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Birth:          22 May 1976 Seattle, Wash.
Death:          24 Jun 1994 South Kitsap Co., Wash.

Notes
!PUBL
1981 book (see for details)

The Seattle Times
June 28, 1994, Tuesday, Final Edition
 page B6
HEADLINE: BALLARD TEENAGER'S TRAFFIC DEATH WAS AVOIDABLE ACCIDENT, 
SAYS STATE PATROL

BYLINE: BY DAVE BIRKLAND

     Regardless of the circumstances, the death of a teenager is always hard to 
comprehend: Their lives are just beginning, their dreams unfulfilled, their challenges 
unmet.
     The death of a popular Ballard youth, Mollola Blair, 18, in a car crash in South 
Kitsap County late Friday night is especially sad because it could have been avoided.
     "This is a tragedy that did not have to happen," said State Patrol Lt. Steve Boyer 
of the crash that sent a car full of mostly recent Ballard High School graduates 
hurtling off the roadway and into a tree in the Port Orchard area. They were en route 
to the birthday party of a friend.
     Speed was involved and there was alcohol on the driver's breath, Boyer reported. 
The degree of intoxication, if any, will not be known until samples of the driver's blood 
are analyzed for alcohol content, he said.
     There was no evidence of drinking by the rest of the occupants, according to 
Boyer.
     Jim McClurg, a friend of the Blair family, emphasized that Blair and Esther Jennifer 
Campbell, a 17-year-old exchange student from Scotland, did not know the driver had 
been drinking when they got in his car.
     The speed of the vehicle has not been determined, but the crowded car was 
traveling faster than the posted 35-mph speed limit, Boyer said.
     The crash occurred as the car went down a moderate hill where Southeast View 
Park Road curves to the left, State Patrol Det. Dwight Combs said.
     The car failed to make the curve, went straight and hit a tree approximately 20 
feet off the roadway, Combs said.
     Blair, a Ballard High School cheerleader and captain of the girl's swim team for the 
past two years, was killed.
     She apparently was sitting on the lap of the passenger in the right front of the 
two-door Ford Escort, the side of the car that struck the tree.
     The driver, Russell Green, 16, of Gig Harbor, and passengers Tony Olsen, 16, and 
Eric Larson, 18, both of Ballard, were treated and released at Harrison Memorial 
Hospital in Bremerton.
     David Desclos, 18, also of Ballard, suffered two broken legs. He was airlifted to 
Harborview Medical Center where he was in satisfactory condition yesterday. Campbell 
suffered a broken pelvis and was treated at Harrison Hospital in Bremerton, then 
transferred to Swedish Medical Center/Ballard.
     Blair, who was the business manager for Ballard High School's newspaper, had just 
been accepted to Washington State University and was looking forward to going there 
next month for orientation, McClurg said.
     "Mollola was an especially compassionate student," volunteering to work with 
Natural Helpers, a group that counsels troubled students at Ballard High, McClurg 
said. She was active in Young Life, a Christian organization for young people, and she 
sang in the choir of Bethany Community Church in the Green Lake area.
     Blair's parents, Randy and Janice Blair, are obviously in shock, yet the special 
relationship they had with her is seeing them through "this time of tragedy," McClurg 
said.
     Janice Blair has been a volunteer at Ballard High School and she ran 
unsuccessfully for the Seattle School Board in 1987. Randy Blair owns an insurance 
brokerage.
     It is a tragic loss, yet Blair's parents said they are looking forward to the memorial 
service tomorrow when they "will celebrate 18 wonderful years with her. . . ."
     The service is scheduled for 1 p.m. at the Shoreline Community Church, 125 N.E. 
185th St. The family suggests remembrances to the Ballard Beaver Bash Scholarship 
Fund in care of Ballard High School.
     Besides her parents, Blair is survived by her brother, Lassik; grandparents Don and 
Evelyn Blair and Afton  and Ruth King, all of Seattle; aunts and uncles Mike and Linda 
Brooks, of Seattle, Mike and Sharon Roma, of Edmonds; an uncle, Dennis Blair, of 
Seattle, and cousins Gina and Anthony Roma of Edmonds.
------------
The Seattle Times

June 16, 1998, Tuesday Final Edition

SECTION: EDITORIAL; Pg. B5; LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

LENGTH: 239 words

HEADLINE: GREATLY RAISES THE STAKES

BODY:
I am pleased that the police, county sheriff and state Liquor Control Board are taking 
seriously the problem of graduation celebrations and underage drinking ("Here come 
the keg patrols," June 1.)

Something that might give graduates and their families further incentive to avoid illegal 
drinking is a new change in state law. 

This past session, the Legislature approved a measure that toughens penalties for 
adults who provide alcohol to minors.

The change in law, sponsored in the House by Rep. Brad Benson, R-Spokane, and by 
me in the Senate, increases the offense to a gross misdemeanor. It carries a penalty 
of up to a year in jail and a fine of as much as $ 5,000.

This greatly raises the stakes for an adult who makes the foolish and dangerous 
choice of providing alcohol to a minor.

Sadly, the impetus for the change was the senseless traffic death in 1994 of Ballard 
resident Mollola Blair, a passenger in a car driven by a drunken teenager who had 
been provided alcohol at a graduation party by an adult.

While it's unlikely that drinking by minors will totally cease, what should and can be 
changed is adults making it any easier by providing the liquor.

So, if common sense won't stop adults from giving alcohol to people under 21, then 
perhaps stiffened penalties will. The law took effect June 11, just in time for this 
year's graduation parties.
---------------------------
The Seattle Times

June 16, 1996, Sunday, Final Edition

SECTION: SCENE; Pg. L1

LENGTH: 4276 words

HEADLINE: DADS REMEMBER -- EXPERIENCES WITH THEIR CHILDREN BROUGHT 
HAPPY MEMORIES AS WELL AS A FEW TEARS FOR DADS ON THIS FATHER'S 
DAY

Saturday afternoon, June 25, 1994.

