Sixteen-year-old Bonnie Clotfelter is the tiniest, prettiest, saddest defendant in Cobb County Drug Treatment Court.

It's a recent Wednesday evening, and Bonnie is wearing braces, a blue inmate jumpsuit and the guilt of a freshly relapsed alcoholic.

Judge Juanita Stedman asks her: "So, Miss Bonnie, tell me about this accident where you wrecked your [Mitsubishi] Eclipse and injured your boyfriend."

"I wasn't drinking," replies Bonnie, the jumpsuit engulfing her much the way a boy's letterman jacket, in a happier setting, might hang.

Stedman doesn't believe Bonnie. It turns out she is right: Bonnie had started drinking again. Her parents found bourbon in her water bottle at the beach a few days after the accident.

On probation for underage drinking, Bonnie knows she could go back to the county Youth Detention Center.

Over the next 90 minutes, 15 teenagers just like Bonnie will stand before Stedman, the Juvenile Drug Court judge. All have been cited at least twice on underage drinking or drug charges. Some, like Bonnie, have been turned in by their frustrated parents.

Bonnie is a former cheerleading captain and homecoming queen from east Cobb's Walton High, one of Georgia's top public schools. Not your typical profile of underage drinking.

Cobb Drug Court officials say there's nothing surprising about Bonnie's background. Many of the teens they see are from affluent schools.

In a 2007 state survey, Walton students were more likely to drink and use illegal drugs than the state or county average.

Fifty-six percent of seniors said they had used alcohol in the previous 30 days, and 35 percent said they had used marijuana.

"East Cobb? Definitely worse with alcohol and the more expensive drugs," said juvenile probation officer Sabra Kofa-Dunn, a member of the drug court team.

Bonnie was the poster girl for the Cobb Drug Court, filming videos for a recent fund-raising campaign. With 11 months and 14 days of sobriety, she'd graduated from the program and made for a great face of success.

But on this day she's back in court, in handcuffs and ankle shackles.

Her parents, Jennifer and Michael Pintur, are tired of fighting their daughter, tired of the bad choices she keeps making.

"My biggest fear is that we'll end up going to her funeral," Michael Pintur says.

Polite and charming

Bonnie has always been in the "in crowd" at Walton. A rising senior, she's usually had boyfriends, and she wins over parents with her demure smile and polite "yes ma'am."

" 'Oh, Bonnie's so perfect, we just want to take her home and let her live with us,' " other parents would tell Bonnie's mother.

"People don't see the Bonnie who drinks at home alone, who throws up and passes out," said her stepfather, who has been Bonnie's parent since she was an infant.

The Pinturs pride themselves on not being a typical east Cobb family —- if there is such a thing.

They drive used cars —- including Bonnie, who must pay the insurance on her $4,000 Eclipse —- and live in a modest two-story home with next-door neighbors barely an arm's length away. Michael is a Delta Air Lines mechanic; Jennifer is attending night school to become a massage therapist. Son Tyler, 14, is a promising football player.

Bonnie's drinking shocked her family when they found out two years ago. But she started even younger. She was 12.

One day after school, she created a concoction in a friend's basement. "A bunch of different alcohols and orange juice," she recalled in an interview. "I liked it. My friend threw up."

She drank again a few weeks later. Then again.

"It was out of boredom," Bonnie said. "By the time I got to high school, I was drinking every weekend, to the point of blacking out. Then I started drinking on weeknights, alone, in my room."

Bonnie's parents had marital problems over the years. The arguments and door-slamming might not have been rougher than what many kids experience, and things are better now. But they probably took a toll on Bonnie.

"I liked drinking by myself and then passing out, so I wouldn't remember," Bonnie said. "I liked not remembering."

Bonnie was 14 when she got caught.

"I'd gone to a concert and my parents came to pick me up, and they could tell I was drunk," she said. "They were so mad, and I jumped out of a moving car and didn't come home. I went to a friend's house, and the cops ended up picking me up."

Over the next couple of years Bonnie was taken to youth detention three times, each time turned in by her parents.

"You don't know what hard is until you call the police on your little girl," Michael Pintur said.

Bonnie didn't like anything about youth detention.

"I'm claustrophobic and our cells were tiny," Bonnie said. "You'd go to school, couldn't talk, and then back to your cell. ... The girls were mean and the boys were gross."

Still, Bonnie was less mortified the second time she went to jail, and even less the third. Her attitude frightened her parents.

The Pinturs initially blamed Bonnie's friends. Eventually, they realized their daughter was the problem. "It wasn't other kids going to jail," Jennifer Pintur said. "It was ours."

The Pinturs restricted Bonnie's driving —- she can drive only to her part-time job at a nearby restaurant —- and for a couple of months they took the door off Bonnie's bedroom.

"She lost all privacy," her father said. "We had to know that she wasn't drinking vodka from a water bottle."

Ed Dudley, Bonnie's history teacher and Walton's football coach, has known the Pinturs for years.

"She is an absolutely sweet child, never a problem in school, made good grades, and [that] shows you that anyone can fall into the substance abuse trap," Dudley said.

