After getting pulled over for driving under the influence of alcohol in early November, kinesiology major Tyler Harrison paced the drunk tank, a white-padded jail cell with only a four-by-three window, feeling a burning sensation as if ants were crawling in his veins.

“I just knew I had to fix what I did,” Harrison said.

Barely 21 years old, Harrison was driving back to his apartment on Nov. 3 after having a few drinks with friends at the home football game between Sacramento State and University of California, Davis — also known as the Classic Causeway — when he was pulled over. Just after he left the parking lot at Hornet Stadium, a friend driving next to him waved him down to ask for directions to an after-party. That’s when Elk Grove Police Sgt. Dan Davis pulled him over for “obstructing traffic.”

Little did they both know, there was going to be an arrest that night that would be broadcast for all of Sacramento to see. With a .11 percent blood alcohol concentration, Harrison said he knew he had made the dumbest mistake of his life.

The legal limit for drinking and driving is a .08 percent BAC in California, according to the Department of Motor Vehicles website.

Less than three weeks after his DUI arrest, Harrison took on the extra responsibility to educate others on the effects of drinking and driving.

“By driving (under the influence), I affected not only myself but other people. I knew I had a responsibility to help others so they won’t do what I did,” Harrison said.

A forum held Nov. 15 by Phi Beta Sigma, a fraternity Harrison is in, entitled DUI Will Make You Cry allowed students to hear Harrison’s experience and learn from his mistake.

“You can take the bad things in life and create worse things out of it or you can take it and turn it into something positive,” he said.

Putting more hours into ensuring the forum would help teach others not to follow in his footsteps, Harrison was able to have Davis, a representative from Sacramento County District Attorney Jan Scully’s office, representatives from the Elk Grove and Sacramento Police Departments and Sacramento city officials there to share their experiences with DUI cases.

This time, Harrison personally invited Fox 40 News – the same news station that showed him getting arrested – to televise his forum to help expose the need to stop people from driving drunk.

With about 40 people in attendance, Harrison was finally feeling the irritation wearing off.

“If I could just get one person to hear about what I had to say, to not drink and drive, then I would have done something,” he said.

At first, Davis, who is in charge of motor and traffic enforcement, was a little surprised and skeptical when Harrison called him, but deep down he knew Harrison was someone who could change lives.

Davis said Harrison did a genuine job with the forum, which allowed tens of thousands of people to see the trauma, embarrassment and money associated with a DUI.

He said, however, that those people are the lucky ones because the consequences of drinking and driving can be very catastrophic.

“Elk Grove alone made over 300 DUI arrests last year,” Davis said. “I’m sure Sacramento made thousands and thousands of DUI arrests just last year.”

However, Davis knew something was different about the person in his backseat that night.

“We had a long conversation that night, which I hardly do with people I arrest,” Davis said. “He was willing to listen to what I had to say and I was willing to hear what he had to say because he handled the situation like an adult – asking for no special treatments.”

Understanding how wrong things could have turned out, Harrison would like to have another forum before spring break.

After Harrison was released from the Sacramento County Main Jail about 12 hours after being arrested, many of his loved ones wanted to hear what he had to say.

After being approached several times wanting an explanation about the incident, Harrison realized that many of those who surrounded him were in fact disappointed in his actions.

“What affected me the most was how many people were let down because they saw me on television getting arrested,” Harrison said.

Going to church, making prayers before any meeting, letting people know that education is the way to a better life and doing good things for God are just a few things Harrison does on a daily basis.

The shock of him getting arrested for a DUI really made the people he cared about question his authenticity, he said.

Phi Beta Sigma brothers supported him and knew that he would showcase his crime for others to see in order to keep someone from making the same mistake he made.

“After seeing just a clip of Tyler on the news that night, we all tried calling him but he didn’t pick up,” said Sac State business major and fraternity brother Pernell Sulivan.

Sulivan knew that Harrison felt humiliated, yet at the same time, wasn’t too surprised that he would sacrifice his image to put on a forum to help better the world.

With the help of Phi Beta Sigma, Harrison was able to book the University Union Redwood Room and used his fraternity as a stepping stone for the DUI forum.

Aside from his brothers, his family back home in Hayward also helped him emotionally, spiritually and physically.

After the initial shock of having their son arrested for a DUI, his parents asked him if he needed anything and if he would be all right, Harrison said.

Upon hearing that Harrison was in full gear of putting this forum together, Debi Harrison, Tyler Harrison’s artistic mother, helped put together the flier that would be passed out throughout campus.

“I talked to my brother, who just turned 18, about my mistake and my 13-year-old sister says that if it happens again and the police don’t kill me, then she will,” Harrison said.

Nonetheless, he said he doesn’t regret getting a DUI because it was his responsibility and no one else’s.

Although his DUI fines have cost him more than a few thousand dollars and attending mandatory DUI school will continue to take up more than three months, it doesn’t bother Harrison.

“In this process, I met so many people I wouldn’t have met,” he said.

Getting a natural high from meeting different people, Harrison is delighted that he is enlightened by these people. From his optimistic, friendly and willing approach, those same people are more than enlightened by his presence.

“My counselor at DUI school…almost cried when we were talking about our experiences,” he said.

Deur Julie Tcha can be reached at [email protected]