As heavy downpour from a late-March thunderstorm slicked roads on Interstate 75, Lindsey Prudhomme sat in the driver's seat of her car, parked on the shoulder, waiting for visibility to improve.

She had a decision to make: Turn around and drive 20 minutes back to her Clarkston home or wait it out and continue to drive the 40 minutes to MSU.

After a phone call home and a talk with her father, they both decided she should continue on to campus, and not let a storm ruin the fun of celebrating a possible MSU victory over Maryland in the NCAA men's basketball tournament.

It was a decision that changed her life.

Looking back, Prudhomme said she feels the decision to turn back or continue was her "window of opportunity" to avoid a risky situation waiting for her at MSU.

When Prudhomme was sitting on the side of the freeway, she didn't know she would end up as a participant in the March 28-30 disturbances that led to $40,000 in damage on campus and in East Lansing.

And she didn't know it would take months to rebuild her life.

Prudhomme was one of 3,000 students involved in the March disturbances and one of 15 MSU students arrested that night. She eventually pleaded not guilty to disorderly conduct and being a minor in possession of alcohol and was put on probation and forced to wear an ankle tether.

She said the actions she took after spending a night in jail changed her life.

That night

After arriving on campus Friday, March 28, Prudhomme headed to Cedar Village Apartments to watch the basketball game with friends. Among them was Prudhomme's best friend, Kelly Plante. Surrounded by four televisions and plenty of alcohol, Prudhomme hoped the night would be fun no matter what the outcome of the game.

The MSU men's basketball team was working its way through the NCAA tournament, and after a win over Maryland, about 3,000 students flocked to the streets to celebrate.

Prudhomme and her friends had been drinking alcohol throughout the game. She and Plante were the only underage drinkers at the apartment - with Prudhomme only six weeks shy of her 21st birthday. The group then went outside to see what was going on.

"You just get so into it that you kind of forget what's going on," Prudhomme said. "You don't feel like you're drinking any more than you normally do."

Police made their presence known but described Friday's crowd as being mostly in good spirits and even posed for pictures. The situation seemed harmless to Prudhomme and Plante.

But before the sun would come up the next morning, police would make 18 arrests, 15 of which were MSU students.

One of those was Prudhomme.

"It stopped being cool when I got arrested," she said.

Sitting on top of friends' shoulders, the two women felt the excitement of cheering "go green, go white" with the huge crowd. But because of the amount of alcohol she consumed, Prudhomme's behavior was beginning to get out of hand.

The final straw came when Prudhomme got so caught up in the excitement, she exposed herself to the crowd. Plante witnessed the act and began pleading with Prudhomme to go back inside the apartment.

Plante had finally convinced Prudhomme to start heading back, but it was too late - the police were heading in their direction.

It was just past 1 a.m.

"The crowd broke, and I was handcuffed and taken through the crowd," Prudhomme said. "That was so embarrassing, having everybody stare at me and laugh."

Plante stood and watched as police handcuffed her friend and began to take her away.

"I was scared for her," she said. "I wanted to say, 'No, no, please don't take her. I promise she's fine.'"

Plante walked home, worried and dazed about what had happened. While trying to make sense of it with her roommates, the situation started to sink in.

"It was so surreal," she said. "We kept saying, 'She's not really in jail, that's for bad people.'"

Behind bars

Prudhomme was taken to the Ingham County Jail, where she spent the night in a holding cell.

Surrounded by a few concrete benches and a toilet barely hidden from view, Prudhomme sat in her cell with about eight other women who were also arrested from the crowd of celebrators.

"It was the worst experience of my life," she said.

Prudhomme sat awake in her cell all night, feeling alone and scared. While the other women in the cell continued their conversations, she kept mostly to herself, continually calling friends and family.

Her father, Michael, was the first family member to answer the phone call. He saw "Ingham County Jail" on his caller ID but never expected to hear his daughter's voice on the line.

"It's every parent's nightmare," he said. "When the phone rings at 2 a.m., your heart stops."

And Prudhomme's mother, Joanne, didn't take the news well either.

"At first, I wanted to bury my head and pretend it didn't happen," she said. "The idea of her being in jail made me sick.

"It just wasn't a characteristic of Lindsey."

By mid-afternoon that Saturday, Prudhomme was let out on personal recognizance bond. But leaving jail was almost as bad as actually being there.

"They just open the door and you walk out," she recalled. "You don't have any shoelaces in your shoes, and you're in the middle of nowhere, you're disheveled, you've been wearing the same clothes for 12 hours, you're tired and cranky."

She stood outside the building wondering what to do next.

"It's like jail is its own little world, and when they let you out, you hit reality," she said. "It's literally the worst feeling in your stomach when you actually step out and realize it's not a dream - 'I got arrested and I have to deal with it.'"

