Peshlakai Family Marks 16 Years of Anti-DWI Outreach With Law Enforcement

Darlene and David Peshlakai returned to Santa Fe's south side Thursday night for the 16th consecutive year, passing out cards, pins and bags of candy bearing photographs of their daughters Del Lynn and Deshauna to drivers as part of an annual anti-DWI outreach campaign that has outlasted a governorship, produced real arrests and kept the memory of two young women alive across New Mexico.

The Naschitti family's daughters were killed when James Ruiz of Albuquerque, then 36, plowed his F-250 pickup into the rear of their sedan on Santa Fe's south side. A police report found Ruiz made no effort to brake. Tests later showed his blood-alcohol content was well over the legal limit at which a person is presumed to be driving drunk. The sisters, seated in the back, were killed in the wreck along with the family dog, July. Darlene and David Peshlakai were hospitalized with serious injuries. Ruiz suffered minor injuries and is now serving a 40-year sentence at Southern New Mexico Correctional Facility in Las Cruces, according to online correctional records. His record at the time of the crash included five DWI arrests, three resulting in convictions, with one case set for trial the very week he killed the Peshlakai sisters.

"One of our intentions is to remind people that something has happened there — just to remind them and to keep reminding them," Darlene Peshlakai said. "It's something that we have to keep doing."

The family, based in Naschitti in northwest New Mexico, has built that commitment into a year-round operation. They organize runs, basketball tournaments, motorcycle rides and rodeos, weaving the girls' story into community life across the region. The checkpoint events have produced measurable results: in 2015, a Peshlakai memorial checkpoint netted four arrests, three of them for DWI. In 2013, Gov. Susana Martinez attended the family's memorial checkpoint and, according to news reports at the time, passed out flyers to drivers as they came through.

"Life goes on," Darlene Peshlakai said, "but never easily."

Ruiz's prior record stands as the clearest argument for why the Peshlakais keep showing up. A driver with five DWI arrests and three convictions, one case pending trial, was behind the wheel of an F-250 with a blood-alcohol level well above the legal threshold when he struck their sedan without braking. Sixteen years later, Darlene Peshlakai frames the family's persistence not as grief alone but as obligation: the fight against drunken driving, she said, requires persistent messengers.