Citizen Staff Report
THE FINAL EDITION

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.”

Citizen Staff Writer
THE FINAL EDITION

JUDY CARLOCK

jcarlock@tucsoncitizen.com

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-to-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 weekly 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 hard-nosed 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.

Citizen Staff Report
THE FINAL EDITION

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.”

Citizen Staff Photographer

Citizen Staff Writer

RYN GARGULINSKI

rynski@tucsoncitizen.com

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.

Citizen Staff Writer

TEYA VITU

tvitu@tucsoncitizen.com

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.

Citizen Staff Writer

TEYA VITU

tvitu@tucsoncitizen.com

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.

Citizen Staff Photographers

Citizen Staff Writer

GABRIELLE FIMBRES

gfimbres@tucsoncitizen.com

Some needed canes and walkers.

Others pushed strollers.

Grandparents and other family members raising children took to the streets Friday to protest state budget cuts they say are hurting their kids.

“Fight, fight, fight for grandparent’s rights,” participants chanted as they marched.

Carrying signs that read, “Not on the backs of children,” “No more budget cuts” and “Old people rock,” dozens marched the seven blocks from Armory Park, where they held a rally, to the State of Arizona Administration Building, 400 W. Congress St.

About 100 caregivers and children delivered 250 petitions, demanding that legislators restore 20 percent cuts in aid to families caring for the children of relatives. The cuts, made by state legislators last month, impact more than 10,000 Arizona children, according to organizers.

Most often, the reasons that parents cannot care for children include incarceration, addiction, mental illness or death.

“We need all the help we can get, and the Legislature needs to realize it’s cost effective for us to raise good citizens,” said Mary Bliss, 62, who is raising her 14-year-old grandchild.

At the state building, Alice Strosser, 84, handed a box of petitions to Jo Grant, legislative coordinator of the southern Arizona office of the Arizona state Senate and House of Representatives. Grant told Strosser she would deliver the petitions to legislators. Five other caregivers delivered boxes as well.

Strosser raised three grandchildren, and two still live with her and her husband, Robert. They moved in after their mother died of a heart attack at age 37 a dozen years ago. The Strossers spent their life savings raising the kids. She wants to make sure budget cuts won’t hurt other grandparents.

“We’re trying to help other grandparents who come after us, so they won’t have to go through what we went through,” she said.

Not all marching were seniors. Single mom Jymelle Mason, 37, adopted four of her sister’s children and has guardianship of a fifth, along with her own child.

Mason’s sister is in prison, and the children would be in foster care without her.

The cuts will “demolish me,” she said.

“There are other ways out there they can get this money,” she said.

Several suggested that cuts to the corrections budget would better serve the state.

“They are taking the money away from the children, not from the people who put them in this situation,” said Mary Glover, 45, who adopted three great nephews. “Most of their parents are in prison, and they still get their money.”

Dillon Bledsoe, 14, and his brother Dakota Bledsoe, 9, spent part of their spring break marching. “It’s to stop the cuts,” Dillon said.

Their grandmother, Becky Brown, 63, said the boys’ father is in prison and the mother “can’t even take care of herself.”

She said her grandsons would be in foster care had she not taken them in seven years ago.

Budget cuts have resulted in her getting $50 less per month, money she spent on groceries and clothes for the boys.

Angel Johnson, 4, carried a sign nearly as big as he is as he marched with his grandmother, Carmelita Sanchez, 69.

Rosa Borbon, 62, is raising her granddaughter, Mary Rose Borbon, 8, whom she adopted. The two marched side by side.

“They are our future,” the grandmother said.

At the rally before the march, Fred Chaffee, president and chief executive officer of Arizona’s Children Association, encouraged kin caregivers to stand up for their rights.

He said the KARE Family Center in Tucson, which provides support to kin caregivers, tracked the 2,100 children and families served in 2007. Of them, 70 percent of the children were not in state care, saving the state $4.2 million, Chaffee said.

Jim Murphy of the Pima Council on Aging said grandparents need financial assistance.

