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Sunday, May 5, 2002
Life Sentences: Ronny Frazee, 31, Former drunken driver
By Leslie Linthicum
Journal Staff Writer
Moriarty
Ronny Frazee never thought much about the sequence of events that landed him in court four times in a little more than 10 years.
"You go to the bar, have a few beers and you go home," Frazee says. "And you drive."
Arrested for DWI for the first time in Truth or Consequences when he was 19 and again in Albuquerque when he was 24, Frazee went to court, paid his fines, accepted the court's counseling and got right back on the road.
"I'd go talk to my counselor," he says, "stop and get me a quart and drink it on the way home."
Then Frazee, a dropout from Rio Grande High School, turned 30 and realized he had a good job that he liked and a girlfriend committed to staying with him despite his drinking binges.
Back-to-back DWI arrests in Albuquerque and Moriarty last year got Frazee's attention. He did 90 days in the Torrance County Detention Center and was enrolled in a Metropolitan Court program in Albuquerque that combined acupuncture, regular urine and blood screenings, counseling and community service.
More than a year later, Frazee says he no longer drinks or drives. The court has taken his driver's license away, and Frazee knows he can never touch alcohol again if he is going to keep his record clean.
"I love to shoot pool but I can't," he says. "If I go into a bar and shoot pool, I'll drink a beer. And if I drink a beer, eventually I'll drive. So I just can't."
Frazee, a carpenter, has also evolved into an advocate for tougher DWI laws.
"If it was up to me, you'd do five to 10 years in prison for the first one," Frazee says. "There's a lot of people getting hurt and dying, and it's got to stop."
"Everybody else had a problem, but I didn't."