Driving home to the Madison area after dropping off my oldest grandchild at summer camp near Prairie du Chien, Katie, my daughter-in-law, noticed a car weaving on the highway ahead.

She called 911 and notified authorities of our location. Although at first I thought she might be overreacting, the weaving car got progressively more out of control.

With three young grandchildren in the van, I cautioned Katie not to follow the potentially impaired driver too closely, but she was determined not to let him out of her sight until authorities showed up.

When we didn 't see a trooper after the first call, she called again. This time while she was on the phone, the driver veered out of his lane in a small town, did a U-turn in the middle of the road up, drove onto someone 's yard, bumped down the curb and sped off down a side street.

The driver narrowly missed a woman with a stroller waiting to cross the street.

Katie gave the dispatcher the intersection and then followed the car, which had simply gone around the block and gotten back on the highway.

Once on the highway, two cars back now, we could see he was still weaving dangerously. She called the dispatcher a third time just as the driver went into the other lane of oncoming traffic. Still no trooper.

The driver suddenly turned off the highway on a small road that went toward a farmhouse and curved through cornfields. At that point, Katie was able to identify the make of the car. We waited off the road until she saw the state trooper approaching and coached the dispatcher on directions.

While this was happening, I was tending to a crying baby in a car seat and quieting a worried 4-year-old who kept saying "Let 's go home now. " The 2-year-old slept through it all.

At one point I wondered about the wisdom of Katie 's tracking the driver, but she was determined to prevent a potential accident that could easily happen to an unsuspecting mother in a van filled with children traveling in the opposite direction.

After Katie got home, the state trooper called to tell her that he had arrested the drivery. He had a video of his failed sobriety test and his blood alcohol level was .28 -- more than three times the legal limit.

Although it remains to be seen how fast the driver will be back in his car and what kind of consequence he will receive from the state of Wisconsin, perhaps the most lenient in the country when it comes to drunken driving penalties, it was the outcome Katie was hoping for.

In September I 'll be flying to Dallas to receive a 2008 MADD Media Award for my blog entries at motherwarriors.blogspot.com on drunken driving.

I can bring a guest to the awards luncheon at the annual MADD conference. I hope Katie can come. I don 't know anyone who has more clearly demonstrated what it takes to get a drunken driver off the road before an accident happens.

Katie not only called 911 to report a reckless driver, she stuck with it until a trooper showed up.

Who knows how far the impaired man had already driven without anyone taking the initiative to get him off the road -- or what might have happened had Katie not called 911?

We saw how close the driver came to plowing into a woman and child.

Show that you care. Call 911 when you see reckless driving. You can save lives.

Kirkwood is on the Parent Advisory Board of Partnership for a Drug-Free America, and the State Committe on Alcohol and Other Drug Abuse. She lives in Fitchburg.