“It is the right thing to do to support grandparents raising grandchildren,” Murphy said.

Grandparents, family members protest cuts to state assistance

For more information

The KARE Family Center of Tucson-Pima County

4710 E. 29th St., No. 7

Tucson, AZ 85711

(520) 323-4476 Ext 102

kares@arizonaschildren.org

Citizen Staff Writer

MARY BUSTAMANTE

mbustamante@tucsoncitizen.com

Quick, spell “eg-’za-ser-bat.”

But first, pretend you’re in elementary or middle school and you’re on stage in front of hundreds of people.

That’s what 57 students from area public, private and charters school – and some home schools – will be up against at the 2009 Pima County Spelling Bee.

It will be held at 10 a.m. Saturday in the Berger Center for the Performing Arts at the Arizona State Schools for the Deaf and the Blind, 1200 W. Speedway Blvd.

“Exacerbate” was the last word correctly spelled last year.

The top two spellers at this year’s bee will advance to the state contest March 28 at Arizona State University in Tempe, said coordinator Jaymie Jacobs. The winner there receives $500 and a trip for two to the Scripps National Spelling Bee in Washington, D.C., from May 22-24.

The nearly five dozen Pima County contestants made it to Saturday’s bee by winning spelling bees at their schools or home school organizations, she said. Each will get a gift certificate from Bookmans Entertainment Exchanges and the top three will receive medals.

Those competing and their grade level from the Tucson Unified School District are:

Eleanor Allen Henderson, 6, Dodge Middle School; Ian Smith, 5; Fruchthendler Elementary School; Zachary Benz, 6; Doolen Middle School; Noelle Moquin, 8, Gridley Middle School; Hector Rodriquez, 7, Hohokam Middle School; Thomas Noriega, 5, Sam Hughes Elementary School; Shelbie Fuller, 5, Kellond Elementary School; John “Jack” Ames, 8, Magee Middle School; Carlos Camacho, 4, Tolson Elementary School; and Faith Eusebius, 5, Wright Elementary School.

From Sunnyside Unified School District:

Brandon Castro, 8, Chaparral Middle School; Alexander Garcia, 8, and Stefen Gutierrez, 7, Lauffer Middle School; Andrez Romero, 5, Los Amigos Elementary School; and Natalie Tejeda Babers, 4, Los Ranchitos Elementary School.

Citizen Staff Writer

ARTHUR H. ROTSTEIN

The Associated Press

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said Thursday it is soliciting information to update the status of 23 endangered or threatened species in Arizona, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Texas.

Spokesman Jeff Humphrey said the Endangered Species Act requires a review of listed plant and animal species every five years to see whether the classifications are still accurate or whether additional action, including full-fledged status reviews, are needed.

A new batch of species is reviewed every year.

State wildlife agency or university scientists usually provide the information, but the general public frequently contributes too, said Humphrey, who is based in Phoenix.

Information must be submitted by May 12.

“Sometimes what we get from the public is their awareness of increased threat,” he said. For example, if a county has slated a highway to go through a certain area, that might affect an animal’s migratory route.

Fish and Wildlife staffers who track various endangered or threatened species might not automatically know of potential threats from such projects, he added.

“Particularly in the area of threats, sometimes citizens have provided us good heads-up,” Humphrey said.

In addition, he said there is an increasing emphasis on citizen science – such as bird counts and surveys conducted by private citizens keyed to shifts in the behavior, migration or habitat patterns of animals and plants.

Such efforts, he said, “are becoming more and more relevant to us as we look at more long-term pictures of species,” Humphrey said.

He cited work being done by the USA National Phenology Network involving federal agencies, academic institutions and citizen scientists. The University of Arizona-based project studies changes in plant and animal life cycle events influenced by climate change.

Humphrey said the review itself won’t result in a change of status for any listed species but could trigger a full-blown review of the listing, for instance to evaluate the recovery plan being used.

Among the protected species under review this year are the Gila chub (a fish), masked bobwhite quail, Mexican long-nosed bat and the Texas poppy-mallow, a wildflower.

