Graduation Trip Ends In Death For Whidbey Girl

Christina "Chrissey" Priest had gotten the University of Washington scholarship.

Priest and her mother had checked out the dorms, bought towels and a comforter and planned for her and a friend, Melissa Merwine, 18, class president of Oak Harbor High School, to room together in the fall.

The trip to Disneyland was to celebrate - along with three girlfriends packed in a pickup, fresh out of Oak Harbor High School and full of high hopes for the future.

But a head-on car crash Sunday morning forever changed the teens' future.

The crash, which investigating officers say Priest couldn't have prevented, claimed her life and injured her three friends.

The teens graduated from Oak Harbor High on Whidbey Island six days earlier and were driving south on Interstate 5 near downtown Sacramento at about 1:10 a.m. when a car traveling the wrong way on the divided freeway careened into their pickup.

Priest, who was at the wheel, and the other motorist, Salvador Valdez Chavez, 23, of Sacramento, were killed instantly, according to the California Highway Patrol.

Priest's passengers were admitted to University of California-Davis Medical Center in Sacramento and are all listed in fair condition as of today. Besides Merwine, the passengers in the pickup were Kari Lagerwey, 18, and Bridget Quinn, 17.

Priest's mother, Vicky Pitt, said Merwine's legs were crushed and that she is in danger of losing one leg.

Pitt, who described her daughter as opinionated and headstrong, said she had submitted a complete business proposal on the trip to persuade her mother to let her go.

"I said no to this trip and no to this trip," Pitt said.

She said the business proposal and constant campaigning from friends convinced her to let her daughter go on the Disneyland roadtrip.

Pitt, who teaches at Oak Harbor High School, said her daughter had been "the happiest she'd ever been" her senior year at school.

"I was able to be with her in her senior year," she said. "She'd blossomed."

"These girls had everything," she added.

California Highway Patrol (CHP) officials are investigating the accident and the possibility that alcohol may have been a factor in the other motorist driving at a high speed in the wrong lanes of the freeway.

Officer Jim Harris of the CHP said Chavez's car sideswiped another car a mile before hitting the teens' pickup.