Experts say cultural reasons contribute to the high percentage of DUI arrests among the Latino population: Mexico has a more-relaxed attitude toward alcohol; immigrants can be confused about U.S. laws; and Mexican workers in the United States often suffer from depression while laboring hundreds of miles from family and friends.

"The Latino community creates its own problems," said Joe Ynostroza, technical assistance director for the California Hispanic Commission on Alcohol and Drug Abuse in Sacramento, a nonprofit educational organization. The problem is especially acute in Mexico.

"Most of this is first- or second-generation Mexican males," he said. "Alcoholism runs rampant in the Mexican Latino community."

No other ethnic or racial group has such a high level of DUI arrests statewide, according to the California Department of Justice. Whites account for about 41 percent of DUI arrests, Blacks make up about 6.5 percent, and the remaining 7.5 percent encompasses all other racial groups combined.

Today's demographics are a marked contrast to 1988, when whites accounted for 55.7 percent of DUI arrests and Latinos 35.3 percent, according to the department. Latinos surpassed whites in the number of DUI arrests in 1992 and have been at the top of the list each year thereafter.

The problem is not specific to Stockton, San Joaquin County or even California.

» The DUI arrest rate for Latinos in Raleigh, N.C., is 45 percent, while they account for only 8 percent of the population, said Eric Siervo, a public-policy manager at the National Latino Council on Alcohol and Tobacco Prevention in Washington.

» Latinos account for 43 percent of DUI arrests in Texas but only 32 percent of the population, according to the Texas Department of Public Safety.

» "The Spanish-speaking population makes up 41 percent of Miami's citizenship and is overrepresented in death and injury caused by impaired-driving crashes," said Susan Isenberg, president of the Miami-Dade Chapter of Mothers Against Drunk Driving.

In September 1997, Salvadore Mejia, then 21, was an undocumented immigrant and unlicensed driver from Mexico who had been drinking with buddies at a produce stand just south of Stockton before he got behind the wheel.

Witnesses reported seeing Mejia's truck weaving along Highway 99 just before it slammed into the rear of Christina Hoffman's Buick. The teen's car was disabled and sitting at the side of the road with its emergency lights flashing. Hoffman's head hit the steering wheel in the impact. She died later at a hospital.

Mejia was sentenced to more than 10 years in prison for vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated, and the Hoffman family will never be the same.

"The accident basically severed the family," recalled Carla Hoffman, Christina Hoffman's aunt.

After the accident, the teen's parents and siblings left California for Arizona. Marvin Hoffman, the girl's father, sued his father and brothers to dissolve the family's agricultural and trucking business. Family members left in the Manteca and Tracy area rarely speak to Christina Hoffman's immediate family, said Buzz Hoffman, her uncle.

"I'm not bitter. I'm sad. He's my brother, and it hit him very, very hard," Buzz Hoffman said. "But people need to know that drinking and driving causes long-lasting consequences."

Latino drinking and driving is on the rise and a cause for concern, Siervo said. And Raul Caetano, a professor of epidemiology at the University of Texas Health Science Center and a MADD national board member, said education in the Latino community is paramount.

El Concilio, Stockton's Council for the Spanish Speaking, runs such a program for DUI offenders. Program coordinator Lucila Rojas said many Mexican teens are allowed to drink alcohol at the dinner table, which reinforces acceptance of drinking.

Rojas also said many Mexican laborers arrested for DUI in the United States are living without any support system while they work and send money back to their relatives.

"Many are lonely, and they don't know how to react to missing their family members, so they drink - a lot," she said. "That is one of the big things we have to work hard to overcome."

Ynostroza also educates and offers treatment programs to Latinos convicted of DUI. Many believe they are targets for arrest but also admit that drinking at night, on weekends and even sometimes at work is a measure of machismo, he said.

Police officers also have noticed that Latino men are more likely to jump into a car after drinking.

It's a cultural thing. Unfortunately, most have to find out the hard way that things are much different here," said Stockton Police Officer Martin Gonzalez, a bilingual traffic officer who added it's not uncommon for a Latino man to down a 12-pack of beer on a weekend night.

Statewide, a DUI conviction means a jail term of two to 90 days for first offenders. Fines range from $1,053 to $2,700. And mandatory classes on the dangers of drinking and driving are required. In Mexico, getting stopped for DUI might mean a $30 payoff to a police officer.

Antonio Rojas, 27, works in a butcher shop and has lived in Stockton for three years. He remembers riding in a car in Guanajuato, Mexico, when the flashing lights and siren of a police cruiser veered in behind him. After a few hours of drinking in a bar, his friend was pulled over for drunken driving. The friend pulled out "a few bills" and paid off the officer. Moments later, they were back on the road, driving home.

Some say Mexican officials' attitudes are changing.

Jorge Vargas, an international-law professor at the University of San Diego and a former member of the Mexico City Bar Association, said all countries regulate drinking and driving. Mexican officials are increasingly concerned with the country's DUI problem and are doing more to enforce the laws with jail time. They now use checkpoints and Breathalyzers and typically force offenders to spend at least one night in jail, he said. That was confirmed by several San Joaquin County Latinos who have witnessed more-frequent checkpoints in Mexico.

Late on Sept. 11, 2004, Carlos Flores said, he was one of the last patrons to leave a bar on Charter Way. A buddy asked for a ride.

Just a few blocks later, the 37-year-old Edison High graduate was stopped and arrested. He had a blood-alcohol level twice the legal limit.

"I was drunk. I had no excuse. I can't fight it, and I know I shouldn't have done it," he said.

Yet Flores also complains that Stockton officers patrol areas where bars cater to Latino crowds.

"There's no question profiling is going on," Flores said. "If two Mexicans are in a car, you get pulled over."

It's a common complaint, but police say they don't target certain racial groups.

"I've arrested Black, white, Asian, Hispanic, young, old, males and females," Stockton Officer Lisa Asklof said. "There's no discrimination happening."

Asklof has worked as a DUI officer - called a "dewey" or "deuce" in cop talk - for more than a year. Grant money from the California Office of Traffic Safety purchased vehicles and training for Asklof and three other officers specifically assigned to hunt down drunken drivers. They have made more than 2,000 arrests since obtaining the grant in February 2003. The grant will expire at the end of June, police spokesman Pete Smith said.

On a typical shift, Asklof starts in south Stockton. She drives east along Charter Way and north on Wilson Way before heading west on Bianchi Road and north on Pacific Avenue to Hammer Lane. By her dinner break, Asklof covers most main thoroughfares in town and many neighborhoods.

She pulls cars over for myriad reasons - speeding, seat-belt infractions, mechanical problems, expired registration. Likely signs of a drunken driver include running red lights and stop signs, driving close to one edge of the lane and swerving.

Thirty years before Ed Chavez was mayor of Stockton, he was a sergeant in the city's Police Department. In the mid 1970s, he oversaw a three-year, $1million effort to increase drunken-driving enforcement and education efforts. He said the weekend checkpoints were successful in alerting residents to the dangers of drinking and driving.

While profiling is always a concern, Chavez - who later became police chief - said it's reasonable for officers to concentrate patrols in areas with crime problems. That includes areas of south Stockton where Latinos are likely to drink and drive.

Chavez, Asklof and other officers insist it is nearly impossible to determine the age, race and sometimes gender of a car's driver before walking up to the window and asking for a license, registration and proof of insurance.

Because of high-back seats, rear passengers or tinted windows, officers may not know if a driver is Latino until he or she is close enough to ask: "Have you had anything to drink?"