Melissa Antkow was struck in Phoenix by a 16-year-old girl driving a Dodge Ram just before Christmas 1999. The teen-ager ran a red light at an intersection and broad sided Melissa's car.

Every day, Tom Antkow thinks about the different things that could have kept his daughter from that intersection.

He thinks about them when he's in his car, when he's sitting in the living room, when he glances at Melissa's picture next to the urn that holds her ashes.

If she had been a few seconds late to pick up her two boys from day care; if only she had paused a few moments before entering that intersection.

"It's amazing to me ... someone so vibrant is suddenly gone in an instant," Antkow said.

"After that, I could have done one of two things: I could have given up, or I could crusade for my daughter's life," he said.

Crusading for Melissa's life meant teaching driver safety courses again.

Now he's giving driving lessons to teen-agers like the one who caused the crash that killed his daughter. He says he has committed his life to keeping others from making deadly mistakes while driving.

After years of teaching people how to handle perils of the road, Antkow knows precisely what caused the crash that killed Melissa: inexperience.

"If (the 16-year-old driver) had more experience, more training, more awareness - that accident never would have happened," Antkow said.

Antkow estimates he has trained more than 6,000 students and disabled drivers since he started teaching defensive driving in 1973.

He later switched careers, entering the wine business in California. Two years ago, he moved to the Springs to live near Melissa and her family. She ended up back in Phoenix last year after divorcing her husband.

Just three months after the crash, he founded Driver Safety Consultants in Colorado Springs in his daughter's memory. He trains young drivers, offers refresher courses for seniors and evaluates the needs of drivers with disabilities.

Antkow is still haunted by the crash that killed his daughter. He wears a crucifix and a ring of Melissa's on a gold chain around his neck. It's the same crucifix she was wearing in the last photo taken of her, Antkow said.

In the photo, she's smiling, with braces on her teeth. It's a smile that was rare in her photographs because she had always been self-conscious of her slightly crooked front teeth, Antkow said.

Another photo of Melissa taken years earlier is attached to the glove compartment of the red Ford Contour Antkow uses for his driving courses.

In the photo, her lips are slightly upturned but she's still hiding her teeth.