RYN GARGULINSKI

rynski@tucsoncitizen.com

Some people who live near the intersection of East Grant Road and North Alvernon Way used to avoid shops there.

“People want to shop near their homes,” said Blanche White, 73, president of the Oak Flower Neighborhood Association, one of four neighborhoods bordering the intersection.

But “in one neighborhood meeting, someone said, ‘I don’t feel safe there, so I drive to another place farther away.’

“That was really eye opening, I think.”

Since that meeting some months back, the four neighborhood associations – Oak Flower, Garden District, Palo Verde and Dodge Flower – have worked with area businesses and organizations to make shopping a safer and more pleasant experience.

The associations are honoring seven with Business Good Neighbor Awards at 10 a.m. Saturday at the Tucson Botanical Gardens Pavilion, 2150 N. Alvernon Way.

The Botanical Gardens is one of the honorees for offering its facilities for neighborhood meetings and special events.

The others are Specialists in Dermatology, Northgate Laundromat & Cleaners, Fry’s, Emmanuel Baptist Church, Sign-A-Rama and Emerge!

Those honored will get a certificate and a placard proclaiming they make good neighbors to place in their front windows.

“We have a lot of neighborhood businesses that are deserving,” White said. She added that more awards will be forthcoming.

The two businesses in her neighborhood, Specialists in Dermatology and Northgate Laundromat & Cleaners, both had good reason to nab the awards.

The dermatology practice worked with residents even before the office was built a few years back. Some employees have attended neighborhood cleanups.

The laundromat has increased security by making sure a worker is always present and posting a security guard at night.

“One of the problems we have is the panhandlers that hang out in the parking lot,” White said. “Businesses have made more efforts to put security guards out, to walk people to their cars if they don’t feel safe. It’s improved considerably.”

The entire area has improved, said Tucson Police Department Capt. David Neri, who is in charge of the midtown division.

The Good Neighbor Awards are just one phase of a larger program, the Alvernon-Grant Initiative. Those involved include the associations, area businesses, Tucson police, City Council Wards 3 and 6, and Pima County Supervisor Districts 3 and 5.

Efforts began about four years ago, Neri said. One of the most successful phases started in February 2008.

“In our first monthly report, we removed in excess of 40 weapons off the street,” Neri said. A number of arrests and confiscated narcotics also were part of the effort.

“It’s far safer now than it has ever been.”

Progress has been marked from February 2008 to February 2009 with a 60 percent reduction in burglaries, auto thefts and all types of fraud, leading to a 13 percent overall dip in crime.

“It’s really a great project,” said George Pettit, spokesman for Councilwoman Karin Uhlich’s Ward 3 office. “People are working hard trying to turn around the neighborhood. It’s really a feel good kind of thing.”

RYN GARGULINSKI

rynski@tucsoncitizen.com

My friend is sitting around waiting for his lizard to die.

Well, he’s not really just sitting around waiting. He still goes to work, watches baseball on TV and plays video games while his lizard refuses to eat and becomes increasingly lethargic.

But he won’t take the lizard to the vet. He says it’s ridiculous to pay what he expects would be an astronomical bill for “a $30 pet.”

That reminds me of one of my rats who had a tumor. I later found out rats are highly susceptible to tumors, could live years with the things and the tumors were usually benign.

The vet wanted $2,000 for surgery. This was a $2 pet. A feeder rat. We didn’t get the surgery.

The rat did live for years and still ate, slept and ran in that rolly ball thing with his usual fervor (though the ball kind of turned lopsided after awhile).

So while I can relate to my friend to a certain extent, getting a pet should be kind of like a marriage: for better for worse, ’til death do us part.

And death should not be sped up by avoiding the vet.

My dog Sawyer tested this theory early on when he ate a small handful of river rocks in Oregon.

One of the smooth, slippery stones was only about an inch wide but a hefty 4 inches long. I know because I still have it.

While the rock slipped down Sawyer’s throat just fine, it then lodged sideways at the top of his intestine.

His head bloated like a parade float as toxins backed up in his system.

He was a $60 dog, facing an $800 stomach surgery. Yet I still thought it ludicrous when one of my co-workers suggested I could put him to sleep, as euthanasia was cheaper than the surgery.

The horror.

Another horror is the path some other folks take when they find their pets too expensive.

They let pets loose in the desert.

Roadkill calls have jumped from 159 in October to 223 in March, according to the Pima Animal Care Center. This hefty increase is most likely brought about, at least in part, by abandonment.

