Bob Anastas

Check Into A Winning Life

Through Check In To A Winning Life, Bob Anastas (the founder and former executive director of Students Against Driving Drunk-SADD) brings to both parents and students a motivational message on how young people can develop responsible attitudes and make smart choices about the many challenges they face.

A former college All-American football and hockey player, Massachusetts High School Teacher of the Year, and coach, Anastas faced a tragedy in the summer of 1981 that profoundly changed the course of his life. Within four days, two star athletes on his high school hockey team were killed in separate drunk-driving crashes. Their deaths prompted Anastas to start a new health program for sophomores at the Massachusetts school where he taught.

Only one week into the course, Anastas recognized that his typical approach – reciting powerful statistics on the consequences of underage drinking and drunk driving – was not getting through. The students already knew the facts, but were still making illegal and risky choices and, in some cases, they were dying. Out of frustration, Anastas turned to the students for help. "I don't know how to do this," he told them. "I need your help. What I have been doing has failed." Together, Anastas and the students began to tackle the problem.

From this concept was born SADD, or Students Against Driving Drunk, to engage students and parents in a joint commitment to help each other, to call on one another, to break down the walls of "the box." Today, recognizing that students face many challenges and decisions beyond those about underage drinking and drunk driving, Anastas has initiated a new and separate program, an evolution of his core message, expanded to address the broader subject of responsible decision-making.

Check In To A Winning Life addresses the many challenges and decisions facing students today and motivates students, teachers and parents to broaden their understanding of risk-taking behavior and forcefully address it. Bob Anastas is available to speak to parent-teacher groups, student assemblies and student athletes. This program is also available on video.

Anastas is a member of the Board of Directors of the National Commission for the Prevention of Alcoholism and Drug Dependency, and was the recipient of the National Commission Against Drunk Driving Humanitarian Award, among others.