On, off the wagon

Back in court, Bonnie is proof that relapse is often the companion of recovery.

"Do you know how many people in this courtroom you've let down?" Stedman asks Bonnie that same Wednesday.

Bonnie reels off the list: her parents, grandparents, her court counselor, "you, judge."

Drug Court is part rehab and counseling, part punishment. The program takes kids who have had at least two incidents with drugs or alcohol. It doesn't accept violent offenders, kids with gang ties or big-time dealers. Those go to Juvenile or Superior Court.

Every teen gets extensive drug and alcohol counseling and restrictive curfews. All have spent time under house arrest; many have spent a few nights in YDC.

Other counties have juvenile drug courts, but Stedman said Cobb's is unique in the degree of in-home counseling it provides. Jennifer Farmer, the counselor assigned to Bonnie's family, has suggested coping strategies, ways to avoid "triggers" that made Bonnie want to drink.

Officials say the program has worked for most of the 350 kids who've gone through it the past six years. More than 80 percent have graduated from the program. Thirty-five percent have had subsequent alcohol or drug-related incidents.

Looking back, Bonnie said she got lazy about staying sober.

"You have to be determined," she said. "I remember going to prom and being everyone's baby sitter. I didn't drink, but everyone one else was. It sucked."

Two days later, Bonnie went to a friend's house where everyone was playing beer pong, a drinking game involving ping-pong balls, cups of beer and lack of supervision.

"I figured I'd be around people who drink all the time, now, at college, everywhere," she said. "I needed to learn how to drink one beer or so and not go crazy. I thought I could do it.

"But soon I was drinking Jack Daniel's again and getting drunk. Jack Daniel's always got me in trouble."

'You know she lies, right?'

In court, Bonnie's probation officer has recommended that Bonnie be held for a week or two at YDC. Stedman glares at Bonnie, then shifts to her parents, standing off to the side.

"I'm going to send her home," Stedman says. "But she has to be here every Wednesday for Drug Court. And you know she lies, right?"

After court, Stedman explains that Bonnie's good work in school was enough reason to keep her out of jail.

Still, Stedman orders drug and alcohol screening every few days, house arrest with unannounced visits and counseling for Bonnie and her parents every Wednesday.

Most Drug Court attendees come from east Cobb schools and the higher-income west Cobb schools, according to court officials. Sixteen of the 28 teens currently in the program attend east Cobb schools.

Dudley, the Walton teacher and coach, cites "affluent neglect."

"Parents who are busy professionally and personally don't always spend tons of times supervising their kids. We have it as bad here as any other place I've taught or coached."

Jennifer Pintur resents permissive parents. She wouldn't mind having a glass of wine with dinner, but there can't be a drop in the house. Michael gave up drinking long ago.

"I just love her, and I'm going to fight for her and fight her if necessary," Michael Pintur said.

When Bonnie appears in court, her streak of sober days is only 14, but no one thinks Bonnie is starting at square one.

The 350 clean days before the beer pong game had to mean something.

So Stedman, who this Wednesday would send four kids to jail, begins building Bonnie back up.

"I am so proud of you, Bonnie," she said. "I want you to tell everyone in this court why you are letting your story be told in the newspaper."

"I want people to learn from it," Bonnie said. "I want my little brother to learn from it."

Michael Pintur fights back tears. He's at once so proud of Bonnie, yet still scared for her.

Structure is welcomed

The smallest misstep is threatening to bite Bonnie.

Bonnie had been tardy eight times to the class following P.E. Her probation officer got a report from school.

"I'm dressing out," Bonnie explains to the judge. "And I go to my locker."

Bonnie's leash is short, but she's OK with that. She thrived under restrictions before. She figures they will help her get through tempting summer parties.

"I like knowing I can't get away with it," she said later, of being screened regularly again. "This makes it a lot easier for me. I hope when I get off the program I'll be all right."

Bonnie doesn't plan on cheering next year, but she has dreams of doing so in college. She hopes to attend the University of Alabama and become a sportscaster when she graduates. Her parents would prefer a year at nearby Kennesaw State.

"We have one more year with her, then she'll take the next step," her father said. "When she leaves, she'll have to be ready to stand on her own two feet."

WHAT THE STUDENTS SAY

Each year, the state Department of Education surveys students, asking questions on a variety of issues. Here are some of the 2007 findings:

STATEWIDE

> 25 percent of high school seniors admit to binge drinking (five or more drinks in one sitting) at least once in the past 30 days.

> 38 percent say they have used alcohol in the past 30 days.

COBB COUNTY

> 51 percent of eighth-graders think it is easy to get alcohol. By 10th grade, it's 68 percent. By 12th grade, it's 80 percent.

> 76 percent of seniors said marijuana was easy to get, 64 percent of 10th-graders and 35 percent of eighth-graders agreed.

WALTON HIGH SCHOOL

> 56 percent of the seniors said they had drunk alcohol in the past 30 days.

> 37 percent had engaged in binge drinking.