Still others leave pets behind after they’ve been evicted or their homes have been foreclosed.

Such things are more sickening, even, than eating 4-inch river rocks.

Even those faced with seemingly insurmountable vet bills have found a way to pay them.

Lizzie Mead and her two greyhounds – Opal and Rider – were victims of a hit-and-run in October. This left her with a $14,300 bill and a dog whose eye popped out.

The amount has been paid as of May 1. Money was raised through generous donations, extra customers at Mead’s Silver Sea Jewelry & Gifts store on Fourth Avenue, and a beaded bracelet campaign.

The beaded bracelets were so gloriously successful, Mead kept up the campaign after the vet bill was paid to raise an additional $1,164 to save two retired racing hounds from Guam.

For better for worse. ‘Til death do us part. All for the love of pets.

The pets, yes, they love us back, save for one dog I had that constantly crapped on my pillow.

Even with lots of love, not all pet tales have happy endings.

My childhood gerbil was accidentally slain when he bit someone and the person hurled him back into the cage.

My adult miniature pinscher was murdered when some jerk decided to get back at me through my dog.

A friend’s baby alligator died when it was forgotten in a shoebox atop a kitchen cabinet for the entire summer.

My mom’s childhood parakeet got loose and landed in a sizzling frying pan.

Tragedies happen, but we are still obligated to do the best for our pets regardless of circumstance.

Never chuck them in the middle of the desert. Never shove them in a shoebox for the summer. And never fry pirogi while a bird is loose in the house.

Ryn Gargulinski is a poet, artist and Tucson Citizen reporter who still owes her folks $800 for Sawyer’s stomach surgery.

Listen to a preview of her column at 8:10 a.m. Thursdays on KLPX 96.1 FM. Listen to her webcast at 4 p.m. Fridays at www.party934.com.

E-mail: rynski@tucsoncitrizen.com

ON THE WEB

An update on Lizzie Mead and the greyhounds can be found at greyhoundinjuryfund.wordpress.com.

Ever wonder what’s up when your dog incessantly chases his tail or your cat bats at your head?

You can find out Saturday if you attend Communicating with Your Pet, a free service from 10:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. at HOPE Animal Shelter, 2011 E. 12th St.

Reiki Master and pet socializer Judy Ferrigno will be on hand to spend time with folks who bring in their dog or cat for a 10- to 15-minute consultation.

For more information, call 792-9200 or visit Tucson’s only no-kill dog and cat shelter’s site at www.hopeanimalshelter.net.

RYN GARGULINSKI

rynski@tucsoncitizen.com

RYN GARGULINSKI

rynski@tucsoncitizen.com

School may be out soon, but free meals will still be in for Sunnyside Unified School District.

Starting June 1 and running through July 24, free breakfast and lunch will be served to kids 8 and younger who live within the district’s boundaries, according to a district news release.

Breakfast will be from 7:30 to 8:30 a.m. and lunch served from 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. at the the following locations:

• Billy Lane Lauffer Middle School, 5385 E. Littletown Road

• Challenger Middle School, 100 E. Elvira Road

• Craycroft Elementary School, 5455 E. Littletown Road

• Gallego Basic Elementary School, 6200 S. Hemisphere Place

• Liberty Elementary School, 5495 S. Liberty Ave.

• Santa Clara Elementary School, 6910 S. Santa Clara Ave.

• Sierra Middle School, 5801 S. Del Moral Blvd.

• Sunnyside High School, 1725 E. Bilby Road

• San Xavier Indian Community Education Center, 1960 Wa:k Lane

RYN GARGULINSKI

rynski@tucsoncitizen.com

Three-digit temperatures have hit Tucson, making it an ideal time for the Salvation Army’s Operation Chill Out to begin.

The summer donation campaign for homeless people starts Wednesday.

“With the heat rising, more displaced and at-risk Tucsonans are going to find themselves needing important resources such as water and basic day-to-day items,” said Salvation Army spokeswoman Tamara McElwee.

To enhance this year’s efforts, the Salvation Army has teamed up with Walgreens and Naughton’s Plumbing, Heating and Cooling.

Walgreens locations throughout the city are hosting summer specials where customers can purchase select, tagged items found near the register that are donated to the Salvation Army.

Walgreens’ Sierra Vista store, which piloted the program, has seen about $100 worth of the tagged bottled water, soup, seasonal items and other goods donated each week.

