HOT PURSUIT

One of my first assignments about 35 years ago as a young reporter at KAAL-TV in Austin led me to a woman who has forever impacted my life.

Back in the early 1990s, I covered a Mothers Against Drunk Driving Impact Panel where I met Mary Kay Malakowsky. Just a few years earlier, she had lost her teenage daughter. It’s one of the stories that has impacted me the most throughout my professional careers as a journalist and police officer.

I am saddened to learn that Mary Kay died on Aug. 8 at her home near Hartland. She was 79.

She was a passionate advocate with MADD for more than 30 years. She even earned the recognition of “State Speaker of the Year.”

Over the years, we kept in contact from time to time through our involvement with MADD. She channeled her anger and passion to stop other senseless tragedies into MADD. She shared her gut-wrenching story with DWI offenders, most often in the Albert Lea and Mankato areas.

“It rips out your heart,” she once said. “It rips it out so bad you never know how to put it back together.”

Mary Kay’s daughter, Michelle Malakowsky, 19, was fatally injured in a head-on crash in a construction zone along Interstate 35 in Rice County in August 1988. The violent impact of the crash sheared off Malakowsky’s head. It’s one of the most gruesome crash stories I’ve ever heard.

The driver, a pro-golfer who had just come off the course in Faribault, was vomiting all over as he drove and smashed into Malakowsky. Prior to the crash, Mary Kay later learned, the driver was so drunk he couldn’t even stand up and people at the club were laughing at how drunk he was. His friends carried him down the steps and put in the driver’s seat. They did one last thing—turned the key so he could drive away.

Just minutes later Mary Kay and the rest of her family were given a life sentence. She once told me, “The day the deputy told me she was dead, I had a headache and I had it for 10 years, day and night, 24 hours a day.”

To hear Mary Kay share the horrific details was chilling, even after I heard it several times over. And she didn’t mince words when describing her feelings about the drunk driver that ripped a hole in her family. “He has never told us he is sorry. There is no remorse there. He can go to hell.”

For years Mary Kay struggled and couldn’t laugh or enjoy life because of the terror that haunted her. Who can blame her?

Mary Kay was left to raise her 2-year-old granddaughter. Ashley Casey used the tragedy and eventually grew up to become an alcohol and drug counselor.

Mary Kay is one of the reasons I ended up in law enforcement for nearly 20 years. As a police officer, I made a commitment to DWI enforcement and went on to earn several awards from MADD for my efforts. She is the reason I have no tolerance for people who get behind the wheel drunk.

What troubles me is how drunk drivers and alcoholics (I was married to one) often take little to no accountability for their actions. As I have found out over the years, they often blame everyone else for their problem.

But that didn’t stop Mary Kay from attempting to make an impact. She relived her daughter’s gruesome story over and over in hopes of changing societal attitudes, one drunk driver at a time.

She drove home the message: U booze, U drive, U lose. Mary Kay leaves the world a better place, after taking a lifetime of pain and anguish to go in hot pursuit of making a difference. May you rest in peace Mary Kay.