Helen Keller Elementary students looked up and cheered at a police helicopter that performed a fly-over above the school parking lot on Oct. 7.

The gathering of students, teachers and community members wearing red then parted to make way for a parade of law enforcement vehicles to kick off Red Ribbon Week. The event honors the work of Enrique (Kiki) Camarena, a special agent with the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) who was killed by drug traffickers in 1985.

Helen Keller in Juanita was just one of two schools in the state of Washington chosen to take part in the nationwide event that encourages kids to lead a drug-free lifestyle. The special event, which featured McGruff the Crime Dog and a dancing DEA badge character, was followed by a school-wide assembly led by Kirkland Police Chief Eric Olsen.

“I am the luckiest guy on earth, do you know why?” Olsen asked the students. “Because I’m a cop.”

He spoke of the choices he made to become a Kirkland Police officer, and urged students to think about their choices. “If you have to ask yourself twice, then it’s probably not a good choice and you know the right decision,” he said.

DEA Special Agent Doug James asked kids to hold up their hands and pledge not to use drugs. Others shared personal experiences with drugs.

“Two-and-a-half years ago, drugs came to my front door,” said Scott DePuy, an Issaquah firefighter who spoke of his 17-year-old son, Ryan, a Bothell High School junior who died of an accidental drug overdose in 2008.

“There was a time in his life where he had this glimmer in his eye that he could do anything,” DePuy told students, adding his son wanted to be a professional baseball and soccer player. “When he used drugs, that little gleam started to fade away.”

DePuy said there are four things that make a prescription drug safe: they are prescribed by a doctor, prescribed to you, you take the doctor’s recommended dosage and you are not allergic to the drugs.

Since his son’s death, DePuy founded the Ryan’s Solution Foundation, a local non-profit organization that brings awareness of the prescription medication overdose problem to teens and parents.

He said he speaks at events like Red Ribbon Week to encourage them to use prescription drugs safely, and because he doesn’t want others to go through what he did with his son.

“It’s hard. It’s really hard.”