Pressman Tim Torres (left) and pressroom supervisor James "Jimbo" Krakowiak say they'll miss printing the Tucson Citizen.

James “Jimbo” Krakowiak, 56

Print supervisor

37 years at TNI, 15 printing the Tucson Citizen

“Everyone calls me Jimbo,” says Krakowiak, who is deaf and attended the Arizona State Schools for the Deaf and Blind. He worked in ASDB’s print shop as a student and discovered “that’s what I wanted to do.”

He started working for the newspaper company as an apprentice when the Citizen was located downtown and the paper was printed on a letter press with lead “plates” that weighed about 40 pounds each.

Now, the printing is done by digital computing; the aluminum plates are slim and weigh about 1 ounce. He worked the 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. shift.

Krakowiak has been a pressroom supervisor for more than 20 years and the pressmen have learned to use sign language, gestures and facial expressions to communicate.

“He’s an awesome pressman,” said Tim Torres, who accompanied him to Detroit in 1995 to run the presses there during a strike.

Krakowiak said he’s sad the Citizen is closing.

L.G. Ward, 60

Pressman

30 years at TNI, 5 printing the Citizen

“It took me 24 years to get on the Citizen and five years later, they’re taking it away from me,” Ward says. “It’s like losing a relative.”

He works the 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. shift. The Citizen was off the presses by 9 a.m., he said.

The remainder of his work day is spent printing sections of the Arizona Daily Star.

Ward started in printing working for a business forms company and got the TNI job through a softball team buddy who recruited him for the team and to TNI.

Ward said the automation of the printing system has made pressmen’s jobs much easier.

Colored inks were loaded onto the presses manually, through hoses and by the bucket. Now the inks are stored a floor below and move through hoses and onto the press.

Also, instead of the toggle switches used to adjust the paper while the presses roll, adjustments occur at the press of a button.

“You don’t just come in and figure it out in one day,” he said.

Bill Navarette, 59

40 years at TNI, 11 years printing the Citizen

Navarette started learning the printing business at Pueblo High School and worked for a local printer, printing the Arizona Daily Wildcat while he was still in high school.

He came to TNI in 1968 and had to learn to adapt to a computerized press when the newspaper moved to 4850 S. Park Ave. and a digital operation.

When the presses began to roll 35 years ago, they printed 1,000 papers a minute.

A 1-ton roll of newsprint is good for about 20,000 copies of the Tucson Citizen. Navarette moves the newsprint onto a trolley, which moves on a track to the presses and loads automatically.

“It’s like I’m losing a friend,” he said about the Citizen closing.

“It doesn’t seem possible. It won’t hit me until I won’t see it anymore.”

Tim Torres, 52

Pressman

25 years at TNI, 2 years printing the Tucson Citizen

Torres remembers his first day as a printing apprentice as “nerve-wracking.”

He had “the first day jitters, like with any job you go into. You don’t want to mess up.”

Since then, Torres has worked as a press operator, foreman and supervisor.

He’s printed both the Arizona Daily Star on the night shift and the Tucson Citizen on the day shift.

Torres enjoys his co-workers.

“The people make it interesting and I have fun on the job,” he said.

Like his co-workers, he said he’s sad to see the Citizen shut down.

Artie Gonzales,

ex-compositor, now a dispatch driver, 37 years at TNI, on the Citizen and Arizona Daily Star

“The Citizen was an icon,” Gonzales said. “I grew up here and used to deliver it when I was in sixth or seventh grade. His after-school route near Tucson High and Roskruge Elementary schools started at around 3:30 and took him about 45 minutes.

When he started at TNI, the paper’s pages were composed with hand-set “hot” lead type and the pages had to be read upside down and backward.

Now the pages are composed on a computer screen, a negative of the page is made and transferred to an aluminum page or “plate.”

It was fun in the old days, Gonzales said.

He’ll miss the editors he worked with in the “back shop.”

“I’ve known these guys for more than 25 years. It’s gonna hurt. You grew up knowing them, joking around with them, telling them stories. The fun’s gone now.”

Gonzales said the end of the Citizen makes him wonder what’s next for him.

“We don’t know what’s going to happen to us,” he said.

Tay Bell, 49

Newspaper hawker, 10 years

Bell is an Army Special Forces veteran with a steel plate in his head from a four-wheeler accident. He would rather work than collect disability, he said.

He’s been selling the Tucson Citizen and the morning paper for 10 years at intersections in the county, north and northwest of Tucson city limits.

