They never made it.

Two motorcycles racing each other slid under the car, causing it to roll. Pam Moore, 27 and pregnant, died. The crash also claimed her daughter Tammy. She was 6. Moore's husband, Jim, and their daughter Christa, 3, survived.

The crash occurred 35 years ago in the Bay Area of California. Its repercussions are being felt today in Utah.

Pam was the only sister of Utah state Sen. Carlene Walker, R-Cottonwood Heights. And even though Walker is not sure whether the men on the motorcycles were intoxicated, she believes they were and has turned her private tragedy into a public quest.

Walker is the Legislature's crusader for tougher drunken driving laws.

"I never want to lose another loved one like that," she said. "It was 30 years of feeling the sadness and the pain, feeling that it was preventable."

Walker has sponsored six bills in the past four years that stiffen the state's DUI statutes. Five have become law and the sixth appears to being on its way to passage.

The latest bill would create "alcohol restrictive" driver's licenses for repeat DUI offenders and anyone who refuses a Breathalyzer test. Those labeled alcohol-restricted could face a class B misdemeanor for driving with any alcohol in their system. The restrictions last for a different period of time based on the number of offenses and number of times a person refuses a Breathalyzer test.

The idea behind the bill comes from the DUI subcommittee of the Utah Substance Abuse and Anti-Violence Coordinating Council. Walker is the only legislator to sit on that subcommittee.

She meets with this group of DUI activists monthly, but almost never brings up the crash that claimed Pam and Tammy. Many have no idea about Walker's personal tragedy or, like Susan Burke, the director of the coordinating council, they have only heard about the deadly crash in passing.

Members of the subcommittee describe Walker as a detail-oriented activist who studies the issues and shows deep empathy for victims. And they say her involvement in legislation has contributed to the decreasing number of DUI deaths. Utah has the lowest percentage of alcohol-related fatalities in the country, coming in at 15 percent compared to the nationwide average of 40 percent, though the number of DUI arrests remains at about 14,450 each year.

Walker's goal is to stop every intoxicated person from getting into the driver's seat, a dream she knows is quixotic. But she looks at her efforts as a way to honor her sister's memory.

Walker first publicly told the story of Pam and Tammy's death last spring to a group of Utah Highway Patrol troopers, breaking down before she could finish the tale.

"I don't know what prompted me to share it that night, but I did," she said. "In a way, I was trying to tell [the troopers], 'Thank you.' " They are my heroes."

Art Brown, of Mothers Against Drunk Driving, says some people who lose a loved one so tragically become activists like him. Others "are so disabled that they can't."

For 30 years, Walker was one of the disabled.

"I shut down," she said, a "MADD" pin adorning her lapel. "I couldn't deal with it."

Walker still remembers the phone call that woke her up early on a March morning in 1970 - her parents on the other end, telling her the news.

She was pregnant herself and working for American Airlines as a reservation agent in Boston while her husband was attending graduate school. She flew out to California and spent six weeks taking care of Christa, while the 3-year-old girl's father was still in the hospital. Walker had to leave sooner than she wanted to, because her own due date was approaching.

Like her mother, she rarely discussed the crash and never talked about it in specifics. The pain was too great.

After seeing the motorcyclists - who survived the wreck - Walker assumed they were either intoxicated or high, presumptions she mostly kept to herself.

She admits she was probably stereotyping them, but she also used it "as a justification for their reckless driving."

After getting elected to the Utah Senate in 2001, Walker decided to stop avoiding the details of her sister's death. She sat down with Pam's husband, Jim Moore, who has since remarried, and heard what truly happened for the first time.

"I spent 30 years thinking it was either alcohol or drugs," Walker said.

But Moore told her the police could not prove that either accusation was true. The men were never charged with a DUI.

Despite the ambiguity, Walker knows the pain of sudden loss and says she wants to do what she can to stop preventable deaths at the hands of drunken drivers - particularly those who continuously violate the law.

She takes issue with people who say she does not know the effects of alcohol because she is not a drinker, or who claim her membership in the LDS Church is the reason she sponsors DUI bills.

"It is not an anti-alcohol issue," she said. "Somebody can get smashed in their own home. They can get wasted in a bar as far as I am concerned. But they can't drink and get behind the wheel."

mcanham@sltrib.com