(upbeat music) Tom - This week on Arizona Illustrated, saving plants from destruction with the Tucson Cactus and Succulent Society.

- There's a good number of people that just come out and want to make sure that all native plants we can get find a home.

We don't want to see them bulldozed.

We want to see them transplanted somewhere in the Tucson area.

Tom - Meet a community group dedicated to beautifying neighborhoods on Tucson's south side.

- We have pride in here.

There's so much culture, but we gotta show that in our streets too.

And if we do that, we can represent our neighborhood a little bit better.

Tom - Meet the man, the myth, the legend, Tucson's own quad guy.

- The more I drove around Tucson, the more interesting it became.

You can drive around downtown and pass by several bus stops and people are shouting and smiling at you and you experience that and you smile inside and you turn the corner and somebody goes, "Neezer!"

(laughs) - Mix emotions around town.

Yeah.

- And field notes on the elusive Gila monster.

(upbeat music) Tom - Hello and welcome to Arizona Illustrated.

I'm Tom McNamara.

The Tucson Cactus and Succulent Society has but one mission and that is to protect the cactus and other succulents from destruction or loss of habitat.

Since their founding in 1999, they've saved well over 120,000 plants and their mission is far from over.

(beeping) (Steve) We're going to start with a little Charlie Brown saguaro that we're going to take to Waterman and then the second one is about three and a half foot.

It's about on the upper end of his range and it's just beyond that palo verde at the property line.

And we're going to go just a little bit west of that and we'll find that plant.

All right, let's do it.

(Dick) When cactus people close their eyes and think about what heaven looks like, this is it.

Starting in 1999, we started working with developers as they have an area that they want to develop in their homes, schools , et cetera.

They call upon us to come in prior to them doing any blading, and we rescue all the small plants, the plants that they would never consider taking out.

We also take out any saguaros that they'll let us have.

(Steve) So now we just wind the maypole.

(Donna) Let's go this way over by the cholla maybe.

We have to get permits from the Arizona Department of Agriculture and we have to get tags.

(soft music) (Grace) My grandparents bought this property in 1946, it was originally 160 acres and they built one home towards the west side of the property.

But then one day my grandmother counted twelve cars on the road and that was just too much.

So instead of relocating, they built a second bigger home further back on the property in 1966.

My dad and his brother were both born in Tucson and grew up on this property, and my sister and I were both born in Tucson and grew up on the property.

So it's been three generations of us to live here.

(Claire) I don't think most kids have this much space to run free so there's definitely lots of exploring the desert building forts.

(Grace) We've definitely had to run from javelina a time or two.

The property is being sold to a developer of homes.

So what you see around us all this desert is going to be turned into ranch style homes.

It's going to be a big neighborhood.

But we are keeping five acres of it.

Every time we've come back on the property It has changed so much and more and more plant life has been cleared out and it looks completely different.

And it's hard to look at because it's just not the same as when we were little, and we know that it's going to be unrecognizable pretty soon.

So we're thankful to have pictures and memories as it is going to change quite a bit.

[power tool noise] (Steve) All right, so we're right here.

Okay.

And so we're doing this narrow.

It's going to be a sewer line.

Gotcha.

The boundaries are not well marked.

OK, you're going to have to give it your best guess.

And then once you take the plant, remove the flag and so everybody else doesn't come out of there looking for it .

I coordinate the training out in the field.

I have about six folks that work with me.

They're designated to monitor the boundaries, help people with the technique of rescuing the plants so that the plants will have the best chance of survival after transplant.

They're instructors, as well as safety enforcers, so they help people know how to do all of this without any injuries.

(Dick) All the rescue people know that if I don't bleed on a rescue, it's not very good.

We're not afraid of getting stuck by spines.

We enjoy it.

We're crazy.

There's no getting around it.

(Steve) This one is so light that Dick normally throws this over your shoulder and walks out.

(Dick) My favorite cactus, of course, is the queen of the night the Peniocereus greggii.

Sometime in June, it starts producing a flower.

Fairly large blooms at night attracts moths.

It's a fascinating plant, and it really just excites everybody because of its beauty when it blooms and it's its lack of of anything when it's not in bloom.

(Steve) They're very hard to spot.

They look like a dead stick.

[power tool noise] So the first part is like a little archeology dig here.

Oh, here it is.

See that how I scratch it a little bit right there, the dirt.

They'll excavate all around it and then they'll come in from the side and they'll carefully brush the dirt off of the tuber.

That looks like a little elongated turnip.

