TEMECULA -- The colorful lights typically seen during the holiday season may just be a bit more red and blue as law-enforcement officers throughout the area crack down on those who decide to drink and drive.

Using stationary sobriety checkpoints and roving patrols, the goal of those officers is to get as many impaired drivers off the road as possible.

The first checkpoint of the season was conducted by Temecula police along busy Pechanga Parkway. From 7 p.m. Friday to 2 a.m. Saturday, officers arrested six suspected intoxicated drivers, said Sgt. Mike Pino, who heads the department's traffic division.

An estimated 2,300 vehicles went through the checkpoint before officers were done, he said.

It took officers less than a half-hour after starting Friday to snag the first suspected drunken driver, a 39-year-old woman who told them she had been drinking at the Pechanga Resort & Casino just down the road.

Officers found that the woman had one prior DUI conviction and her husband, who was a passenger in the car, had two, Pino said.

"That's why she was driving," Pino said the couple told officers. "Because both of them had been drinking and she had one less (DUI conviction) than he did."

Pino said that this time of year, with many businesses holding company parties for the holidays, it is critical that law enforcement take a stand against impaired drivers.

"When people get behind the wheel after drinking, it's like they are playing Russian roulette with a car," Pino said. "Our goal is to make sure our (accident reconstruction) team doesn't have to get called out to investigate a DUI-related crash."

According to the California Office of Traffic Safety, 1,411 people were killed and 32,041 others injured in alcohol-related crashes statewide in 2002. Nationwide, those numbers were 17,419 killed and 258,000 hurt.

Even with all the publicity about not drinking and driving, and the efforts of law-enforcement agencies throughout the state targeting DUI drivers, 2002 was the fourth consecutive year that the number of DUI fatalities and injuries increased after more than a decade of decline, according to the traffic-safety office.

"It's amazing to me that, after all these years of telling people not to drink and drive, and having all these checkpoints, we still easily arrest an average of a half-dozen people at these things every time," Pino said.

Most of those given field sobriety tests and then arrested by officers at the weekend checkpoint were cooperative and said little. There was one noticeable exception.

About 11 p.m. a woman in a silver luxury car was directed into the secondary checkpoint where Officer Rob Alexander was going to give her a series of sobriety tests.

One test was to mentally estimate 30 seconds and then tell him when that amount of time was up. According to Alexander, the woman did so in about seven seconds, not 30.

In his opinion, Alexander said, the Fallbrook woman was intoxicated so she was given a preliminary breath test which registered slightly more than the 0.08 blood-alcohol content at which someone can not legally drive in California.

The woman became loud and belligerent as she was handcuffed and walked by officers to a nearby mobile command post to be booked and taken to jail.

Once inside the command-post trailer, she became even louder and verbally lashed out at officers.

She repeatedly called them "Nazi bastards" and a few times shouted "Why don't you guys go to Iraq and kill some people, that's what you really want to do."

Talking continuously, the woman often reminded the officers that she pays her taxes and said that she and her rights were being abused, demanding that the handcuffs be removed. "Am I a threat to society?" she yelled. "This is abuse."

She refused to submit to either a breath or blood test, as required by law for all those who have a license to drive in California.

Pino said it was a sad someone like that was out driving around.

"That's extremely dangerous, she's obviously intoxicated to act like that," the sergeant said. "She tells us she's had only one glass of wine and that she's sober and thinks she is OK to drive.

"She's driving a 3,000-pound vehicle and that's exactly the reason people like that need to be taken off the road before they possibly kill someone," Pino said.

A tape recorder was recording the woman while she was in the command post.

"That's to help protect us against any number of allegations, and can also be used as evidence if (the arrest) goes to court," Pino said.

"Quite often, a tape like that can be a very sobering thing for someone to hear the way they sounded while they were intoxicated," he added.

Pino said it is common for officers to be verbally abused by suspected DUI drivers when they are arrested.

A handful of local high-school students who were observing the checkpoint Friday had left before that woman was arrested.

The students, part of the Friday Night Alive club at Chaparral High, were there to see what happens at a sobriety checkpoint, said Anthony Bolen, a 17-year-old senior.

"Our club is there to help promote another lifestyle other than going out and drinking or doing drugs," he said. Being at the checkpoint lets students see what people go through if caught drinking and driving, he said.

Bolen said he has a friend who drove drunk and almost died after being in a crash. He keeps trying to get the message of another lifestyle through to that friend, "but he hasn't really listened yet," he said. "A lot of my friends have listened though."

This was the first time sophomore Chris Hardison had observed a sobriety checkpoint. "I've never seen a (field sobriety test) live, just on like (the TV show) 'Cops' or something," he said.

Hardison said seeing the checkpoint and what happens when someone is stopped by police "was a reality check; I'm going to be driving soon."

Lisa Curry, a counselor at the school, heads up the club and said Friday that there are too many students and young drivers making bad choices.

"Students who don't want to be a part of (those bad choices) are involved in (Friday Night Alive)," she said. "It's an alternative for them."

She said seeing the checkpoint in action and watching people being arrested was a good experience for the club members and herself.

Pino said he was pleased that the students were there "to see just how impaired people can be and still think it is OK to drive a car.

"We encourage them to go tell all their friends about this and hope it helps save lives," he said.

Pino said at least four more checkpoints will be held in Temecula during the holiday season. Other agencies also have a number of checkpoints planned throughout Southwest County.

Contact staff writer John Hall at (909) 676-4315, Ext. 2628, or jhall@californian.com.