to make them cry and I want to make them just wiggle their toes," Brooks said of seeing the students' reaction to his presentation. "I think I do at least two or three of those pretty much everyone I speak to.

"That's all part of it, making that connection and also taking them along on that journey."

The Maidez Center is offering "L;fe Savers" numbers to get help

Text "Go" to 741741 (Any help)

1-800-273-8255 (Suicide prevention)

1-800-656-4673 (Dating abuse and domestic violence)

1-888-373-7888 or Text "BeFree" to 2333733 (Human trafficking)

1-800-786-2929 (Runaway)

1-800-931-2237 (Eating disorders)

1-800-366-8288 (Cutting/self injury)

1-866-488-7386 (LGBTQ)