And then the connective top is so fragile that then when they do take it out of the ground, they'll carry it like a baby back to make sure that it doesn't break away the tuber in the top.

This year, they bloomed over about a three week period.

In one microclimate they'll all bloom at the same time.

That alone is enough for an excuse to get out and walk in the desert at night and have a margarita after and just enjoy June in Tucson.

[music] (Steve) Shall we?

(Donna) So it's really cool because I'm looking at these saguaros in my pickup truck this morning and saying, Hey, guys, wait until you see what your new home is going to look like.

And it really is spectacular.

The saguaros that we rescued at the construction site, we drove them out here.

We're out at the Waterman restoration site and we're planting the three saguaros that we rescued.

And then they have new homes and they have a spectacular view of the mountains.

It's really a lot of fun to plant them.

And the other thing is that we can come visit them because this is public land (Dick) We are the largest local cactus and succulent society in the world, and we've rescued over 120,000 plants in the last 22 years.

(Steve) There's a good number of people that just come out and want to make sure that all native plants we can get find a home.

We don't want to see them bulldozed.

We want to see them transplanted somewhere in the Tucson area and saved.

Tom - Barrio Restoration is a local community effort to clean up landscape and beautify streets and neighborhoods in South Tucson and to create a clean, safe and welcoming environment for all who live there.

(soft music) - Good morning.

- Good morning, how you doing?

- [Woman] I'm good, how are you?

Thank you, guys.

There's masks here and sanitizer.

- We got a project called Barrio Restoration, basically cleaning up the streets of South Tucson.

Today is our third community cleanup.

Team, follow each weed-eater.

All right, and if so, if you wanna get weeds with the shovel there... We have people from the Barrio Restoration Facebook and Instagram here today.

I got my family members showing some support.

We got some city officials here as well, so they're kind of all jumping onboard to make a difference here in the neighborhood.

I'd say maybe 20 people so far, and I still have people showing up here in the meantime.

Probably when the hot dog stand gets here, more people will show up as well.

- [KP] Barrio Restoration, David Garcia.

The homie David, he invited us out here because he's helped us a number of times in Western Hills, Las Vistas.

- [David] You guys like the bike?

(laughing) - My name's KP, and I'm an organizer.

I work in food security right now, but I'm also working in just anti-gentrification work and taking care of our spaces.

Tucson, Arizona, has become a home for me, and so I wanna take care of my home with my abilities in any way that I possibly can.

We're cleaning up invasive plants, invasive weeds.

You can just see all along the roads and all along the sides how it's unmaintained.

And we're just trying to clean these spaces up so that we can plant trees that grow in people's yards that create bountiful amounts of shade.

And then, if people wanted to use these spaces for gardening, we wanna be able to do that type of stuff.

(yard equipment whirring) - Yeah, well, I actually live in the northwest side, so I'm far from here, but I don't think that should matter.

It's Tucson.

We should be more tight.

It doesn't matter if you're from the north, west, east; we're all from Tucson.

And I feel like we should take care of it and really appreciate what we have.

With COVID and everything going on, I wanted to really start meeting my community and helping others and really just do something more proactive and more with my community.

I feel like we've lacked that in these last couple years, and it's important.

It's hot, I will say that, but everyone made me feel super welcome.

It really is a positive energy that we have out here.

Guys, how do you feel?!

(lawn equipment whirring) (soft acoustic guitar music) - Well, there's Tucson, and then you have South Tucson, all right?

And South Tucson is my hometown.

I mean, my whole family's on South Tucson, you know?

We've lived here for many years.

I just know that there's hard workers here, hard workers that beautify other areas, get paid, but don't get paid enough to do very much else.

I don't know how funds and stuff like that get allocated to kind of take care of areas.

I feel like maybe we're being neglected somehow.

We have pride in here.

There's so much culture, but we gotta show that in our streets too.

And if we do that, we can represent our neighborhood a little bit better, and all you need is a shovel.

And you create respect at the same time.

You gotta be the spark in the neighborhood to get that going.

We got Sonoran dogs, we have YOPOS hot dog stand.

Their hot dogs are feeding our community, but they're also supporting Barrio Restoration and the neighborhood.

The food isn't just for our volunteers.

I mean, I hope that we can get some of the people in the area to come out and eat too, just kinda get to know what we're doing.

- I think it's important because people need help.

People need help every day, especially right now; we're in a pandemic.

And I think now that we haven't been able to be close to one another, share space with one another, we need to be more collective in our efforts in every way, right?

'Cause you can live anywhere in the world, but it's nothing without community.