He’s worked for years with fellow hawkers Manuel Garcia, 53, and “Mo,” who always wore a Stetson and a crisply ironed shirt with his jeans and cowboy boots.

In March, Bell said, Mo told him he was done with selling the newspaper and going off to California to be with family.

“He has an aortic aneurysm,” Bell said. He came by to say goodbye.

The other member of their trio, Garcia, 53, used to work the same intersection at another corner.

Garcia, who had polio and whose legs are bent nearly 60 degrees, stood for seven hours a day, like they did.

But in November, Bell said, a Pima County sheriff’s deputy asked to see their IDs.

Garcia, who came to Tucson in 1990 from Mexico City, didn’t have any and the deputy called the Border Patrol, Bell said. A Border Patrol agent picked Garcia up at his bus stop and Bell presumes he was deported to Mexico. He hasn’t seen him or heard from him since.

Bell said his best tip was $165 from an older man who simply pressed the bills into his hand as he drove by, without a word.

Bell said he will be sorry to see the Citizen stop publishing.

“I’ve always been one to read the Citizen,” he said. “If I read the paper, I read the Citizen.”

I walked on fire for this place, a piece of cake compared to guessing which day we were going to die. Or not. Buyers invited to visit the place didn’t bother. We continued “day by day.” Just like real life.

My career here started in 1980, after a decade of change as tumultuous as this one. The Citizen had moved, changed owners and converted to computers.

At 20, spoiled for honest work by a stint at a college paper, I drove to 4850 S. Park Ave. to talk to my uncle’s poker buddy. Then-Features Editor Dick Vonier told me what my creative writing degree was worth and sat me down at a typewriter to rewrite my résumé.

Seventeen years later a couple of co-workers and I sat at Dick’s kitchen table, trying, though not very hard, to talk him out of his last bender.

This by way of saying the Citizen has been, if not the love of my life, by far my most enduring commitment.

Just ask my ex-husband.

OPPORTUNITY KNOCKS: I got a job as a clerk and begged copy editors to let me write headlines. One of them, known for once accidentally setting his hair on fire, ended up in a coma. I offered to fill in. How was I supposed to know he’d died that morning?

After that, the bosses found me an editing position. I started with the new section Calendar and in 1983 was made editor of Bulletin Board, a weeky zoned publication delivered to all area households.

For arcane legal reasons, Bulletin Board had to be an “edition” of the Citizen, outside the ordinary chain of command. I couldn’t, by law, have a boss.

Leaving me free to work my own hours and follow real reporters around. Especially one.

DUCK AND CHICK: This guy walks in with a brilliant magazine-length piece and Dick tells him we can’t use it. He goes home, writes another brilliant story and comes back the next day. This one ran, and Chuck Bowden was hired.

Bowden tolerated me as a kind of apprentice. I’d tag along on interviews and he would invent assignments for me, even dragged me to the gym. Journalism takes stamina.

Chuck and Dick and Picture Editor P.K. Weis were among my many mentors, illustrating every day the power of observation, language and frozen instants in time.

When I wrote a front-page piece about a storefront dance club an editor attached a snotty comment: “Non-Bowden byline CQ (correct).”

I took it as a compliment.

DESK HOPPING: I had skipped the usual reporter-to-editor sequence and needed to back up. I covered the county and city ably enough but rarely with the grit and patience to do it expertly.

We started to lose our investigative edge when our most hardnosed reporters – like Jim Wyckoff and Mark Kimble – became editors. All of us had a learning curve. Frustrated by the “he said, she said” rhythm of reporting, I longed to get to the bottom of things but rarely did.

I landed on the city desk and did a stint at USA TODAY as the token Westerner – and conservative. Just because I didn’t think every problem had a government solution.

Back here, two years on the features desk burned me out on managing people. I never knew where their jobs ended and mine began.

I fell hard in ’96, lost my driver’s license and joined Dick’s support group (he died in 1997).

And I got demoted to the copy desk. Finally I was where I wanted to be.

RECENTLY: From days to nights, copy desk to the city desk, back to the copy desk. Setting the alarm for 2:30 a.m. or 4 p.m. Ducking out of Thanksgiving dinner or arriving late on Christmas Eve – typical newspaper stuff.

And, for the past couple of years, doing this column, riding herd on the Web site and student teaching at Cholla High Magnet School.

On vacation or on assignment, I traveled and saw the world. I stay at home and see it too.