People can also donate bottled water, hats, sunglasses, sunblock and lip balm by dropping them off at The Hospitality House, 1021 N. 11th Ave., or one of five Naughton’s locations:

• 1140 W. Prince Road

• 3940 W. Costco Drive

• 4226 S. Sixth Ave.

• 6062 E. Speedway Blvd.

• 8190 E. 22nd St.

Peeing in the shower can be a good thing – as long as your drain works, you don’t have some disgusting urinary infection and no one is in the shower with you.

It helps saves the environment by flushing with water you are using anyway, it can help kick athlete’s foot and, according to the highly scientific Glamour magazine, urine is sterile and nontoxic.

In these germ-o-phobic days of swine flu where surgical masks are often designated outerwear, it’s only fair to clean up some germy myths.

Like public restroom toilet seats give you gads of diseases. Quite frankly, they are one of the cleanest parts of the restroom, at home and in public.

“There are no butt-borne diseases,” said Charles Gerba, a University of Arizona microbiologist, garbologist and well-known “germ guru” who has studied such stuff for several decades.

“People are scared of toilets,” he said, which is one of the reasons they are so germ-free. Folks clean the crap out of them.

“There is more fecal bacteria in the kitchen sink than there is in most toilets,” Gerba added. “That’s why dogs drink out of the toilets.”

This just proves dogs can sense certain things, such as ghosts, upcoming storms and fecal bacteria.

Gerba also admits there may be some credence to the belief that dog saliva is fairly clean, but he’ll still shirk from getting a wet one on the face by a well-meaning canine.

“I don’t like being licked by any animal that uses its tongue as toilet paper,” he confessed.

The most germ-infested item in a hospital may also surprise you. It’s not the bathroom door, the toilet bowl handle or the call buttons.

It’s the television remote control.

“In the home, too, it’s at the top of the list,” he said. “Everybody with the flu jumps into the bed with the TV remote.”

Other germs thrive in the soft fibers of the carpet.

“Carpeting builds up a lot of bugs,” he said. “We started working with UV lights and were surprised how much E. coli is in there.”

The original thought was it would be too dry for such stuff to thrive, but Gerba said food festering between fibers might be doing the trick to entice bacteria.

“It’s like a Happy Meal for them.”

I shudder to imagine the banquet going on in my vintage 1970s orange shag rugs.

Ugh.

But even carpeting and the TV remote cannot compete with the germiest thing in the home – the kitchen sponge.

“Every time you wipe it around, you’re giving bacteria free ride,” he said.

Replace the sponge once a week, throw it in the washing machine or nuke it in the microwave for 30 seconds or so.

Other places that could use some washing are found at the workplace.

Like that nozzle in the office water cooler. Gerba didn’t bring this one up, but Assistant City Editor Mark Evans reminds us often.

He stands in the break room while folks fill up their water bottles and asks them, “Do you know how many germs are on that thing?”

He then steps forward to fill up his own megatumbler.

Telephones, desktops, keyboards and the poor old computer mouse are the germiest things in the office, Gerba said.

That, and the first floor elevator button. It’s good Tucson doesn’t have many buildings that stretch above one floor.

While I hate to admit this, Gerba also said women’s desktops are much germier than men’s.

No, men aren’t necessarily neater, he said, but women have certain habits.

“Seventy percent of women store food in their desk,” he said. Again, it’s an E. coli playground. At least I am proud to say there’s no food in my desk.

The mice that prowl around the office went and ate it all.

As long as they followed the dogs’ lead and washed it down with toilet water, I guess it’s OK.

Ryn Gargulinski is a poet, artist and Tucson Citizen reporter who intends to to steam-clean her vintage carpet.

Listen to a preview of her column at 8:10 a.m. Thursdays on KLPX 96.1 FM.

Listen to her webcast at 4 p.m. Fridays at www.party934.com.

E-mail: rynski@tucsoncitrizen.com

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.

RYN GARGULINSKI

rynski@tucsoncitizen.com

Andrea Santa Cruz spent 16 years in drug-addicted hell. That turned two of her five kids into TV stars.

Her 13-year-old son, Frankie Santa Cruz, and her 12-year-old daughter, Aerica Santa Cruz, are main characters in this year’s public service announcements on TV for the region’s new anti-drug campaign.

“I feel sorry for the person who encourages any one of us to try some type of drug,” Frankie said to a room full of people who attended the Wednesday news conference to kick off the campaign.