People are nothing without other people.

And it could be a community of any kind, right?

As long as you have it, people are a lot happier, a lot more sustaining.

And I think if people are well-intentioned and they aren't trying to be a part of gentrifying areas and things like that, it's definitely always welcomed.

Just come in, do your part, speak to people, know people, become a familiar face.

If you have any ideas or any expertise, lend that in any way that you possibly can and help people survive on a daily basis.

- When I look around and I see everyone working, it fills my heart, it really does, and it makes me wanna do more.

It makes me wanna be able to do it next week or even do events myself.

And look, now there's about 40-50 people here, and that's an amazing accomplishment.

(soft acoustic guitar music) It's the world that we're trying to change, and I feel like it starts by one step at a time, and this is one small step to something that can be bigger in the future.

- They're doing amazing work.

David is a community warrior and a community leader.

And we're all community leaders in our own way and we can all help and we can all get out here and do our own part.

We wanna all thrive and live fruitful lives, and I think that we're all pushing towards that.

- [David] I've been landscaping for the majority of my life.

My grandfather took me on my first cleanup when I was seven years old.

I honestly feel like what I've learned and what my grandpa showed me about cleaning yards, and I wanna show the kids too, this is our turf, you know?

This is the south side.

This is where we live.

This is full of pride, yet it takes hard work.

It takes a bit of sweat equity, right?

How we doin', how we doin'?

- Teamwork.

- All right, makes the dream work!

So, I've been at it for three years now, just a little bit at a time, making my presence in different neighborhoods, just trying to spread the word and inspire the people to do the same.

It's all about community.

It's all about getting people together.

And it's pretty amazing of how many people showed up today just to make this happen.

My grandpa, I've always wanted to make him proud, and I think I'm making him proud by using what he showed me to make a difference in the community.

(gentle music) - Now to find a Spanish translation of the previous story and many others from our archives, go to the website azpm.org slash Espanol.

We've been working with our exceptional student associate, Daniela Gonzalez from the Department of Spanish and Portuguese to translate our stories into the Spanish language.

Serving all communities in Southern Arizona equitably is very important to us.

And we'll be updating the page often with new translations and we hope you'll check it out.

Maybe you've seen them riding through downtown, the west side or hurtling through Gates Pass, even as far away as Bisbee.

One thing's for sure, there's more to him than meets the eye.

He's the legendary quad guy.

(Eddie) I am George Edward Rodieck, Junior.

I go by Eddie.

Never like being called George.

(off screen woman) And what do other people call you in town?

(Eddie) The quad guy.

[loud rock music] [telephone ringing] (robot voice) Your call has been forwarded to an automatic voice message system.

(Woman 1) Guess who I just saw?

With his hands in the air, his bandana waving.

It was Quad Man!

[phone message beeping] (Woman 2) I just saw him when I was grabbing a Presta coffee at the Mercado this morning.

[phone message beeping] (Woman 3) Tucson Quad Guy comes around the corner and all of a sudden my bad day became a good one.

[phone message beeping] (Man 1) When I'm driving down the road and my eye catches a glimpse of Quad Man.

I know it's going to be a good ----ing day.

[phone message beeping] (Woman 4) I just love this grown man living his life the way he wants.

[phone message beeping] [rock music ends] (Eddie) I classify myself as a Europeanized Persian American.

My parents traveled a lot.

[jazzy music] My dad was a pilot Full Bird colonel in the United States Army Air Corps, and then he was a commercial airline pilot.

And he met my mother in Iran.

She was a stewardess.

He was a captain.

And I love to tell everybody it was coffee, tea or me conceived in the cockpit.

When he retired, we were supposed to go to Colorado.

He was going to buy a fishing resort.

Can you imagine?

That would have been awesome, you know.

But he came here and he bought a liquor store and then they got divorced and I was shipped off to boarding school in England and then 11th grade in Iran.

And then my mother shipped me off here to a private boarding school, Fenster in Sabino Canyon.

And you talk about culture shock.

You you go to an English boarding school for two years with uniforms, barbers, very strict.

And then you go to a Fenster boarding school that was coed.

The girls were just across the lawn on the other side in a dorm.

And, you know, I.

You know, I enjoyed Fenster Boarding School.

I was married twice.

First time was three years.

Debbie left, and my mother came over.

She goes, I told you she would leave you, you know?

And I said, I know.

Impetuous as I was, I had this photograph of a family friend in Iran.

Next thing you know, I'm on the phone.

I said, You want to come to America and get married?