As long as I’ve worked here, I’ve learned. Whether I wanted to or not.

NOW: A few unemployed journalists may not amount to a hill of beans. Ninety percent of what we do is – not, fluff, exactly, but superfluous. Opinions, entertainment, sports. National news, available anywhere. Almost all of it free, not counting the Net connection.

But still we lose something with every demise. Newspapers have the staff, if not always the will, to ferret out embarrassing information local governments don’t want published. To pursue documents revealing whether Lute Olson got special treatment. And to hold big businesses – like Citizen owner Gannett Co. Inc. – at least somewhat accountable for previous statements.

Thanks to Assistant City Editor Mark Evans for reviving that hunger here.

Financing the dogged tenacity to nail that stuff is a lot more important than polishing prose or rewriting press releases.

A born cynic, and most days I still believe: Truth will find a way to be told.

I just don’t know how anymore.

Edgar Suarez (seated) was employed by Tucson Newspapers Inc. for 62 years. He is shown here with three of his children, (from left) Selina Suarez, Bettina Warburton and Steve Suarez, at his retirement party in 2003

Tucson native Edgar Suarez started his career as a newsboy selling newspapers on the street in 1936.

When he retired from Tucson Newspapers Inc. in 2003, he was 75 and had worked 62 years for the company.

He is its longest serving employee.

Suarez served in the Army for two years in the mid-1940s and TNI saved his job for his return.

In his last TNI post, he was a preprint coordinator in charge of scheduling and verifying the advertising inserts slipped into the newspaper before it hits the streets.

“I enjoyed it here very much,” he said at his retirement.

In his early years at TNI, one man ran the press, he recalled. “Now they need a lot more than that.”

Astronauts narrowly avoided disaster Thursday during their first spacewalk to upgrade the Hubble Space Telescope, but the more treacherous tasks still await them.

Astronaut Andrew Feustel on Thursday successfully wrenched out a stubborn bolt that, if it had broken off, could have blocked installation of a $132 million camera on Hubble. The camera is one of astronomers’ highest priorities for this mission, the fifth and final visit to fix and modernize the Hubble.

There will be no weekend off for Feustel and the other six crewmembers of space shuttle Atlantis, which pulled up to the Hubble on Wednesday. In the next few days, they’ll undertake work so difficult that NASA is downplaying their chance of success.

“Today was a speed bump,” Hubble senior scientist David Leckrone said. “Two days from now is going to be the hold-your-breath day.”

What’s planned:

• On Saturday, Feustel and astronaut John Grunsfeld will attempt the first repair on a Hubble scientific instrument while in orbit. Fixing the Advanced Camera for Surveys requires them to remove tiny screws that they won’t be able to see – while wearing bulky space gloves.

“This will be a nail-biter all the way,” Grunsfeld said before Atlantis’ May 11 launch.

• On Sunday, astronauts Michael Massimino and Michael Good will try to mend another broken scientific instrument. To bring the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph back to life, they’ll have to undo more than 110 screws not much bigger than watch screws.

The telescope could be crippled if a single stray screw floats into it.

“I don’t know exactly how it’s going to turn out,” Massimino said before launch. “A lot of miracles have to occur.”

The scientific instruments on Hubble – unlike its standard components, such as the observatory’s batteries – were not designed to be fixed in orbit. So it’s extraordinarily difficult to access them. Hubble’s managers decided the two instruments are so scientifically valuable that it’s worth the risk to try to repair them.

If the astronauts pull off the repairs, Hubble will have five functional scientific instruments for the first time since 1993, but Hubble’s overseers are trying to tamp down expectations.

“On this mission, the final mission, we’re going for broke,” Leckrone said.

Thursday’s spacewalk was not expected to be challenging, but the astronauts encountered an unexpected obstacle as they tried to remove a scientific instrument known as Wide Field Planetary Camera 2.

The camera has been a scientific workhorse, but it’s 15 years old, and its replacement will be 15 to 35 times more powerful. Astronomers are eager to start using the new camera.

Obama plan’s start slow; foreclosure alternatives added

WASHINGTON – The Obama administration on Thursday outlined an expansion of its housing rescue plan that will help homeowners who face foreclosure because they are ineligible for current assistance programs.

Officials also provided a report card of sorts on how the home-loan modification and refinancing efforts are going since the housing rescue plan was announced in February.