Feds seeking endangered species update information

Citizen Staff Writer
LAW AND ORDER REPORT

A.J. FLICK

ajflick@tucsoncitizen.com

Two half brothers were convicted Tuesday of kidnapping, sexual assault and other crimes related to an illegal criminal enterprise that prosecutors say involved intimidating vulnerable women to do their bidding.

Howard Ned McMonigal III, 36, was convicted of five counts each of kidnapping, four counts of sexual assault, three counts of theft and one count each of conducting an illegal enterprise, aggravated assault, illegal possession of a vehicle and possession of meth.

McMonigal bowed his head and wiped his eyes as the verdicts were read.

Deputy County Attorney Kellie Johnson said McMonigal will likely spend the rest of his life in prison when he is sentenced March 23.

Ignacio Esteban Rimer, 30, was convicted of one count each of conducting an illegal enterprise, kidnapping, aggravated assault and sexual assault.

McMonigal was acquitted of one count of kidnapping; Rimer was acquitted of two counts of kidnapping.

After jurors left the courtroom, McMonigal put his arm around his brother.

Courthouse officers quickly surrounded the brothers as Pima County Superior Court Judge Gus Aragon warned McMonigal that he was not behaving appropriately.

“I’m just hugging my brother,” McMonigal said, eventually dropping his arm.

Some members of the jury entered the courtroom after the verdicts were read and sat in the audience.

As Rimer was being handcuffed, he turned to the jurors and denied harming any women.

“I might be rough around the edges, but I’d never do that to a female,” he said. “Never!”

Aragon admonished Rimer to be quiet as officers pulled him, still protesting, out of the courtroom.

Johnson said in trial that McMonigal ran an illegal enterprise out of his mobile home for at least three years since 2004 and made a living selling drugs and stolen vehicles.

Citizen Staff Writer
LAW AND ORDER REPORT

A.J. FLICK

ajflick@tucsoncitizen.com

On Jan. 12, 2008, Jose Luis “Guapo” Rincon was struck down and killed by a drunken driver one month past his 14th birthday.

Glenda Lorraine Rumsey, 43, will spend the next 14 years of her life in prison for Rincon’s death, injuries to his best friend and driving drunk.

Pima County Superior Court Judge Richard S. Fields imposed the sentence Tuesday for a manslaughter conviction in Rincon’s death along with a concurrent 13-year term for aggravated assault to a minor for injuries suffered by Oscar Perez, then also 14.

The judge imposed concurrent 180-day jail sentences for three driving under the influence convictions.

Fields noted before sentencing that he wouldn’t impose consecutive sentences – for which Rumsey could have been sent to prison for more than 40 years – because of appellate issues that are sure to be raised.

Rumsey, who will be credited with 56 days for time served, sat through an often emotional three-hour sentencing hearing before more than 300 people. It was moved from the courthouse to the Board of Supervisors hearing room to accommodate the expected crowd.

“Your honor, I’m ashamed to be here today in front of all these people as a life has been lost because of something I will regret for the rest of my life,” Rumsey said. “It will be a reminder of my poor judgment of driving under the influence.”

Rumsey appeared disheveled in her orange jail jumpsuit, with her ankles shackled and hands cuffed to her waist.

“On Jan. 12, 2008, a life was lost due to my poor judgment, although at the time I didn’t realize it. I was proved wrong,” Rumsey said.

“I had no right driving that evening. Jose Rincon was in the right and I was in the wrong.”

Tests showed Rumsey’s blood alcohol content was almost 0.25 percent, more than three times the 0.08 level at which a driver is presumed drunk.

“Jose did not deserve to die that night,” the surviving victim, Perez, said before sentencing. “To have been there with him, seeing how the thing happened is the saddest experience I’ve had to go through.

“I was right by his side, crying, worried, praying and hoping he would be OK, that he would make it through. But he didn’t.”

Deputy County Attorney Mark Diebolt asked for a minimum 18-year sentence, calling Rumsey “a professional drunk.”

Diebolt said Rincon’s death “in all likelihood” saved Rumsey’s children, ages 10 and 12.