Funded by a $258,000 federal Community Oriented Policing Services, or COPS, Methamphetamine grant, the campaign is a partnership of the Counter Narcotics Alliance, Tucson police and the Meth Free Alliance.

It includes five PSAs, posters and the message “Choose to Refuse.”

“As soon as you tell a kid ‘No,’ that’s what they want to do,” said Counter Narcotics Alliance Capt. Terry Rozema. “This campaign encourages kids to make wise choices.”

Tucson police Chief Roberto Villaseñor said the only way to tackle the problem is with involvement from everyone.

“We cannot arrest the problem,” he said. “The county attorney cannot prosecute away the problem. Everyone has to work together. The community needs to be part of the process. It’s the epitome of community policing.”

The policing has also hit the Internet, with a Meth Free Alliance page on Facebook.com and peer support groups that will Twitter motivational messages.

Seventh-grader Frankie has been speaking out against drugs for a couple of years and has appeared in past PSAs. Rather than getting ridiculed at school, he gets respected – and even imitated.

“In my school, I’m considered famous,” he said. “They will see the PSA and mimic me.”

He was a natural on stage, likening addiction to a monster full of empty souls.

It’s a monster both his mother and father knew well.

“He was pretty straight-laced when I met him,” Andrea Santa Cruz, 38, said of her husband. But meth, and other drugs, took care of that.

The couple, who still are married, spiraled downward until there was nowhere to go but up.

She hit bottom with her mom dying in January 2003 and Child Protective Services taking her children five months later.

“I was lost. My heart felt empty,” she said. “I just lost six of the most important people in my life.”

Her husband, too, entered a program and moved out of state until both were more stable in their recovery.

Major changes came with getting clean, she said. The couple got their five kids back.

Instead of fearing CPS, Santa Cruz now works for the agency.

She also staffs the phones for the Meth Free Alliance, tells her story whenever it will help and appears in public service spots from a previous campaign.

She’s recognized on the street.

“People have come up to me and said, ‘Because of you being so bold, my daughter has been clean for three months.’ ”

She also recalled how fellow motorists will pull their cars up to hers and give her a hearty thumbs up.

Rozema, of the Counter Narcotics Alliance, has had a different experience with motorists.

“I never had people pull up to me and give me the thumbs up,” he said. “It’s always a different finger.”

On the Web

Meth Free Alliance:

• www.meth-free-alliance.org

• Phone: 388-4711

• Also see its Facebook page:

http://www.facebook.com/

home.php#/pages/Meth-Free-

Alliance/74794503216?ref=s

RYN GARGULINSKI

rynski@tucsoncitizen.com

In an economy where everything seems to be going downhill, one statistic has soared: complaints against work-at-home scams.

The complaints have jumped 275 percent – from 226 to 848 – from the first quarter of 2008, according to Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard.

They have also moved from the No. 3 to the No. 1 position on the Attorney General’s Office’s top 10 list of complaints.

“Scam artists can make risky business opportunities seem like an attractive option for hardworking consumers,” Goddard said.

“During hard economic times, more consumers are worried about making financial ends meet and more scams prey on that need.”

The complaints have soared as the state jobless rate rose to 7.8 percent from 6.9 percent in December 2007.

Work-at-home schemes generally fall into two categories. Work-at-home opportunities offer people the chance to set up their own business at home while work-at-home companies hire people to work from home for the benefit of a parent company.

The majority of the complaints involve Internet-based opportunities, Goddard’s office reports.

Many of them also involve paying an initial fee of $500 to $1,000, according to a news release from Goddard’s office.

When the business isn’t panning out, the promoter then tries to wheedle even more money out of the consumer to pay for advertising and marketing.

After the promoter collects the cash, consumers often find the business either fails altogether or doesn’t make enough to offset what they have already paid to start it, the news release said.

The Better Business Bureau of Southern Arizona has been inundated with inquiries about work-at-home companies.

Over the past three years, these inquiries have tripled with the BBB, topping off at 3,275 in 2008. This was up from 791 in 2006 and 1,873 in 2007.

RYN GARGULINSKI

rynski@tucsoncitizen.com

What do you get when you mix 50 folks ages 99 through 106 for 90 minutes to reminisce and schmooze?

One heck of a party.

Pima Council on Aging’s 22nd annual Salute to Centenarians was planned for Friday morning at Tucson Medical Center, just in time to kick off May as Older Americans Month. We chose three of the honorees to profile.