The expanded program includes:

• Foreclosure alternatives. Homeowners unable to qualify for a modification will see a more streamlined process for pursuing short sales and deeds-in-lieu of foreclosures, which transfer a home back to the lender. The goal is to help homeowners avoid a foreclosure that could lead to a severe hit on their credit scores.

A short sale occurs when a home is sold for less than the remaining mortgage, but lenders agree to consider the debt paid.

• Protections for homeowners whose home value has fallen. Under a $10 billion program, new incentives will be provided to lenders to help them make modifications in regions where home prices have had steep drops.

The Obama administration has said it expects up to 9 million homeowners to get help through mortgage refinancing and loan modifications.

But the complexity of the program has made for a slow start and done little to dampen foreclosures, which have risen as banks ended temporary moratoriums on foreclosures.

“It’s been slow. The foreclosure problem is not going away,” said Mark Zandi, with Moody’s Economy.com.

CHEYENNE, Wyo. – Two seasonal Yellowstone National Park concession workers have been fired after a live webcam caught them urinating into the Old Faithful geyser.

Park spokesman Al Nash says a 23-year-old man on Tuesday was fined $750 and placed on three years of unsupervised probation for urinating, being off trail in a restricted area and taking items from the area. The man also was banned from Yellowstone for two years.

The second employee’s case is pending.

The park’s dispatch center was called after someone watching a webcam on the geyser saw six employees leaving the trail and walking on Old Faithful on May 4.

The geyser was not erupting at the time.

Xanterra Parks & Resorts general manager Jim McCaleb says the former concession workers were hired at the Old Faithful Inn and that such incidents were rare.

Dem denies ’02 knowledge of waterboarding

WASHINGTON – Congressional Republicans are rushing to defend the CIA after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi accused the spy agency of misleading her and other lawmakers about its use of waterboarding during the Bush administration.

The issue of what did the speaker know about the interrogation method — and when did she know it — has deepened the fault lines between the two political parties. Pelosi was unequivocal about a CIA briefing she received in the fall of 2002.

“We were told that waterboarding was not being used,” the speaker said Thursday. “That’s the only mention, that they were not using it. And we now know that earlier they were.” She suggested the CIA release the briefing material.

Pelosi vehemently disputed Republican charges that she was complicit in the use of waterboarding, and she suggested the GOP was trying to shift the focus of public attention away from the Bush administration’s use of techniques that she and President Barack Obama have described as torture.

On Friday, the top Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee contradicted Pelosi’s claims and questioned her criticism of the nation’s spy operations.

“I think it’s a tragedy that we are seeing this massive attack on our intelligence community,” Sen. Kit Bond of Missouri said in an interview on NBC’s “Today” show.

Bond said he reviewed the CIA’s material and it was clear that Pelosi had been informed about the enhanced interrogation method, although Bond said he was not with Pelosi when the spy agency briefed her.

The CIA was widely criticized for its intelligence gathering prior to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and faced questions about its information on suspected weapons of mass destruction in Iraq prior to the start of the war in March 2003. The weapons were never found.

CIA spokesman George Little said it is not the policy of the agency to mislead Congress, although he refused to answer directly questions about Pelosi’s accusation.

Pelosi has been the target of a campaign orchestrated in recent days by the House Republican leadership, which is eager to assign Democrats partial responsibility for the use of waterboarding — a kind of simulated drowning — in the Bush administration.

GOP officials secured the release of an unclassified chart by the CIA that describes a total of 40 briefings for lawmakers over a period of several years. Pelosi’s name appears once, as having attended a session on Sept. 4, 2002, when she was the senior Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee. Former Rep. Porter Goss, R-Fla., who at the time was the chairman of the committee and later became CIA director, also was present.

The notation says the briefing was on “enhanced interrogation techniques on Abu Zubaydah … and a description of the particular EITs that had been employed.”

Little, responding to Pelosi for the CIA, said the chart “is true to the language in the agency’s records.” But he did not say whether the information was accurate.

Instead, he pointed to a recent letter from CIA Director Leon Panetta to lawmakers saying it would be up to Congress to determine whether notes made by agency personnel at the time they briefed lawmakers were accurate.

Coincidentally, Pelosi spoke as the CIA rejected former Vice President Dick Cheney’s request to release secret memos judging whether waterboarding and other harsh techniques had succeeded in securing valuable intelligence information.

CIA spokesman Paul Gimigliano said the request was turned down because the documents are the subject of pending litigation, which makes them not subject to declassification.

Police vehicles guard the site where a woman was found dead inside a car, two blocks away from a police station in Tijuana, Mexico, on Thursday.

