Robin Monica, of North Kingstown, with a portrait of her son, Jeffrey, who died five years ago in a car crash.

The Providence Journal / Bob Thayer

NORTH KINGSTOWN — A cross on Frenchtown Road marks the spot where Jeffrey Monica died. After drinking a few beers, the 19-year-old took a curve at 100 miles an hour and smashed into a telephone pole.

A second shrine dominates the Monica living room, in a two-story house tucked away on a quiet street. Jeff’s soccer jersey, framed, blocks the brick fireplace. A signed soccer ball rests on the hearth. Two dozen photographs line one wall. In one, Jeff leaps to kick a ball.

Although her oldest son died five years ago, Robin Monica still cannot talk about him without stopping, suddenly, to fumble for a Kleenex.

“It’s not easy, but I’ve got to do it,” says the 55-year-old Macy’s sales clerk.

Since Jeff’s death, Monica has faced cameras and teleprompters to make three public service announcements about drinking and driving. In the first, she stands, stiffly, next to a picture of her son.

She has talked at Parent Teacher Organization meetings and has taken pictures of roadside memorials marking other alcohol-related deaths. The year Jeff died, she joined the local task force headed by Kathy Yeager, who will meet with other officials today to discuss a statewide strategy to stop teen drinking.

She makes no excuses for her son. “He died from his own poor choice and decision,” she says. “Coming to grips with that was not easy.”

AS A TEENAGER, Jeff loved soccer and speed. Often, before he left home, Monica would grab his arm and say, “Jeff, take it easy.” “Mom,” he would counter, “I’ve got it under control.”

He was a good kid. By the spring of 2003, he had finished his first year at Rhode Island College, where he lived in a dorm. He’d landed two summer jobs, one of them as a landscaper. He was showing signs of maturity, too. He told his younger brother, David, to buckle down at school. Don’t goof off like I did, he said.

“Everything was coming together,” says Monica. “Life was perfect for him.”

Then, on May 29, he borrowed a driver’s license to buy beer. He drove to a friend’s house to watch 2 Fast 2 Furious, a movie about drugs, dirty money and street racing.

Pumped up, Jeff drove fast on the way home. He took a curve, swerved to miss a car, fishtailed and hit a guardrail. His mother’s Audi flew upward and smashed into a telephone pole 5 feet from the ground. The police kept Robin Monica, who went to the accident site, from getting in the car. Electric wires sprawled everywhere.

Losing a parent, says Monica, is like breaking your arm. It’s difficult, but you manage. Losing a son is like having your arm shorn off at the shoulder. You have to learn how to live again.

ROBIN MONICA is learning to live again.

After the accident, she was numb. When the electric company sent her a bill for the damaged telephone pole, she lost control.

Then she started walking around the neighborhood, a quiet road off Stony Lane.

She started reading books and articles about the grieving process. And she joined Working Together for Wellness, North Kingstown’s substance-abuse prevention task force.

That year –– she doesn’t remember what month –– Monica approached a teacher about making a public service announcement about her son’s death. She did two more after that, but she still couldn’t “speak Jeff’s name without melting down,” she says.

Last year, the local task force won a $450,000 federal grant to curb teen drinking. The grant was issued because of the high number of DUI arrests in town, and because students on a school survey said they drank.

The task force used some of the money to pay for a police “party patrol.” The strategy is working, says Detective Jason Clark.

To date, the patrol has broken up 20 illegal drinking parties. In the last nine months, the police have arrested more than 130 juveniles, many of them on drug or alcohol-related charges, says Clark. Two adults have been charged with supplying alcohol to teens.

Now, the task force wants to change local attitudes toward drinking.

Too many teens are getting alcohol from older students, older siblings and parents, says Yeager, coordinator of Working Together for Wellness.

Too many students and adults think teen drinking is a right of passage, adds Monica. “It’s so ingrained in our society. You can’t watch a football game without seeing a beer commercial.”

But things can change. Once, smoking was pervasive. But after researchers linked tobacco to cancer, employers banned it from the workplace, Monica says. Now, there are smoke-free zones everywhere.

When she was a girl, Monica protested against smoking in a very personal way. She flushed her parents’ cigarettes down the toilet.

IN THE FIVE YEARS since her son’s death, Monica has learned two things that haunt her.

When Jeff died, the coroner said his blood-alcohol content was just over the legal limit of .08, the equivalent of about two beers –– no more than most people drink at a dinner party. The information was not reassuring. “You don’t have to be falling down drunk to get into trouble,” Monica says.

The other thing Monica discovered has to do with teen behavior. According to researchers, young people have no fear. The part of the brain that deals with risky behavior develops later, she says. “That’s why kids make these impetuous decisions.”

If she had known that five years ago, maybe things would have turned out differently, Monica says.

“The fact that it was preventable drives me crazy. If one person hears what I have to say, and takes it to heart ––” she stops, unable to finish.

pdavis@projo.com