By Jeong Park
The Orange County Register
HUNTINGTON BEACH, Calif.
Iglesias is grateful that Huntington Beach Police Officer Grant Hasselbach pulled her over that night. So grateful, in fact, that she recently thanked him on Facebook for arresting her.
“I probably would have continued to drive under the influence if I had not been caught,” Iglesias wrote in her Facebook post.
Hasselbach has made nearly 100 DUI arrests during his three years in Huntington Beach, including 34 in 2016. That year, Huntington Beach police arrested 354 people for DUI. There are a lot of bars downtown, near the sand, and a lot of people visiting the beach for a good time.
Iglesias was in Huntington Beach Dec. 14, 2014 to attend a party with friends. After the party, despite having had some drinks, she thought she could make the 1.5-mile drive to her friend’s house to stay the night, she said.
“You think you are untouchable,” Iglesias said.
But when Hasselbach saw Iglesias’ 2003 white Maxima swerve and make wide turns, he said, he suspected Iglesias was driving drunk. In a sobriety test, she tested above .08, the legal limit for adults 21 and older.
Within hours, Iglesias sobered up to reality in a holding cell.
Her DUI conviction was costly. After pleading guilty, she paid more than $2,000 in court costs and fines and was put on a three-year probation.
That said, at 20, she still drinks — like many people her age. What she doesn’t do, she says, is drink and drive.
“Even if it’s just one drink, I always take an Uber now,” she said.
Despite the consequences, many of those convicted of a DUI reoffend. According to a 2015 report from the California Department of Motor Vehicles, 36 percent of individuals convicted of a DUI had a second conviction within 10 years of their first offense.
But Patricia Rillera, regional executive director for Mothers Against Drunk Driving Southern California, said DUI can also be a wake-up call.
“Most people have the mentality that this isn’t going to happen to me,” Rillera said. “Most times, it takes a red flag or some tragedy to get some people’s attention.”
Iglesias knew high school classmates who died in drunken driving accidents. But they were distant to her, she said, until she got a DUI.
As part of her sentence, she had to meet with MADD members who had lost family in drunken driving incidents. The meeting opened her eyes, Iglesias said.
“Getting a DUI was the least of the bad things that could have happened to me from drinking and driving,” Iglesias said. “I got let off really easy.”
Those experiences led Iglesias to her recent public thank-you to Hasselbach nearly three years after her arrest. When Iglesias saw Hasselbach in a photo on the Huntington Beach Police Department’s Facebook page being honored by MADD, she wanted to share her story.
“I was hoping… to have (Hasselbach) see that he affected somebody in a positive way,” Iglesias said.
Hasselbach does not have a Facebook account, but Iglesias’ post reached him within days. He was surprised.
“As a police officer, you don’t get thanked very often,” he said.
But Hasselbach also hopes more people recognize the ramifications of drunken driving before they get behind the wheel.
As a police officer in San Diego in 2012, Hasselbach was just a few feet from becoming a victim of a DUI accident, he said. A drunken driver hit his police car as he was escorting another drunk driver, an incident that was captured on video that later went viral.
“There are a lot of Lyft drivers, a lot of Uber drivers and a lot of taxis,” Hasselbach said. “If someone chooses not to take one of those and to drive, they are at risk.”