TIJUANA, Mexico – The bodies of four U.S. citizens were found strangled, beaten and stabbed in a van in this border city, two days after they reportedly left their southern California homes for a night at the Mexican clubs, U.S. officials said Thursday.

The victims, ages 19 to 23, were found tied up on Saturday, but their deaths were not reported earlier because they were under investigation, said Fermin Gomez, an assistant state prosecutor in Baja California.

U.S. consular officials in Tijuana said the victims – two men and two women from the San Diego and Chula Vista areas – were U.S. citizens. The state attorney general’s office in Baja California said one of the women was Mexican.

Their deaths are the latest in a string of violence in Tijuana that authorities blame on a bloody turf war between drug cartels.

“I just don’t think kids should be going to Tijuana right now,” Chula Vista police Lt. Scott Arsenault told the San Diego Union-Tribune. “They ran into the wrong people, obviously.”

Bernard Gonzales, a spokesman for the Chula Vista Police Department, said a friend told the women’s parents they were headed to nightclubs in Tijuana on Thursday night. They were reported missing the next day when they did not answer their cell phones.

A plainclothes police officer, wearing a face mask, stands near a house where a methamphetamine lab was found on the outskirts of Tijuana, Mexico, on Wednesday.

WASHINGTON – Despite Democrats’ rising anxiety about Afghanistan, the House on Thursday easily passed a $96.7 billion measure filling President Obama’s request for war spending and foreign aid efforts there and in Iraq.

Some 51 Democrats broke with Obama, who is sending thousands more troops into Afghanistan, but all but a handful of Republicans stood behind the president to produce a 368-60 tally. Republicans supported the measure even though majority Democrats added almost $12 billion to Obama’s $85 billion request.

The measure would boost total funding provided by Congress for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars above $900 billion.

Across Capitol Hill, a key Senate committee approved a companion $91.3 billion bill that sticks closely to Obama’s war request – including $50 million for the Pentagon to begin the promised closure of the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The issue of closing Guantanamo is addressed in the House measure as well – not with funding but with a promise that detainees from the prison will not be released on U.S. soil. A new provision, however, anticipates some of the 241 detainees at Guantanamo will be transferred to the United States to stand trial or serve their sentences.

A separate conflict over the war-funding measure concerns whether it should provide a $108 billion U.S. contribution to the International Monetary Fund as part of an expanded $500 billion IMF loan fund, a cornerstone of last month’s Group of 20 nations summit in London to assist poor countries struggling through the global economic downturn.

Obama officially requested the IMF funding late Tuesday, and the request was immediately incorporated into the Senate version by Appropriations Committee Chairman Daniel Inouye of Hawaii. The IMF funds would cost U.S. taxpayers about $5 billion since the government is issued interest-bearing assets in return for the contribution.

House Republicans oppose adding the IMF funds to the war-funding measure, and their votes will be needed to pass the final House-Senate compromise bill, given the opposition of anti-war Democrats.

As for the military spending, during the Bush administration many Democrats stressed their opposition to the war in Iraq while supporting efforts against al-Qaida and the Taliban in Afghanistan. But an increasing number of party liberals are skeptical of success in Afghanistan.

Chief among them is Rep. David Obey, D-Wis., author of the House legislation as chairman of the Appropriations Committee. But for now he’s giving Obama a chance to demonstrate greater progress in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

“This is a bill that I have very little confidence in,” Obey said. “I think we have a responsibility to give a new president – who did not get us into this mess – the best possible opportunity to get out of it.”

Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., is opposing the infusion of war funds. He’s not impressed with Obama’s plans on Afghanistan.

“Sometimes great presidents make mistakes, and sometimes great presidents make even great mistakes. I hope that doesn’t happen here,” McGovern said. “As the mission has grown bigger, the policy has grown even more vague.”

Both the House and Senate measures largely follow Obama’s military request for the wars. But the House version adds $11.8 billion, including almost $4 billion for new weapons and military equipment such as cargo planes, mine-resistant vehicles, Bradley Fighting Vehicles and Stryker armored vehicles. The measure also adds $2.2 billion to Obama’s request for foreign aid — much of which appears to be designed to get around spending limits for 2010.

The $91.3 billion Senate measure includes Obama’s $1.5 billion emergency request to fight a potential flu pandemic, while the House would add about $500 million to the request – even as the recent swine flu scare appears to be abating.