That Sunday, Prudhomme witnessed more people rioting in the streets following MSU's loss to Texas in the Elite Eight. She went back to the same Cedar Village apartment she had been partying in before she was arrested, but this time she stayed in watching movies by herself in her friends' apartment as chaos ensued outside.

Watching the scene unfold made her angry, even though she had done something similar just two days prior.

"I wanted to just go out there and grab people by the shoulder and ask them why they were doing that," Prudhomme said.

More than 2,000 people flooded the streets, starting fires and tipping over cars. When it was all over, Prudhomme was forced to walk home because her car had been blocked in.

With remnants of tear gas still lingering in the air, she reflected on what had happened to her and realized things were going to be a lot worse for her because of what happened Sunday night.

"Maybe if Sunday didn't happen, Friday wouldn't have been a big deal," she said. "But either way, it doesn't matter because they both happened and I've got to be held accountable no matter what."

Family friend and lawyer Jeff Pepper had always joked with Prudhomme that if she ever needed help, he would be there. She didn't think that one day she'd have to take him up on the offer.

Prudhomme pleaded not guilty to disorderly conduct and being a minor in possession of alcohol and was put on probation and forced to wear an ankle tether.

The tether, an electronic device that monitored her position, allowed her to leave her house only for class, and if she wanted to go elsewhere, it had to be cleared with a probation officer.

She kept it covered by wearing long pants during the summer heat.

"I thought it would look like a watch," she said. "It literally looked like something a dog would wear."

She also had to blow into a Breathalyzer twice a day, every day - at 8 a.m. and again in the evening.

But what hurt her the most was her close-knit relationship with her family that became strained from the moment she made the phone call to her father from jail.

"They were so supportive, but I was just so depressed that it didn't matter," she said.

On May 1, she appeared in court for the second time. To her disappointment, she was given another court date.

But she had the tether taken off, and her Breathalyzers were reduced to once a day.

"It was a good day," she recalls. "I was excited to go home and take a bath and put my leg in water and shave my ankle and just wear shorts."

She got a job at Lou & Harry's Five Star Deli to help pay court expenses.

"It was seven hours a day where I could get my mind off it," she said.

But when she left work, she was back to feeling badly about herself and continued to sink into depression.

So she decided to do something about it.

Responding with responsibility

Prudhomme decided to tell incoming freshmen how they could avoid making her mistakes, much to the surprise of her mother.

"At first, when she offered to speak at orientation, I thought, 'She's just trying to dig herself out of a corner,'" Joanne Prudhomme said. "In the end, when a good kid does a bad thing, you hope they are strong enough to figure out a way to make it better."

And she did. After clearing her speech with her lawyer to make sure she wasn't crossing any legal boundaries, they contacted Mary Beth Heeder, the director of orientation offices. The two met just days before orientation was set to start to try and work the speech into the program.

Standing in front of more than 400 students each day, Prudhomme told her story, sometimes getting emotional.

Prudhomme said sharing her story got her up every day, got her motivated to live life and made the whole situation easier for her to deal with because she was finally talking about it.

"I always said that I did this to help other people, but I think it helped me a lot more," she said. "It was therapy for me."

Many also came up to Prudhomme following her speech to thank her for sharing her story.

"That didn't help me as much, it just made me glad they listened," she said. "I could care less if people thought I was courageous. That's not why I did it."

Her friends and family came to watch her speak, which Prudhomme said strengthened her relationships with all of them because they saw how it was eating away at her but, more importantly, how it changed her and made her more responsible.

Her final court date was July 29, where she was sentenced for her disorderly conduct charge. A motion by her lawyer to keep the sentence nonpublic was granted by Judge Richard D. Ball.

Her minor in possession charge was dismissed.

But she constantly reminds herself that she didn't get off scot-free.

"My punishment wasn't handed out in just one day," she said. "It started the day I got arrested and continued through all the court dates, and it still goes on today."

She's also glad she can still attend school.

Judges in Michigan are permitted to remove students from all state-funded universities in the state for one year if they are convicted of participating in or inciting a riot.

The move came in response to the March 27-28, 1999 riot at MSU, which saw 10,000 people gather in the streets, resulting in 132 arrests and $250,000 in damage. Had she not been able to return to school for her final year, Prudhomme feels she would have been too depressed to ever go back.

"I could deal with jail time, and I can deal with fines, but I couldn't deal with the possibility of not graduating from college," she said.

After she began speaking at the orientation programs, Prudhomme said her life completely changed. She joined student groups and wanted to continue to spread the word.

"It gave me a focus in life," she said.

Now a journalism senior, Prudhomme said she is looking forward to graduating and starting a career. But she will always remember those painful days, starting with one night in March.

"It's unfortunate that sometimes bad things have to happen for good things to turn out," she said. "This is one situation where I can honestly say a few positives came out of a horrible situation."