An emotional Eric Munson fought back the tears while explaining the pledge he made to his late daughter.

“With Heidi’s case, I made a promise to talk to as many people as possible about drugs, alcohol and drinking and driving,” Munson told the audience at last week’s 18th Auburn Youth Resources and Enumclaw Youth & Family Services Valentine Breakfast. “This was my promise to her.”

His vow to communicate with others about the pitfalls of drug and alcohol abuse continues today as a prevention/intervention counselor at AYR, a community-based youth and family service agency.

AYR assists others by providing counseling, prevention and support services.

Speaking at the benefit last week, Munson’s message was moving and clear. He doesn’t want other parents and teenagers to experience the sorrow, the awful devastation from a tragedy like the one that struck his family nearly five years ago.

On a sun-splashed April afternoon, Heidi Marie Munson, 19, and Nick Spies, 13, were riding in the backseat of a Subaru that crashed into two other vehicles on the curvy, two-lane Auburn Black Diamond Road.

The crash killed both of them. The driver, 25-year-old Joshua Blum, suffered severe and irreparable brain damage.

Authorities determined Blum had been drinking, smoking marijuana and taking methamphetamines. Two years later, he was sentenced to five years in prison for vehicular homicide.

“I’m so sorry for all of this,” Blum said at his sentencing. “I don’t know what else to say.”

No words can soothe the pain.

Munson’s first-born child, an older sister and a friend to many had perished. She was a national-caliber gymnast at state-champion Kentwood High School and a cheerleader for the Conquerors. After high school, she went on to beauty school.

She died five days short of her 20th birthday.

Today, the pain remains visible in her father’s face and audible in his voice.

“It’s been almost five years now. There’s an emptiness in my heart and it won’t go away,” he told the crowd at the AYR benefit at Grace Community Church.

“No parent should have to bury their children. No parent should have to be called to the morgue to identify their child. … You can’t imagine that.”

The tragedy changed the lives of many and altered Eric Munson’s career path. At the time of the accident, he was a college student working to become a teacher. But in the tragedy’s aftermath, he found his calling as a counselor.

At AYR, his crusade to help others continues.

“This has allowed me to fulfill a promise I had made to Heidi,” he said.