Dorothy Kruppenbacher

Born Feb. 25, 1909

Anyone wishing to catch a word with Dorothy Kruppenbacher has to first catch Kruppenbacher.

That is not an easy task. If the 100-year-old Brooklyn-born beauty is not in the middle of a trip back to New York City, she may be heading to California for the weekend.

She’s been to Italy, England, Australia, France and all the Scandinavian countries, and just returned from Florida last week.

“I like to travel,” she said, “and I’ll do it as long as I can.”

Her favorite stop was probably Germany because her parents were born there, but she falls in love with most every place she meets.

“I loved living in Cape Cod,” she recalled.

Constantly being on the go may have helped Kruppenbacher stay so young at heart, but she quickly revealed another secret of her longevity.

“Having six children,” she said with a laugh. “I’m glad I made it.”

Her oldest child is a 77-year-old daughter. Her youngest is a 60-year-old daughter with whom she lives. Four sons came in between.

“My children have been very good to me,” said Kruppenbacher, who is also grandmother to 14 and great-grandmother to 18.

“I love to take care of little children. I love just watching them now, as old as I am,” she said. “When they come to visit, the children always talk to me. They’re so cute, honestly.”

Kruppenbacher treats her family as well as she treats herself.

In fact, she was on her way out the door Wednesday afternoon with her daughter Diane Jackson to her nail appointment.

“She’s an amazing woman,” Jackson said. “For a lot of people she’s a role model.”

Walter Michael Sr.

Born June 25, 1907

Walter Michael has had many notable moments in his 101 years, including hanging out with a murderer.

The killer was Winnie Ruth Judd, who shot her two roommates. She disposed of the bodies by shoving them into steamer trunks, dismembering one of the bodies in the process.

Michael first ran into Judd when he was chairman of the Arizona Board of Pardons and Paroles and denied her parole in 1969.

She was released from prison two years later yet kept in touch with Michael.

“She was the sweetest, kindest old lady you ever saw,” he said. “I sent her back to prison and she loved me ever since.”

Judd even called him the day before she died in 1998, asking him to pay her a visit in Phoenix.

“I think she wanted to tell me secrets she had,” he said, perhaps who helped her chop up the body. “I’m always sorry I didn’t go.”

Other notable moments during his 75 years as member of the Tennessee Bar Association include sitting in on the Scopes Monkey Trial and watching a 1919 Tennessee vote act as a tie breaker for a deadlocked national vote regarding women’s suffrage.

Michael met Annie Pope at a bridge game and married her in 1941. They moved to Arizona for their son’s health after their first child died of cystic fibrosis at 18 months.

Michael said there is no secret to longevity – “I was not a virtuous person” – but does say that not smoking or drinking has surely helped. “With a good heart and liver, you can get around pretty well physically.”

The biggest change he’s noted in the last century is not necessarily a change for the better.

“We’re becoming more savage,” he said of the human race. “We’re not big enough to police and tame the world.”

Carmen Amado Acevedo

Born Jan. 2, 1909

Carmen Amado Acevedo’s biggest life-changing moment happened 89 years ago, but she remembers it as if it were yesterday.

When Acevedo was 11, her mom was the victim in the first recorded motor vehicle fatality in Arizona.

“No one ever told us she was dead,” Acevedo recalled. “We went to town thinking we were going to take care of her.”

She and her six siblings found out otherwise when their aunt told them the real story.

Her mother’s death prompted the family’s move from their ranch in Amado, which bears their name, to Tucson.

Acevedo and her cousin were fixtures on the social scene, often cruising Congress Street looking for friends.

“We had a lot of fun,” she said. “We all got together and had ice cream.”

They also frequented the Blue Moon Ballroom, a popular dance hall from its opening in 1920 until it burnt down in 1947.

She even met her husband, Cornelia Acevedo, there. Actually, she first met him when she and her cousin were strolling along Congress and he drove by in a Packard.

“Driving a Packard was really something at the time,” she said. He asked her cousin to come dance and added, “Bring her, too.”

Cornelia ended up dancing with the cousin once and Carmen the rest of the night. They married four years later and stayed together until his death in 1973. They had one daughter.

A matter-of-fact attitude and a few basic necessities help keep Acevedo going.

“I live my life the best I can and that’s it,” said Acevedo, who still does her own gardening, takes frequent outings and can’t stand sitting around. “You need a smile, a hug and a laugh every day,” she advised. “Life is too short, but mine is long.”