“He gave his life so they could live. Based on her history . . . if she didn’t kill Jose, she would have killed somebody else, if not her own children.”

Defense attorney Stephen Paul Barnard noted that Rincon’s family expressed a “lot of emotion, even some expression of hate.”

“That’s normal. That’s vengeance.

“But, you know, law here isn’t about vengeance. That’s somebody else’s job. It’s about justice.”

Rumsey’s best friend and her former employer spoke on her behalf before sentencing.

Sherry Bayomi said over the 30 years she has known Rumsey, she was a kind and generous friend.

“No one can punish Glenda more than she will punish herself for this tragedy for the rest of her life,” Bayomi said.

Attorney Jeff Katz said Rumsey was a tireless and reliable employee whom he trusted with almost every aspect of his business.

“I truly believe this is a good person, not a bad person, who did a very bad thing,” Katz said.

The most emotional testimony came from Rincon’s grandfather, parents and sisters.

Rodolfo “Rudy” Bejarano, a former city councilman, said his grandson’s death broke his heart.

“Never in my life, never at any time did I shed tears,” Bejarano said, recalling loved ones who have died.

“But since Jan. 12 at about 7:45, you may see something on my face. You would think that they are tears. They are not. What they are, judge, it’s my soul that is bleeding for my grandson.”

Jose Rincon’s father recalled the happy times that led up to his namesake son’s death.

The night before, father and son shared a night by themselves.

He recounted how the frightened family gathered when they heard that Jose had been injured.

“In trauma they call the first hour (after a patient is brought in) the golden hour,” Rincon said. “I call it 40 minutes of hell that I relive every Saturday night.”

Rincon’s voice rose when he recalled what he’d been told about Rumsey’s actions at the crash scene, including testimony from an officer that Rumsey said, “If I killed that kid, my life is over.”

“If HER life is over!” Rincon said.

“If her life is over, it’s by her own doing, not my son’s! Period!”

Adriana Rincon, Jose’s mother, described how she used to love dinnertime. She would fix dinner and listen to music with her daughters doing homework in the kitchen and Jose raiding the cupboard, despite her pleas that he shouldn’t ruin his appetite.

“Dinnertime was joyous,” she said.

“Dinnertime is now almost painful for me,” Rincon said. “My daughters do their homework elsewhere. I have no need for music. I call them all for dinner and we all sit down together as a family. The meal I have prepared has the basics, but there’s no flavor. It’s like a metaphor for my life. I’m doing everything I need to do, but I’m missing the flavor.”

Adriana Rincon said she felt some envy toward Rumsey, because she would one day be able to participate in her children’s lives.

“She gave my son the death sentence,” Rincon said. “And with that, she gave his family and friends a life sentence. And there was no chance to plead.”

Jose Rincon’s surviving siblings also addressed the court and presented a montage of videos and family photos that occasionally made the audience chuckle.

“He always protected me,” said Julissa, 8. “I wouldn’t mind that he took care of me. I wish you could have met him. You would have liked him.”

Gabriela “Gaby” Rincon, 16, was especially close to her little brother.

” ‘Guapo’ and I were always together,” she said. “We were a duo, a team, two halves to a whole.

“I lost my brother. I lost my best friend. I lost my confidant,” she said. “Now it’s just me. Your honor, I lost me. I lost my other half.

“Today, I’m asking you to fulfill your responsibility of sending Glenda Rumsey a message, sending a message out to Tucson, that not under any circumstances, drunk driving will not be tolerated and it is not OK.”

MORE ONLINE

The last few hours of Jose Luis Rincon’s young life were spent with friends.

Glenda Lorraine Rumsey, then 42, spent the last few hours of Jose’s life drinking with friends at a Mexican restaurant.

Their two lives merged that evening, about a quarter past seven, on a darkened East Side street, killing one and incarcerating the other.

To read more, go to tucsoncitizen.com/ss/local/108112.php.

Citizen Staff Writer

TEYA VITU

tvitu@tucsoncitizen.com

The city will assume all employee matters Feb. 6 at the Fox Theatre, including laying off half the staff.

