It’s every parent’s nightmare, the phone call informing you that your child has been in a serious car crash. Mine came on September 19, 2016 at 5PM. It was a frantic call from my daughter Julianna telling me I needed to come home – Something terrible happened to Mitchel. When I arrived at the house, there was a police officer, waiting to tell me that Mitchel had been killed on I-96 while heading to Michigan State University on Monday morning – I literally collapsed upon hearing the news.

It was quickly determined that Mitchel was killed by a young lady who was on Snapchat when she hit Mitchel’s car at 82 mph. The following minutes, hours and days were filled with tears, mourning, and sometimes denial that this could not be real and could not happen to our family.

On the day following the crash, I spent a few hours at one of Mitchel‘s favorite places, a disc golf course in Northville, Michigan with his sisters Julianna and Alexa, telling stories about Mitchel and trying to appreciate the place that he had visited so many times in the previous years.

Mitchel always dreamt of changing the world and we decided that we needed to do something to change the world in Mitchel’s honor. We established The Kiefer foundation with a vision of ending distracted driving and all associated crashes and deaths.