On Guantanamo, the Senate measure includes $50 million to begin closing the prison but directs that it can’t be used to transfer any of the detainees into the United States. The House bill, which does not include such money, sets a policy forbidding release of Guantanamo detainees within the United States. It would allow them to be shipped to the U.S. to stand trial or to serve their sentences.

The Senate Appropriations Committee on Thursday voted unanimously in favor of its version of the spending bill.

Most of that money, about $73 billion, would go to the Defense Department to pay for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, including the extra 21,000 troops being sent to Afghanistan.

The measure is $1.3 billion more than the president requested.

WASHINGTON – The White House trumpeted the news: health care providers taking a $2 trillion scalpel to their costs and pushing the U.S. toward President Obama’s vision of health coverage for all. But don’t line up yet for those insurance cards.

First, a reality check for the nation’s 50 million uninsured.

Medical providers have a long track record of avoiding fiscal constraints, as witnessed by the government’s efforts to tamp down Medicare costs.

And none of the groups that went to the White House can actually dictate prices to itsr members. Doctors in New York or hospitals in Los Angeles are free to charge what the market can bear.

There’s one more catch: Even if every penny of the promised savings shows up, not all of it would be used to help cover uninsured Americans. Actual savings to the government are all that can be counted as Congress tries to pay for subsidies that will be needed to help make health insurance affordable for everyone.

Costs could still turn out to be the greatest obstacle to Obama’s health care plan.

Outside experts estimate the taxpayers’ tab could total between $1.2 trillion and $1.5 trillion over 10 years. Some go as high as $1.7 trillion. Obama’s budget proposal includes a down payment that may cover less than half the bill.

Pledging restraint on costs Monday at the White House were groups representing hospitals, doctors, drug makers, medical device manufacturers and a major health care labor union – a Who’s Who of health care interests. The president posed proudly with them and called it “a watershed event.”

Obama wants to build on the current system in which most people get coverage through private insurers. But he wants to change the rules so the sick can’t be turned down. And he wants to provide subsidies to help low-wage workers and even some in the middle class afford their premiums.

House Republican leader John Boehner of Ohio isn’t impressed. “Today’s announcement promises savings with no concrete plan to achieve them and no enforcement mechanism if they don’t,” he said Monday.

Indeed, it’s too early to tell whether the White House meeting will be remembered as a turning point or as a political mirage.

The administration is projecting an image of a new coalition for health care, with Obama and most of the health care industry and consumer interest groups claiming the political center.

Left out, for now, are conservative Republicans, who oppose Obama’s direction but have yet to articulate their own vision, and liberal Democrats who have been hoping to move toward a nationalized system like Medicare for all. As the debate heats up, the voices from both ends of the political divide will get louder – and the pressure on the center will increase.

By joining Obama, providers are acknowledging at least some responsibility for a bloated and dysfunctional system that economists say is unaffordable.

“I think the reason all these groups want to actively participate in the process is they don’t want to see a blunt instrument used to get spending down,” said Mark McClellan, who ran Medicare for President George W. Bush. “This is an opportunity to get everyone behind a better approach to improve the way health care works.”

That’s just what the groups say they want to do. Their proposals include coordinating care for people with chronic illnesses, rewarding quality not quantity, and using technology to root out waste and prevent errors that get patients sicker.

But it’s hard to put numbers next to any of those ideas. For example, what if better care for chronically ill patients turns out to increase costs? None of the groups has set a target for how much its members should have to pony up.

Congress is going to need hard numbers to pass Obama’s plan this year.

Robert Laszewski, a former health insurance executive turned policy consultant, said he’s betting the consensus won’t last.

“When Congress comes up with mechanisms to reduce costs that actually take money out of the hands of doctors, hospitals and insurance companies, that’s when we’re going to find out if things are really different this time,” he said.

Kyle Lehew, an employee of Mrs. Tiggy Winkle's Toys, shows kids infant friendly robots. The store will open a location inside the Tucson Children's Museum later this month.

Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle’s Toys will open a downtown branch, replacing the gift shop at the Tucson Children’s Museum, 200 S. Sixth Ave.

The 32-year-old local toy merchant at Grant and Swan roads will open at the Children’s Museum on May 21, said Lisette DeMars, a store manager.

Shoppers will not have to pay museum admission to go to the store.

“I’m superexcited about people who work downtown being able to buy Christmas gifts during their lunch hour,” DeMars said.

This collaboration transforms a gift shop into a full-fledged toy store, said Michael Luria, the museum’s executive director.

