“They were my best friends,” said Capps, senior class president at Princeton High School. “After losing them, it was the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life.”

Stewart, a 17-year-old senior, and Baker, 21, a Princeton graduate, were killed in a head-on car accident in September 2008. That very morning, the senior class had taken pictures in front of the school.

But Capps was not one to watch idly as the school year ticked past. “I figured instead of moping around feeling sorry for myself, I could try to save lives,” she said.

At the state Students Against Destructive Decisions convention in November, Capps saw her chance. Peggy Bennett of Charlotte gave a presentation with her son Josh, who suffered life-changing injuries in a drunk-driving accident at 18.

“She is a tenacious little something-or-other,” Bennett said of Capps. “As Josh and I were leaving [the conference], I was taking my suitcases out to the car and she chased me down.”

Senior with a cause

Capps had been on a mission since her junior year, when Princeton lost both Mamie Katlyn Bell and Gilbert Michael “Gib” Martin.

After a trip to a state-sponsored highway-safety convention, she approached Principal Kirk Denning about starting a chapter of SADD.

“I felt a personal mission to stop teen driving deaths,” Capps wrote in an e-mail.

“All these kids getting killed, I might not have known them personally, but I know how it feels for everyone my county’s lost,” she said earlier. “If they hear it from a fellow student, then I would think they would listen.”

By Capps’ senior year, Princeton’s SADD club was established, and she was president. The deaths of Stewart and Baker added more fuel to her drive; she decided to stage a safe-driving forum before the prom, and the Bennett family turned out to be the perfect partners.

“I wanted them to go to all the schools and let [the students] have a taste of reality,” Capps said.

With a little bit of help, Capps and the Bennetts turned their grief into an experience that touched students across Johnston County.

“Summer did not allow economic times to be an obstacle,” Terri Sessoms, spokeswoman for Johnston schools, told the Board of Education at a meeting last week. “Now that takes a lot of gumption for a senior to do; she’s a leader.”

A powerful message

Capps, Josh Bennett and Peggy Bennett spoke at every Johnston County high school except Clayton during the two days leading up to prom. (Clayton already had similar speakers lined up.) The reactions, they said, were incredible.

Capps heard the Bennetts’ story time after time during the two-day tour, but its power was never diluted.

“I think the parallel of Joshua’s life with these kids’ current lives is important,” said Peggy Bennett.

When Josh was 18, Peggy said, he was just like any of the thousands of kids the family has addressed in the past few years. A night of underage drinking changed all that.

After the accident, Josh was in a coma for five months. He is able to walk and speak now, Peggy Bennett said, but will likely never make a full recovery.

“We can’t let him go outside because he wouldn’t know where to go and what to do or how to turn around and get home,” she said.

The Bennetts spoke at more than 15 events at schools across the state this May, each time facing auditoriums filled with students not much different than Josh used to be.

“He sat in the same kind of assemblies you sat in,” Peggy Bennett said. “He was one of them, picture perfect, and one decision did this.”

What he’ll always have, though, is his bright smile and sense of humor.

“He’s a very funny guy,” Capps said. “He’s just out to save a life.”

Lasting impressions

Judging from the reactions to their presentation, Capps and the Bennetts struck a resonant chord with Johnston students. Capps and Peggy Bennett both heard students swear off drinking for prom night.

“She said, ‘We don’t need that other stuff tomorrow night,’” Bennett said of one student she overheard.

Capps still gets thanks from random students, even when she’s at the gym. “After Josh spoke to us ... we said, we don’t need to do this tonight, we can do something else,” one student told her.

Capps doesn’t care much about the spotlight though. “I didn’t set out for recognition,” she said. “I set out to save lives.”

This year’s tour of schools sucked up much of the Bennetts’ vacation time, but Peggy said it’s all been worth it. “It’s something that is so tragic, that at some point you come back up for air and you believe in karma and you just realize, this is something we can really do something good with, that we can make a difference,” she said.

Some Johnston County parents have found relief in much the same way. Rickey Richardson has shared his story with parents at meetings held before teens begin driver’s ed. He is the father of Reece Richardson, who was killed in an accident at 17.

For him, fellow parents like the Bennetts are a community. “I love all you parents that lost kids,” Richardson said at the Board of Education meeting last week. “It’s a unique club that you never expect to be in.”

As for Capps, she is off to UNC-Pembroke this fall. She will play in the school’s drum line and study forensic science; she hopes to work in law enforcement after she graduates.

Car accidents have taken the lives of 28 Johnston County students in the last five years, said Terri Sessoms, public information officer for the school system. Five students and recent graduates were killed this year, she said.

They were Matthew Stewart, 17, Steven "Drew" Smith, 17 and Brittney Hicks, 19, all seniors; and Matthew Stewart, 21, and Shannon Adkins, 18, both recent graduates.