Scared Sober
November 15, 2018
Derek Jorden
Derek Jorden, a former college swimmer, presented “The Light was Green When I Last Looked: Warning Signs on the Road of High-Risk Choices” in the H.S. Kuyper Fieldhouse in September. “I grew up in a loving family. I was in scouts and went to church every Sunday,” Jorden says. “I was 20 years old when I woke up in a hospital bed with a sheriff’s deputy looming over me.” The sheriff told Jorden he had killed another driver in a car crash that Jorden had been in a few hours before when his blood alcohol level was twice the legal limit. After a six-year jail sentence, he now warns others about the dangers of high-risk choices. He appeared at Central with the support of an NCAA Choices Grant to integrate athletics into campus-wide efforts to reduce alcohol abuse.