The Sun
Sunnyvale's Newspaper

Injury renews campaign to hire crossing guard

By Katherine Petersen

Melissa Hilton and other Garden Gate parents began a campaign for a crossing guard near their school at the beginning of the year, but a student got hit by a car before Santa Clara County could start a study.

Akshay Mani, a Garden Gate third-grader, ended up under the bumper of a car on Nov. 12 when a car turned left onto Stelling Road off Hazelbrook and hit him as he crossed the street in a crosswalk.

"He had a light scrape on his stomach," said his mother, Chitra Mani. "We took him to the doctor, and he's going to be fine."

Mani and her husband had taught their son how to cross Stelling in the crosswalk. "He was doing the proper thing," she said. "He didn't randomly cross the road."

Mani was hit at 8 a.m. during commute hours on Stelling, which is a major thoroughfare, said Garden Gate Principal Russ Ottey.

Parents are lobbying the county for a crossing guard at the intersection of Stelling and Greenleaf Drive, two blocks away. Even with a traffic light, many parents feel it's dangerous for children to cross Stelling there alone.

The city passed the crossing guard request on to the county because the intersection is not within Cupertino city limits, said Ray Chong, the city's traffic engineer.

The county will study the intersection in two to three weeks to determine if a guard is needed, said Sadegh Sadeghi, an associate civil engineer in the county's roads and airports department.

John Evans, a parent of a kindergartner and a first-grader, spends 15 minutes each morning helping kids cross the intersection of Ann Arbor Avenue and Greenleaf Drive.

"Between 7:45 and 8 a.m. is a really wild time," he said. "Everybody is a Type A, and we forget that children's safety is more important than an extra 30 seconds at the office. I just wish there was more of me to cover the other dangerous areas."

Evans referred to the intersection of Flora Vista and Greenleaf as well as the school's two driveways.

With a few exceptions, Evans said many drivers are used to seeing him there, and they're starting to pay more attention.

Like Hilton, many parents who live on the east side of Stelling Road drive their children to school rather than let them cross at Greenleaf Drive without help.

"I'd let them walk if there was a guard at Greenleaf and Stelling," Hilton said.

Ottey agrees that even with a light at Greenleaf and Stelling, crossing in early morning traffic can be tricky.

"Put children in a hurry, drivers who want to get to work and rain all together, and it can get messy," he said.

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This article appeared in the Sunnyvale Sun, December 10, 1997.
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