“That is not our core competency,” Luria said. “Our primary focus is not for the gift shop. (Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle’s) puts us in a superior league” compared with other children’s museum gift shops.

DeMars will stock the downtown store with similar educational, wooden and European toys carried at the 4811 E. Grant Road store.

“We’re having tons of fun planning for all the parties we can throw once we have a permanent space downtown,” DeMars said.

She hopes to have activities on the museum lawn such as bubble blowing and kite flying. Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle’s is an activities-oriented toy shop, she said.

Luria said gift shop discounts to museum members will apply at both Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle’s shops.

“They have the opportunity to move products back and forth between the shops,” Luria said.

The museum gift shop orders from 25 vendors, while Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle’s does business with 6,000 vendors. DeMars plans to triple the inventory in the 300-square-foot space.

Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle’s has had event collaborations with the Rialto Theatre and the Loft Cinema, and managers DeMars and David Correa were eager to expand to downtown.

“To be really honest, we started a whisper rumor,” DeMars said. “We said, ‘The Children’s Museum, wouldn’t it be cool if we could be there?’

“We secretly visited the gift shop. It’s a good gift shop, but gift shops is not what they do. Within a month, the rumor had made it to Michael (Luria). He said, ‘Can we have lunch?’ ”

The museum gift shop will be closed May 18-20 to allow conversion to Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle’s, which plans to open May 21 before its grand opening event May 25.

Beginning May 25, museum and store hours will be 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Mondays, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesdays to Saturdays and noon to 5 p.m. Sundays.

Look out, world, 448 new graduates from the University of Phoenix’s greater Tucson locations will be heading your way.

The commencement ceremony, which honors those who completed degrees online or at one of five southern Arizona locations, is 10 a.m. Saturday at the Tucson Convention Center, 260 S. Church Ave.

About 4,000 guests are expected to attend, according to a news release from the university.

Of the 448 degrees being awarded, four are associate’s degrees; 235 are bachelor’s degrees; and 209 are master’s degrees.

The most popular degrees awarded to this batch of grads are bachelor’s degrees in business management and master’s in business administration.

There are two campuses in Tucson, plus one each in Sierra Vista, Nogales and Yuma.

A plane douses the hillside above Mission Canyon on Wednesday in Santa Barbara, Calif., as a stalled wildfire roared back to life.

SANTA BARBARA, Calif. – Winds swirled and homes of all sizes burned as a wildfire descended on this scenic coastal city amid hot, dry conditions that resembled late summer more than the middle of spring.

Firefighters had a brief respite of moderate breezes early Thursday, but expected another day of heat, gusts and potential destruction as they took on a blaze that had swelled to 500 acres and forced the evacuation of more than 5,000 homes.

TV news helicopters showed at least a dozen homes ablaze as night fell, but authorities had no immediate estimate of how many had been destroyed.

Huge mansions and humble homes alike were reduced to rubble, leaving palm trees swaying over gutted ruins. Aerial footage showed five or more luxury homes burning along one crest-top road, and many flare-ups dotting the residential hills were apparently burning homes.

“The fire is very spotty and patchy and there’s a lot of smoke,” which makes it difficult to see the damage,” Santa Barbara County fire Capt. David Sadecki said. “Because it involves people’s homes, we don’t want to speculate.”

The fire went from tame to explosive Wednesday afternoon as gusts up to 50 mph in triple-digit temperatures hurled the fire from north to south into neighborhoods, Santa Barbara County fire Capt. David Sadecki said.

It remained out of control Thursday morning, though temperatures dropped to the 60s and winds had grown calm.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger declared a state of emergency, and the National Weather Service issued a “Red Flag” warning for fire danger, predicting strong wind danger through Friday morning.

Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Department spokesman Drew Sugars said 5,430 homes were under mandatory evacuation. The estimated population of those homes was 13,575 people, he said.

Some of the evacuated were allowed to return to their homes early Thursday, the county said in a news release, but officials had no estimate of how many people were affected.

More than 800 firefighters were on the lines, and 20 more strike teams totaling about 1,300 firefighters were requested.

“The firefighters are picking houses and seeing if they can make a stand,” Sadecki said.

Three Ventura County firefighters were injured when their engine was overtaken by flames as they tried to protect a structure, their department said in a statement. Two were treated for moderate burns and a third was treated for smoke inhalation, said center spokesman Roy Forbes. All were in serious but stable condition.

