LAS VEGAS, N.M. — Outside K-Bob's Steakhouse, the late October evening air crackles with a cold, biting wind that earlier swept a brief snowstorm through town. The Collins family hurries inside the warm, bustling restaurant.

The smell of hamburgers and fajitas sizzling on the grill wafts around the dining room asRay Collins Jr., a dentist, settles into a chair next to his boisterous 2-year-old son, "Little Ray." Across from him is his pregnant wife, Katrina, who also is a dentist. His 16-year-old niece, Arissa Garcia, wearing a West Las Vegas Lady Dons sweat shirt, sits down beside him. At the other end of the long wooden table are Arissa's grandfather, Ray Sr., and her aunt, Roxanne.

In years past, there have been more chairs around the table.

But on Nov. 11, 2006, five members of their family died on Interstate 25 near Santa Fe, crushed in their minivan when it was hit head-on by a drunken driver going the wrong way.

Killed were Paul Gonzales, 36; his wife, Renee Collins-Gonzales, 39; her daughter Alisha Rae Garcia, 17; and the couple's two daughters, Jacquelynn, 11, and Selena, 10.

The last year has been hard, says Ray Collins Sr., Renee's dad, before recapping some of what the family has gone through since the accident.

Arissa listens but says nothing, her face stoic. She and a family dog named Amor were the wreck's only two survivors.

Colorful, silk autumn leaves hang over the door of the Alternative Home Health Care offices on the town's National Street.

Inside, the desks of owners Ralph and Maxine Gonzales are scattered with invoices, bills, messages and the other trappings of a busy office. Both nurses, the Gonzaleses started this home health care business with Paul's help in 1992. Their staff of 63 is available seven days a week, including holidays, to change dressings, check medications and transport clients to doctors' appointments.

On Maxine's desk is a frame with pictures of Maxine's son, Paul, the couple's daughter, Ashley, a premedical student at Knox College in Illinois, and their granddaughters, Jacquelynn and Selena.

Maxine covers the three photographs of Paul and her two granddaughters with her hand. The only portrait she leaves visible is the one that pictures Ashley.

"She is all I have left," Maxine says, a tear sliding down her cheek.

Aftermath

Seated at a K-Bob's table, Ray Jr. remembers how the whole family used to gather for dinner. There was lots of laughter and joking.

They are still a close-knit family, only quieter.

Ray Sr. passes his cell phone to Arissa to program in a phone number because he still doesn't know how to do it. As she quickly types in the number, her grandfather teases her about the 20,000 text messages on his bill a few months ago.

Some of those were messages sent to her by friends, Arissa retorts with a teenage scowl.

"Ten thousand sent by you, 10,000 received from them," Ray Sr. says with a wry smile.

Knee surgery and physical therapy helped Arissa recover from injuries she sustained in the crash. Her family and friends helped her get through the rest, she says.

Her uncle says Arissa would curl up with him at night at first and talk about what happened that November night. Now she doesn't talk about it much, even with him, he says.

Ray Sr. lost 50 pounds and his wife, Cathy, lost almost as much under the stress of the last 11 months.

In June, Ray Sr.'s brother, Gary Collins, died of a heart attack. Alarmed and shocked, Ray Sr. went for a checkup and found one of his arteries was 95 percent clogged. He has endured two stent surgeries since then to restore blood flow.

As the family sat at dinner together, Cathy was in California with her siblings deciding when to take her older sister, Rita Salazar, off life-support.

Ray Sr. says he goes to church almost every day. He used to ask God why these things happened. Now, he says, he just prays Rita's funeral will be the last one for a while.

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Maxine and Ralph were back at their desks processing payroll and invoices a few days after the funerals for Paul, Renee, Alisha, Jacquelynn and Selena. They had worked too hard building the business with Paul to close it. They would have felt disloyal to him if they had just given up, Maxine says.

We kept everything going, Ralph says. We do what we have to do. It's just a lot harder without his help, he adds.

Some of their long-time staff left, unable to cope. They liked Paul and loved having the little girls, with their giggles and smiles, visit after school.

Even now, it is hard for remaining staff members who knew the family. A sign-up sheet for the company's traditional Halloween potluck had no signatures a few days before the event. Without little Jacquelynn and Selena in their costumes, it wouldn't be the same.

A few close friends and their priest at Immaculate Conception Church have helped Maxine and Ralph cope. But in those moments when each of them is alone with his or her grief, that's when you have to give it over to God, Ralph says.

Day by day

Back at Ray Sr. and Cathy Collins' Las Vegas home, where she now lives, Arissa busies herself text-messaging friends and doing homework in the family room. She is a junior now at West Las Vegas High School. She says the class she likes best is weight lifting. She hopes to take a break after high school before going on to college.

Two child-sized, red, furry chairs sit facing a small television in the living room. They belonged to Selena and Jacquelynn. A colorful, hand-painted wooden birdhouse is on display in the living room. Selena painted it with her mother's help and gave it to her grandmother a week before the accident.

On the table is an award for "The Advocate," given to Arissa in October by Selecciones, the Spanish-language version of Reader's Digest. She was among half a dozen other young Hispanics selected from around the country for inspiring others. The company flew Arissa and her uncle to Orlando, Fla., for a ceremony; the last time she was there was on a trip in middle school with her mother.

Arissa is a placer on the Lady Dons varsity volleyball team, which hasn't done so well this season, she says with a grimace. She plans to play basketball when the season starts, and do both track and softball in the spring.

She plays despite the pain in the knee injured in the crash. Other parts of her body hurt as well, a product of sports injuries, but she says she'll keep playing no matter what.