She goes, Oh, I don't know you.

I said, Will come to America.

We got married two months later and then.

So anyway, she divorced me.

It's kind of devastating for me and my routine changed And I've taken up karate, I got my black belt and I took my quad to karate and L.A.

Fitness.

And then I realized that it was fun and I got there a lot faster It was much more maneuverable in traffic, and that's how I got on the quad.

And my lifestyle changed so much.

[rock music] The more I drove around Tucson, the more interesting it became.

You can drive around downtown and pass by several bus stops and people are shouting and smiling at you.

And you experience that and you smile inside and you turn the corner and somebody goes, loser!

Mixed motions around town, yeah.

During the day, Bruce Wayne and Batman persona.

I get up and go to work and I run a company about with 30, 40 employees.

We're landscape contractors.

(Danny) Everybody who talks to him likes him.

People that don't talk to him, they just look and wonder.

Yeah, because he's driving a little wild sometimes.

(Yari) It's great to talk to him about world experiences.

He has a very, a lot looser look on life than most people, and I find that very refreshing.

He encourages you to just enjoy life.

(Eddie) Apparently it was a couple of girls and they started the Instagram page for the Tucson Quad Guy and I was a bit flattered.

And then every once in a while I get tagged, you know, there's a picture of me on Fourth Avenue or somewhere in town it's like Sasquatch sightings.

There was a young kid from Turkey.

He was going to school here and he saw me.

And first time I saw him.

He was wearing, you know, Dockers and a polo shirt.

And I suddenly showed up here one day and he jumped out of his seat and he was dressed exactly like me.

And it was the strangest thing in the world.

And then he'd say, Let's go get pizza.

And I go, Not together.

[engine starting] [engine revving] Depends on what kind of mood I'm in.

If I head down the drive and down the mountains and head into town.

If my ass is shaking back and forth.

I'm listening to Shakira.

[Shakira song] If I'm leaning forward in my head is bobbing up and down.

I'm listening to AC/DC.

[AC/DC song] If it's a stormy night and I'm headed back at night, I'm either listening to Pink Floyd or Enya.

[light moody music] People go, Why do you go in the desert when it's 110?

I go because there's nobody else out there.

And it's a surreal experience.

The Earth is like scorched crack mud and there's no live vegetation.

And all of a sudden you see that dark cloud coming in and you hear the sound of thunder, kaboom.

And it comes and it moves in fast and it's a deluge.

And you sit down on the side of your quad and you put your feet into two inches of water.

The entire desert is now a shimmering lake of mercury, with these apparitions of ghosts like dead mesquite trees coming out of the ground.

And you're sitting there with a can of sardines and a military poncho in the rain.

And you feel like it's the movie Apocalypto.

You pray, you think about the day and you think about how you handle things.

Part of the growth process in life, I guess you sit on the side of a mountain and look over the valley and you know the spirit of the ancient one.

She's sitting right next to you while you watch (Robotic voice) your call has been forwarded to an automatic voice message system.

(Man 1) Quad Guy is what I love about Tucson, Arizona, encapsulated in a man.

The incarnation of the word freedom.

(singing in foreign language) Tom - Gila Monsters can be elusive.

but sometimes they show up in the strangest places.

Producer David Fenster shares two memorable encounters with this Sonoran Desert icon, all part of our series Field Notes, where he shares observations from the Sonoran Desert and beyond.

(gentle music) This is a video I took with my phone in Saguaro National Park in May of 2019, when I first moved to Tucson.

It's embarrassing to admit, but I had to Google "lizards of Arizona" to find out that this was a Gila Monster.

As I was standing there, I learned that Gila Monster's bites are venomous, that they often don't let go of their victims and have to be pried off.

I learned that a component of their venom is FDA approved to treat type 2 diabetes.

They can store fat in their tails.

Mating can last from 15 minutes to two and a half hours.

And human beings are their only known predators.

This spring was my most recent sighting.

I was on Tumamoc Hill filming something at the Desert Laboratory, and I walked into one of the buildings and saw this.

At first we thought it was someone's pet that had somehow gotten loose, but that didn't really make any sense.

So then we figured it must have just wandered in from outside.

We had to go back next door to finish our shoot.

But when I came back a couple of hours later, the Gila Monster was still there.

Some people have lived here for years and have never seen a Gila Monster.

But if you spend a lot of time outdoors in May and June or indoors at the right place, you might just see one.

Tom - Thank you for joining us here on Arizona Illustrated.

I'm Tom McNamara, we'll see you next week.