Man of the Year

(3 of 9)

Candy Lightner had a horrible reason for wanting to achieve that goal. On May 3, 1980, her 13-year-old daughter Cari was walking to a church carnival in Fair Oaks, Calif., when a car swerved out of control and killed her. Police arrested a 46-year-old cannery worker named Clarence Busch and found that he had a long record of arrests for intoxication. Less than a week earlier, he had been bailed out on a hit-and-run drunk-driving charge. A policeman told Lightner that Busch was unlikely to spend any time behind bars for killing her daughter: drunk driving was just one of those things.

Lightner, then 33, a divorced real estate agent with two other children, heard that judgment as she was on her way to a dinner with friends on the eve of her daughter's funeral. She was still furious when she joined them in a cocktail lounge as they waited for a table. It was there, of all places, that she decided to do something. "I remember sitting in the bar with all these people and saying out loud, 'I'm going to start an organization.' Just like that. There was this big moment of silence, and then my girlfriend pipes up and says, 'And we can call it Mothers Against Drunk Drivers.' I didn't have a plan, a goal, nothing. All I knew was that I was going to start an organization, and I was determined to make it work."

She went to see California Governor Jerry Brown to persuade him to appoint a task force to deal with drunk driving. Brown declined to receive her. She went to his office every day, talking to anyone who would listen. After newspapers publicized Lightner's crusade, Brown finally told her that he was appointing the task force and that she would be a member. "I just started crying right there in his office," Lightner says.

Once launched, Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) proved a virtually irresistible force. Now headquartered near Dallas, where Lightner moved, MADD has 320 chapters nationwide and 600,000 volunteers and donors. In response to Lightner's efforts, California passed a tough new law in 1981 that imposes minimum fines of $375 and mandatory imprisonment of up to four years for repeat offenders. By now all 50 states have tightened their drunk-driving laws. And Lightner keeps making speeches, lobbying legislators and generally creating waves. Last July she stood beside President Ronald Reagan as he signed a new law reducing federal highway grants to any state that fails to raise the drinking age to 21. Her next goals: an indemnity fund for victims, a bill of rights for victims, automatic imprisonment for repeat offenders. (Clarence Busch did finally serve 21 months in jail for the death of Cari Lightner.)

"I believe that for every problem there is a solution," Lightner says. "We are changing the way people think about drinking and driving. But more than that, we have caused people to change their behavior, and that is saving lives. I believe in the rights of victims. And I do feel that if you believe in something badly enough, you can make a difference."

William McGowan

"Everybody said we were crazy"

The problem: Could an outsider challenge the telephone company's comfortable monopoly, offer a competitive service and cut phone rates in the process?