Arissa found herself a kind of poster child for DWI crash survivors this last year, forcing her to open her private world to strangers. She says she understands the need for her to be a voice for change.

The family says it was Arissa's suggestion to change the state's new drunken driver alert number to #DWI, one people could more easily remember.

In May, she attended two ceremonies for the graduates who couldn't be there: her sister Alisha, who would have received her diploma from West Las Vegas High School, and her mother, Renee, who would have received her bachelor's degree in nursing from The University of New Mexico.

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The night before he died, Paul Gonzales reminded his sister, Ashley, to send in her college application. She did, and a few months later, she was one of 343 students accepted at Knox College out of 3,000 applicants. When the acceptance letter came, she wanted to share it with him, but he was already gone, she says, her dark eyes filling with tears.

In spite of her grief, Ashley graduated third in her class from Robertson High School in the spring. When she felt like giving up, she imagined her big brother telling her off for not studying, and that kept her going.

She enrolled at New Mexico Highlands University when she was a sophomore at Robertson and earned 36 college credits before she graduated from high school.

In many ways, Paul remains her inspiration. When she was 14, he accompanied her on a two-week school trip to Rome, Paris and London. The following year, they toured historic East Coast cities. Ralph said Paul wanted to show his sister the world outside Las Vegas "so she would not be afraid to go out and spread her wings."

Before the accident, Paul was working on obtaining passports to take his wife and daughters, his parents and Ashley on a trip to Europe.

That was his stepson's character, Ralph says. "He had to be experiencing things and making things happen."

Seeking change

Ray Sr. and his family sought change through the Legislature, but they were new to lobbying. It didn't take them long to realize they would have to learn the political game if they wanted to sway legislators.

They say they watched the powerful liquor lobby outflank their efforts at almost every turn. They would drive from Las Vegas in the morning, only to learn the issue they were there to testify about had been moved to the end of a committee's agenda. The family learned to leave when the liquor lobbyists left a room and come back when they were returning. Arissa sometimes missed school to be at the Roundhouse, and Ray Jr. and Katrina struggled to run their dental practice around lobbying, but frustration began to overlay the family's grief.

"We learned fairly quickly that there weren't many legislators that wanted to really get into this issue," says Gerald Collins, Renee's uncle and an Albuquerque attorney. "The liquor industry is a powerful lobby. Legislators don't want to bite the hand that feeds them."

Just look at how many years it took to ban drive-up liquor windows in the state, the Collinses say.

Gerald says family members did their own research, waded through studies and delivered copies of their proposals to legislators prior to and during committee hearings. A lot of times their efforts seemed to fall on deaf ears, he says.

But they are not giving up, he says.

Gerald closed his law practice recently and went to work for Blue Cross/Blue Shield so he could use his time off to lobby during the next legislative session.

They aren't trying to stop people from drinking, the family says, just from drinking and driving.

They will continue to seek more restrictions on where people can buy alcohol and more funding for treatment programs. They will again try to convince the Legislature that alcohol sales at convenience stores are not much different than drive-up liquor windows.

They'll push for tougher penalties on those who serve alcohol to intoxicated adults and underage drinkers. Locking up DWI offenders and not the people who supply them is like going after a heroin user but not the drug dealer, Gerald argues.

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Three months ago, Maxine was going through some of Paul's things and found a Students Against Drunk Drivers pin. She had almost forgotten he belonged to the group when he was at Robertson High School. Later he also taught defensive driving, first aid and cardiopulmonary resuscitation, all classes designed to keep people safe.

The irony isn't lost on his parents.

Counselors from Mothers Against Drunk Drivers helped the Gonzales family after the crash. Since then, one of Maxine's sisters in Las Cruces has trained as a MADD advocate to help survivors of other DWI accidents.

On Oct. 27, the family participated in MADD's annual 5K fundraiser in Albuquerque. "Paul's Storm" — Maxine, Ralph, Ashley and 15 of their family members and friends — raised more than $8,000, the largest team contribution to this year's benefit. Before the race, Maxine notes, she was not a walker. But she pumped herself up so she could reach the finish line. She did it for the family she lost.

In total, MADD raised more than $60,000 to help train court advocates, counselors and fund other programs. The money raised in Las Vegas will go to programs in the town.

The Gonzaleses support the DWI laws passed by the Legislature this last session. They say they'll continue to make themselves available when needed to speak as advocates for stronger DWI deterrents and more treatment programs for offenders.

Both Maxine and Ralph wish a device could be installed in vehicles that would simply shut off the engine if it sensed alcohol fumes. Manufacturers could be mandated to install it, similar to seat belts. "A simple device like that would prevent so much pain and suffering," Maxine says. "The kind of pain that the Collins family and our family have endured this last year."

But, like the Collins family, the Gonzaleses think it will take a fundamental change in the way alcohol is viewed in society to make a real difference. If people felt better about what they did and could get high on their accomplishments, they wouldn't turn to drugs and alcohol, Ralph says.

No answers, a little light

In the year since the accident, neither family has found answers for why that awful moment happened on a dark highway.

The two families were never close. And the tragedy hasn't brought them together. They each need to focus on helping their immediate families through this, Ralph says.

All they can do is work to keep it from happening to someone else, to hold up the names of Paul, Renee, Alisha, Jacquelynn and Selena as a reminder of the price paid for someone else's choice to drink and drive.

As the first anniversary of the crash drew near, Katrina and Ray Jr. decided to induce the baby. Their second son was born Oct. 31 at St. Vincent Regional Medical Center.

They named him Christian Renee.

Contact Staci Matlock at 470-9843 or smatlock@sfnewmexican.com.