I was returning home from my annual Idaho fly fishing trip and just thinking that the 
last eight days had gone by very fast. We had been on the Henry's Fork River nestled 
in an ancient cauldron between the Continental Divide and Yellowstone/Tieton 
mountains. My brother, Dennis, who was returning with me this year, mentioned that it 
must be about time to check in to let the rest of the family know our arrival time. We 
were going to celebrate Father's Day and my birthday when I returned home. I used 
the car phone to call and a family friend answered the phone. I thought that strange, 
Vicki answering our phone but then my wife, Janice, came on and said, "Mollola is 
dead."

I could not comprehend what I had heard. Our beautiful 18-year-old daughter, killed in 
a car crash caused by a drunk driver. Only 22 days after her 18th birthday and just 14 
days after her high-school graduation.

I thought over our last days. We had been arguing about her social life and 
boyfriends. Mollola seemed to always bring home "lost puppy boyfriends." I had failed 
to understand what she saw in these guys. Mollola said she was old enough to make 
her own mistakes. She was determined to help them in her own way. We ended up 
very angry with each other. I figured that the situation would resolve itself in a few 
weeks when she headed off to Washington State University.

I finally arrived home, my wife, son, family and many friends were waiting. Their 
reassurances were important comforts that Mollola surely knew how much she was 
loved. Later, I sat in her room before trying to get some sleep.

That's when I noticed two greeting cards on her night stand. I looked at the first one 
and it was my birthday card, a drawing of some old, moaning bald guy on the front with 
something inside about having teenagers makes you age faster. How true.

I opened the second card. On the front, it said, "This relationship is important to me, 
and I'm willing to give it everything I've got"; and inside, "that doesn't mean that there 
won't be times that we'll disagree, but it does mean that there will always be someone 
who loves you, someone who's willing to make up, someone who's all yours."

Before me was my answered prayer. She wrote, "I know it's mostly up to me to make 
this relationship better. All I need is a little patience and a lot of love from you. I'm 
willing to try. I love you, Mollola."

I still struggle with the grief even after these many months. I find peace sometimes and 
joy in her final gift among my other memories. A reminder that I can love completely 
without complete understanding with my teenage son's relationship. I understand 
something else, that Mollola was only modeling what she had been taught at home. 
Something that both she and her brother were taught all their lives. To help people 
even in spite of themselves.

Thank you, God. I commend her to you.
- Randy Blair Seattle 

--------------
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER

June 29, 1995, Thursday , FINAL

SECTION: EDITORIAL, Pg. A19

LENGTH: 1111 words

HEADLINE: ALCOHOL-RELATED 'ACCIDENTS' CUT SHORT TOO MANY YOUNG 
LIVES

My husband and I were especially upset by this news - for the family, but also as we 
reflected on another young graduate's death a year ago. We'd attended a memorial 
tree-planting ceremony last March near Southworth in Kitsap County for Mollola Blair. 
Mollola had died at the site last year on June 24 in an automobile crash involving 
alcohol. She was 18 years old and had just graduated from Ballard High School. 
Another mother was there, Loie Lennon, who had lost her 18-year-old son four years 
ago, also in a driving-under-the-influence (DUI) "accident." Lennon is now head of 
Kitsap County's Mothers Against Drunk Driving. 

Janice and Randy Blair, Mollola's parents, have been following closely the arrest and 
prosecution of the young man who was driving the car in which their daughter was 
killed. He was prosecuted as an adult and was sentenced in Port Orchard on June 19. 
He was sentenced to 27 months in prison for vehicular homicide and nine months for 
vehicular assault.
----------------------
http://www.kitsapsun.com/news/1995/Feb/24/three-sentenced-in-girls-beer-party-
death/
The party in South Kitsap last June was advertised as a beer fest and barbecue.

Fliers with maps were passed around Ballard High School in Seattle, and several 
dozen kids descended on the home on View Park Road for the birthday bash.

In the midst of the two-day party, an 18-year-old girl was killed when the car she was 
riding in smashed into a tree. The five other occupants of the Ford Escort, including 
the 16-year-old driver, were injured.

Eight months later, three men have been sentenced for furnishing liquor to minors.

Grant Downey, 40, who hosted the party, was sentenced to 60 days in jail and will pay 
a $250 fine to the Mollola King Blair Scholarship Fund, established in memory of the 
girl who died. He is the father of one of the Ballard teens.

James W. Brown, 33, a Pierce County resident who purchased alcohol for the teens, 
will serve 30 days in jail and pay the same fine.

Adrian Getchell, an adult who dropped by with beer to visit Downey that day, will 
serve no jail time. At the family's request, his fine was $36: $18 a year for two years 
because Mollala Blair was 18.

Kitsap County District Court Judge Daniel Phillips handed down the sentences last 
week. The maximum sentence for supplying alcohol to minors is 60 days in jail and a 
$500 fine for the first offense.

Janice Blair, Mollola Blair's mother, said she would like to see harsher penalties for 
cases in which teens are injured or killed. She has been in contact with her local 
legislator to lobby for longer sentences.

"Here in Ballard we're well aware that alcohol is a problem with teens,'' Blair said. "I'm 
a non-drinker myself, and I think that makes me more sensitive.''

The driver of the car, Russ Green, then a Gig Harbor resident, was remanded to adult 
court. He will be tried in April for vehicular homicide.



Parents
BLAIR Randy ()
KING Janice Lee ()

Siblings
BLAIR Mollala King (22 May 1976 - 24 Jun 1994)
BLAIR Lassik King ()

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