SANTA FE SPRINSG, Calif. — As the night sets, nearly 40 California Highway Patrol officers hit the road laser focused on apprehending drivers under the influence. 

The seven-hour period of intensified enforcement is part of the CHP's Impaired Driver Task Force's efforts, where every month hand-picked officers from across the division come together to tackle a specific area for DUI drivers. In April, the force was out in Santa Fe Springs. 

"In the Santa Fe Springs area, you'll see about 35 to 40 DUI arrests are made any time that deployment takes place in our area. Those officers are in addition to what your normal patrol officers are also doing," explained CHP Public Information Officer, Zachary Salazar. 

Officer Salazar says their presence is not only aimed at catching offenders but also serves as a deterent to discourage individuals from driving recklessly. 

"We know through statistics that impaired driving is directly correlated to the mileage death rate. The more individuals that you can remove from the road who are impaired, whether it's by alcohol, drugs or a combination thereof, improves our chances of reducing potential death on our highways," said Officer Salazar. 

In the past three years, fatal and injury crashes have decreased by 12 percent, according to CHP data from 2019-2021. Still, roughly 70,000 fatal and injury crashes were reported in 2021 across CHP jurisdictions, where 13% of those crashes involved alcohol and resulted in over 700 people dying and 13,000 injured.

Officer Salazar says it’s impossible to put a number to exactly how many lives are saved by each arrest.

"Not only is it 30 to 40 lives of the individual driver, you can times that by how many cars are passing us right now, how many people could that individual have potentially become involved in a collision with and cause either a minor injury, major injury, or, again, the worst case scenario, a fatal injury," said Salazar. 

In the same way that many people are safer when one impaired driver is off the road, each death as a result of one leaves a lasting pain across entire communities. It's a pain that mother Lili Trujillo Puckett knows too well. 

"When I found out she was killed in a crash, I had no idea. I had no idea what had happened. All I know is I dropped her off because she was going to go to a sleepover," said Trujillo Puckett. 

Her 16-year-old daughter had gone out to a party with friends and was in the backseat of the car getting dropped off when the crash happened. 

"He [the driver] had also been drinking. So on his way to take them home, he sees a coworker and he gets challenged to a street race. He decides to race and ends up crashing, killing my daughter. She she was the only one that was killed, everyone else survived," said Trujillo Puckett. 

She says the pain that comes with this type of loss has a huge ripple effect across family and community. She shares the loss has been incredibly difficult for her son. 

"It was so hard to go to the room that we both slept in and her things were there, but she wasn't, you know, her clothes were still on the floor, her hairbrush, her backpack," said Trujillo Puckett.

Trujillo Puckett believes the driver would not have agreed to the street race if he had not been drinking. So she took her pain and decided to start Street Racing Kills, a nonprofit working to educate teens on safe driving. 

"I became a speaker. I was mentoring other parents or families that have lost someone. My life just changed completely and I know this is the only way that I can have her with me," said Trujillo Puckett. 

Salazar says that prevention education Trujillo Puckett is doing is crucial role in stopping people from getting behind the wheel in the first place. 

"While we may not prevent the act of consuming alcohol and or drugs and getting behind the wheel, but we can at least prevent them from becoming involved in a collision and potentially injuring somebody else," said Salazar.

For Trujillo Puckett, it's about saving other parents and families from feeling the pain she shares never goes away. 

"It's hard," she said. "It's really difficult to to keep outliving her. It's really difficult to keep thinking, like, what would she be doing now?"