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When a parent loses a child, it splits the parent’s world in two.

For Chuck and Becky Kennedy of Jamestown , they now define time as “this happened when Emily was still here and when she wasn’t here.”

Their daughter, Emily May , died May 17, 2007. She was killed by a drunken, underage driver. Emily was 24.

How does a parent deal with that?

“You don’t have a lot of choices when something happens,” Becky Kennedy said. You can lie on the couch, she said, “and find somebody to wait on you for the rest of your life or you find something to do since you’re stuck on this Earth.”

Chuck Kennedy said he didn’t work for six months after Emily’s death. “We stayed on the sun porch, drinking coffee, crying and talking about Emily.”

“We were in shock,” Becky Kennedy said. It took a long time for the couple to realize what had happened and begin to move forward in their life.

“Early on, we knew we’d do something,” Becky Kennedy said. “We couldn’t let her (just) be a statistic.”

“We couldn’t sit idly by as parents and not do anything,” Chuck Kennedy said .

In 2009 the Kennedys founded Emily’s Plea, an organization with a goal to stop drunken driving through education and awareness.

A pink star has been copyrighted as the symbol for the organization.

Emily had a pink star on her wrist. Becky Kennedy said pink was Emily’s favorite color and she believes, from what Emily’s friends told her, the star represents Rockstar Energy Drink , where Emily worked. Becky Kennedy now has a similar star on the inside of her wrist.

Emily’s Plea serves as a way for the parents to carry on Emily’s legacy of kindness and love.

“Emily was very kind and proactive individual when it came to charitable organizations and people with disease,” Chuck Kennedy said.

He told how Emily visited an 11-year-old boy with terminal cancer and played games with him. “What was she going to benefit from that?” he said. “Nothing. Just satisfaction she made someone happy in the limited time he had left.

“We don’t want to lose the empathy and feelings Emily had for other people.”

With her educational background, Emily was bound to do something great with her life, Chuck Kennedy said. Emily graduated with honors from N.C. State with a degree in business and a concentration in marketing.

“It’s up to Becky and I to make a difference for her. To do the good in the world that she would have done,” Chuck Kennedy said.

“I want to do something to make her proud of me,” Becky Kennedy said.

Emily’s Plea is affiliated with the North Carolina Crash Network and works with the organization spreading education and awareness to traffic offenders and high school students.

Once a month, Becky Kennedy shares Emily’s story with traffic offenders at a North Carolina Crash Network program at the Guilford County Courthouse.

She’s also spoken with students at Ledford High School.

Besides education, the couple is looking into supplying personal breathalyzers, but needs to find a way to make them affordable.

They’ve also thought about providing cab vouchers to local bars so that if someone has been drinking too much, he or she could still get home safely.

Chuck Kennedy held up a pouch called AlcoScreen. Inside is a cloth that could detect any amount of alcohol. He thinks it’s something teens could use to check if a drink has been spiked or to test whether a driver has been drinking or not.

“We’re trying to educate younger people in being proactive with their safety,” he said.

Emily’s Plea’s first fundraiser will be Oct. 23 with a golf tournament. Proceeds will be used to fund the organization’s functions — sharing Emily’s story, education and promoting products that support abstinence or responsible use of alcohol.

“Our primary goal is one goal and one goal only and that is saving lives. And that’s what we intend to do,” Chuck Kennedy said.

Contact E.A. Seagraves at 883-4422, Ext. 241, or elizabeth. seagraves@news-record.com