MILWAUKEE — Pictures capture the memories of a life well lived. At times, they seemingly predict the future.
“He’s little and has one of my brother’s hard hats on at Halloween,” Becki Slater points out in a photo of her son Zane.
The photo is old enough to miss out on the advancement of red-eye color correction. A digital time code in the bottom right corner shows it was November of 2001, the day after Halloween. Zane would grow into a man over the next 21 years, but that boy in the hard hat remained the same.
“He was always mechanical,” Slater said. “He’d take things apart and put them back together. I remember around eight or nine, he was helping one of his friend’s dad with something on the car.”
Another memory of Zane was captured in a still photo. He’s not much bigger than he was in the first, but he’s on his back underneath a vehicle, always working with his hands. It’s like he was born for this.
“That’s just the way he’s been,” Slater said.
And tragically, he died for it. November 22, 2022, Zane Reilly was working along Highway 23 in Sauk County. At age 25, he was working as a directional driller, setting up for the day of work when it was cut short.
According to the Sauk County Sheriff, a 17-year-old crashed into Zane.
Becki’s son, the altruistic 25-year-old who would quickly jump in to help out a stranger just as quickly as he’d share a story about duck hunting, was gone.
“People make mistakes driving all the time,” Slater said. “It doesn’t cost somebody their life.”
Nearly eight months have passed since Becki lost Zane. For a wife in Shawano County, it’s been eight years.
“Sometimes it feels like it was just yesterday,” Heather Stempa said. “He’s been gone longer than we were married. It’s crazy.”
Stempa’s husband, Derek, was working as a flagger in Shawano County in 2015 when he was struck by a distracted driver in a construction zone. For the Army National Guard veteran, he was upset that day because normally, he worked as a truck operator. But that day required him to hold the flag.
While at work, Heather was told she had to call Derek’s boss because there was an accident.
“I ran up and told my boss, Derek just got hit by a car,” Stempa said. “I got to go.”
At the hospital, she learned the love of her life had not survived the crash. Less than a decade earlier, she was eyeing a cute guy at a bar in Milwaukee, too nervous to go up to him herself. A connection quickly ballooned. The goofy veteran made an immediate imprint on her heart with how kind and caring he was. Their love quickly turned into an engagement, a marriage and two kids. But suddenly, that morning in May, 2015, all of that was gone.
Life is much different for Heather and her two children without Derek.
“I did not think that was a possibility,” Stempa said. “Where they were working, I figured that there’s no way this person had been going fast enough to cause that much damage.”
Stempa says she was never too concerned about safety on the highway.
“He would tell me there would be close calls,” Stempa said. “I always kind of thought he was exaggerating a little bit. These are work zones. People pay attention, they go slower.”
All that stands between highway workers and 2-ton projectiles are some orange barrels, and maybe some “Road Closed” signs. Those protections, Stempa felt, would be enough to protect her larger-than-life husband.
“I just kept thinking, it’s a construction zone,” Stempa said. “He’s probably got some broken bones. He’ll be OK. It’ll just be a long recovery.”
In Wisconsin, about a dozen people are killed in construction zones every year. Since 2018, 63 people were killed in construction zones, according to Wisconsin DOT. On average, there was a crash in a construction zone every four hours last year.
In the past five years, 11,768 crashes recorded, there were 4,370 injuries, not including those 63 people killed. It’s why State Patrol is regularly parked on these thoroughfares to try and intercept problematic drivers.
“Every traffic stop we make is an experience or an opportunity to educate a driver on safe driving habits,” Master Trooper Brendan Braun said. “Making sure you’re paying attention to what you’re doing.”
Braun showed the I-Team what he sees on a stretch of a construction zone on I-43 in Ozaukee County.
While most drivers, he says, were going within 5 to 10 mph of the 60 mph construction zone speed limit, there are constantly those pushing the limits.
“You have to focus on speed, following too closely, things like that,” Braun said. “Not only are we out here to protect the construction workers to ensure they’re safe and can get this project done in a timely manner, we’re out here for the other drivers.”
Braun says the vast majority of drivers he sees follow the rules. But it’s the outliers he’s aiming to educate so families like Heather’s and Becki’s aren’t put through this trauma again.
“I do feel like it’s making people safer,” Braun said. “It could save a couple lives. You may not see that but if you stop one speeder going 80 mph in a construction zone, educating them, either just by talking to them or a citation, that could change their driving behavior in the future. It could save their life, just by education.”
Sometimes the education through a warning isn’t enough. The people Braun caught breaking the law were issued citations with a little more oomph. Instead of the normal $200 citation for going over the speed limit, that gets doubled to $400. But it’s not just limited to speeding violations. Those on handheld devices or drivers who don’t move over when appropriate could also face a doubled fine.
Ultimately, those fines are only one mitigation effort in getting through to drivers about being safer on the roadways. Heather and Becki hope if that doesn’t work, their stories will.
“Don’t be selfish,” Heather said. “Pay attention. I don’t think people realize how quickly something can happen. People aren’t thinking about the person holding the flag or the person that’s pouring concrete or asphalt. Those people have families too. It’s not all about you getting to your destination as quickly as possible.”
“People just need to really wake up,” Becki said. “[The workers] are just out there doing their job and they have to be close to traffic. They don’t have a choice a lot of times. There are some plastic barrels or some barricades between them and traffic moving, too quickly most of the time. It makes me sick to my stomach. There’s no reason. You’re not in that big of a hurry. Leave earlier for work or be late or whatever.”
Becki took a breath after her statement to drivers. Her chest, heavy with the weight of losing her son, the breath expands her bright orange blouse.
It’s a color she frequently wears nowadays, with her loving son in mind. It’s a color he’d frequently wear for his extremely dangerous job and a color seen over and over again at the locations of these construction zones. A color meant to attract attention. Now, the color she so closely connects with, she hopes will grab the attention of others so they can lean in to hear her story.
Her pain.
Her ultimate message.
“Nobody’s life is worth it.”
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