Their fire engine was heavily damaged in the incident.

The blaze bore down on the city at frightening speed, said Chad Jenson, a food server at Giovanni’s Pizza.

“The sky is just deep orange and black, pretty much our whole hillside is going down,” Jenson said.

In a city that has experienced a number of wildfires, Jenson said this one was as close to the city center as any he had seen. Less than six months ago a fire destroyed more than 200 homes in Santa Barbara and neighboring Montecito and in 1990, a fire killed one and destroyed 641 homes, apartments and other structures in the county. The new fire reached the area burned by that blaze Wednesday.

Santa Barbara, a city of 90,000 about 100 miles west of Los Angeles, rises rapidly from the coastline on the south to the foothills of the Santa Ynez Mountains to the north. It is subject to “Sundowners” — strong winds that blow downslope through passes and canyons of the mountain range and offshore.

Elsewhere, firefighters were battling a blaze in rural southeastern Arizona that destroyed three houses near Sierra Vista on Tuesday and injured a man. The fire charred about 4,200 acres near Fort Huachuca, threatening about 50 homes in a subdivision. Containment was estimated at 15 percent Wednesday.

In southern New Mexico, a wildfire in the mountains near Timberon charred about 100 acres, burning at least three structures. State Forestry spokesman Dan Ware said firefighters hadn’t been able to confirm what types of buildings they were.

Fifteen residents have been evacuated, and 70 structures were threatened, Ware said.

California wildfires burn structures and hillsides on Wednesday in Santa Barbara, Calif.

A home is threatened by a wildfire on Wednesday in the hills above Santa Barbara, Calif. Fierce winds blew a wildfire into Southern California homes Wednesday, forcing residents to flee as columns of smoke rose from a scenic coastal enclave.

FLAGSTAFF – A group of conservationists says pollution from a coal-fired power plant is clouding views of the Grand Canyon, and they want the federal government to do something about it.

A petition filed by the conservationists Tuesday asks the National Park Service to declare that particulate matter and nitrogen oxide emissions from the Navajo Generating Station near Page are harming air quality.

The group said the declaration could trigger a reduction in emissions at the plant, improve visibility and safeguard the public’s health.

The plant is operated by the Salt River Project, which supplies water and power to the Phoenix area. Kevin Wanttaja, manager of environmental services for SRP, said the agency has submitted a plan to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to cut nitrogen oxide emissions by 40 percent. No cuts in particulate matter are planned.

Roger Clark of the Grand Canyon Trust, which is among the petitioners, commended SRP for volunteering to retrofit its three units at the plant with nitrogen oxide controls by 2011. But he said it’s not enough. The best available control technology would cut such emissions by 80 percent to 90 percent, he said.

Graphic artists Julie Ray and Rachelle Diaz count 26 vacant buildings in a tight cluster of downtown streets.

They are taking it upon themselves to bring life back to them, first with art exhibits that they hope will inspire businesses to move in.

Ray and Diaz are doing the first such exhibit from 10:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Saturday inside the McLellan Building, 63 E. Congress St. The exhibit will continue through the summer in McLellan’s four exterior window boxes on the Scott Avenue side.

The Downtown Scavenger Hunt Exhibit will showcase photos and thoughts shared by participants in a scavenger hunt March 1. Participants followed clues to find 10 vacant buildings between Broadway and Pennington Street, and Stone and Fifth avenues.

“We are getting them to imagine the possibilities with the buildings downtown,” said Diaz, who has a Tu Scene blog devoted to visual arts events. “What would you do if you could open a restaurant? What would you serve?”

The exhibit will also include historic photos of the McLellan Building. Diaz and Ray will re-enact their Ignite Tucson presentations from last year, five-minute PowerPoint presentations with 20 images shown for 15 seconds each. The duo also want to talk with exhibit visitors about ways to fill the empty buildings.

“Our philosophy is these spaces should be full,” said Ray, who has a Burrito Files blog, where she asks people, if Tucson were a burrito what would be in it. “Let’s continue to make this place more vibrant. Let’s start with these spaces.”

Ray and Diaz are calling their project Pop Up Spaces. They won the support of McLellan Building owner John Wesley Miller, and they want to get exhibits from other artists into other empty buildings.

“We want to connect with more property owners and managers,” Ray said. “We are inviting the public to come downtown and interact with these buildings.”

The live scavenger hunt was March 1, but Ray said people can still go on the hunt by visiting popupspaces.org for clues and submitting comments and photos online.