Jacqueline Flores thought she was turning a corner. After a year and a half of grinding through two full-time jobs plus DoorDash deliveries, she’d finally landed something better—a solar consultant position that paid well enough to actually be home for her son Aleksander Guevara in the evenings. She was in training. They were celebrating at Dave & Busters with a gift card from an old job. For the first time in a long time, things felt like they might actually get easier.
Then Dennis Olsen’s headlights came around the bend going the wrong way.
What happened next in Arcadia ripped apart not just Flores’ Kia, but the fragile stability she’d been building for her family. The wrong-way drunk driver hit her vehicle, severely injuring her and Aleksander, putting his brother in a wheelchair, and killing 21-year-old Lauryn Akey, a nursing student from USF. Metal safety spikes on the car may have saved their lives—a grim irony when one young woman’s life couldn’t be saved at all.
The aftermath has been brutal. Flores suffers from embedded glass in her arm, severe bruising, and needs back surgery. Aleksander sustained a concussion and needs an MRI for a concerning lump on his hip. His brother faces months of physical therapy. But those physical injuries, as serious as they are, aren’t the deepest wounds. Flores lost the job she’d just started because she couldn’t complete her training. She’s scrambling for rental assistance and any kind of government support—aid that’s been slashed in recent budget cuts. She wasn’t unconscious after the crash, but she was dissociated, repeating the same phrase over and over: “I can’t believe this happened.”
What makes this story even more infuriating is the context. Olsen had a prior DUI conviction. His penalty? Two years of probation and a training course. He made the active decision to drive after drinking, took someone’s life, and walked away with minor consequences. Now he’s facing charges of vehicular homicide and DUI manslaughter, with his next court date approaching. Flores doesn’t just want justice for Akey—she wants systemic change. She wants stricter penalties for impaired drivers and prevention tools that might actually stop someone like Olsen before they get behind the wheel.
In the midst of her own devastation, Flores has found an unexpected source of grace: Akey’s mother reached out on Facebook to check on them. So Flores is paying tribute—she dyed her hair and painted her nails pink, Akey’s favorite color, hoping to create a remembrance at the crash site. It’s a small gesture from someone with almost nothing left to give. Her message to anyone thinking about driving impaired is direct: “It’s not worth it.”
A GoFundMe is set up to help Flores and her son rebuild what was taken from them in an instant.