The move comes as the Fox Tucson Theatre Foundation finds itself with $40,000 in the bank and about $60,000 in monthly expenses, said Rich Singer, Fox’s executive director, who is on loan from the Tucson Convention Center.

“They did this because they are financially in very bad shape,” Singer said.

The foundation’s executive committee Tuesday decided to lay off the eight-member staff, but only four employees will be fully cut. The other four employees will be on the TCC payroll, a shift Singer had already implemented when he became executive director in November.

The city owns the 1930 Fox Theatre, 17 W. Congress St., and has a 50-year lease with the foundation which operates it. The foundation will continue to program and handle operating expenses, Singer said.

“It’s giving the foundation an opportunity to focus more on growing as a successful board,” Singer said. “There will be no net increase in cost to the city.”

He said show promoters pay the costs of theater staff such as technicians and box office, but the workers get paid through the TCC.

Singer does not know how long the city will handle Fox staffing, but he said the city wants to return full operation of the theater to the foundation.

“A nonprofit organization can do things that a city won’t,” he said. “They are much better in fundraising and developing their own program. We run rental programs (at the TCC). Not once do we put together a single program.”

Singer attributed Fox’s problems to being a startup with a large facility with large expenses. He said artistic startups typically begin in someone’s home and grow, rather than as a full-fledged operation without an established base.

The Fox reopened Dec. 31, 2005, following a $13 million restoration after being shuttered since 1974.

Nearly the entire staff joined the Fox in 2008, in the waning days of founding executive director Herb Stratford or in the short term of former executive director Jim Williams.

Singer said TCC staffers will assume the duties of the four losing their jobs Feb. 6. The four:

• Patty Yates, business manager

• Robert Bella Hernandez, development and marketing coordinator

• Julie Ragland, events coordinator

• Eric Holm, front of house manager

Singer will try to keep bookkeeper Jenny Bergdoll, who is already working half-time. Box office manager Colleen Sottosanti will likely stay on at the Fox, but as a TCC employee.

Production manager Tracy Odishaw and sound engineer Rocky Richardson were put on the TCC payroll in November, Singer said. The two were cut from full time to working events only, and they are occasionally used at TCC.

“Their lives won’t be substantially different,” Singer said.

City takes control of staffing at ailing Fox Theatre

They are financially in very bad shape.

Citizen Staff Writer

SHERYL KORNMAN

skornman@tucsoncitizen.com

Sunny skies are predicted Saturday through Tuesday with higher temperatures that could open the Catalina Highway up Mount Lemmon to skiers.

Tucsonans could not ski at Ski Valley on Friday because the road remained closed at the base of the mountain to all but residents and those who work there.

Vehicles needed chains or four-wheel drive to be permitted on the road, according to the Pima County Sheriff’s Department.

The road was closed Friday after snow and gusty winds toppled trees and shut off power to most of the residents and businesses on Mount Lemmon.

Power was restored by midafternoon Friday.

The National Weather Service in Tucson said the Friday night low in the Tucson area will be 29 degrees.

That means Operation Deep Freeze, which provides shelter to the homeless during freezing weather, will be in effect Friday evening.

Rain is expected to continue through the evening and taper off overnight.

Heavy snow was accumulating in areas above 3,000 feet Friday. Gusty winds accompanied the snow.

Forecasts are for mostly sunny skies with temperatures in the mid-40s during the day Saturday.

Sunday’s high should be in the mid-50s.

There were no reports of anyone harmed as a result of Friday’s power outage on Mount Lemmon.

Ron Brown, manager of electric operations for Trico Electric Corp., which supplies power on the mountain, said the company has 430 customers on Mount Lemmon, including the TV and radio stations that have broadcast towers there.

ROAD INFORMATION

Planning to go up to Mount Lemmon to play in the snow?

Call the Pima County Sheriff’s Department’s road condition line at 547-7510 for the latest road conditions and to find out if the road is open.

For Mount Lemmon Ski Valley call 576-1321 or for snow conditions call 576-1400.