(Tom) This week on Arizona Illustrated, 15 years after the shootings on January 8th, we look back to see how Tucson responded to the tragedy.

(Pam) I hope that history looks back on that and the response of the community as a beacon for future generations.

(Tom) This alley turned into an art gallery and helped a community dealing with loss during the pandemic.

(Josie) It's an opportunity to meet new people, an opportunity to share ideas and feelings.

(Tom) See how an historic library is meeting the modern needs of Bisbee residents.

(Jason) We are a small town, but we never let that inhibit us in terms of the way that we think as a library and the way that we approach offering services.

(Tom) And reptiles and rhymes with the Elaine A. Powers.

(Elaine) I really hope to educate children and the adults in their lives about real science, real issues in a fun, entertaining way.

Hello and welcome to Arizona Illustrated.

I'm Tom McNamara.

You know, January 8th is a date that Southern Arizonans won't soon forget and 2026 marks 15 years now since that horrific event.

Well, in the intervening years, the January 8th Memorial Foundation and the Southern Arizona Heritage and Visitors Center teamed up to establish the Embrace Memorial behind us here at the old courthouse as a tribute to remembrance and hope.

Once again, we remember the 13 people who were wounded and we ring the bell for the six people who died that day.

Christina Taylor-Green Dorothy "Dot" Morris Judge John Roll Phyllis Schneck, Dorwan Stoddard, and Gabriel Zimmerman.

Like I think every one of us, we know exactly where we were on January 8th.

[911 call] "911 there's been a shooting at Safeway."

[911 call] "Ina and Oracle, there's a shooting at Safeway."

but when you think back to what that day was like, how from the early reports to as we got updated information throughout the course of the day of what had really happened.

Who was with us?

Who we'd lost.

What's important for so many is the remembrance of not just what occurred that day, but how this community responded Even at the Safeway that day, the people that ran towards the incident and ran towards this very difficult situation and how the community came together.

What I realized at that moment is this didn't just happen to me and Gabby and those that were immediately involved.

This happened to everybody.

And people were there for their own healing.

There was some I recall being to early meetings where there were discussions about what might a memorial look like where might it be.

We spent a lot of time thinking about what we wanted this to say.

The architect and designers interviewed a lot of community members as well as survivors and families of the victims.

And what they picked up on was how we came together.

Everyone seemed to have had some connection to what went on.

And people say, well, what's different about Tucson?

Well, that tragedy illustrated.

What's different about Tucson?

The community came together and literally embraced everyone that was involved.

So the shape of the memorial is like arms reaching around.

So it is, it reflects how the community came together in an embrace around those of us affected and around each other.

My name is Jim Tucker.

I'm a survivor of the January 8th shooting and I volunteer at Southern Arizona Heritage and Visitor Center, and I conduct tours here at the Memorial.

My wife and I were the couple talking to Gabby at the time the shooter opened fire.

So I basically tell people, you know, the truth of what actually happened I give them a little bit of background of the process and the design and what the foundation board did as far as research.

For me, it's all of the you know, it's these icons.

There's so many of these emblems that mean so much.

The symbols for each survivor and victim illustrate certain aspects of their life, you know, their interests, their profession.

There's QR codes now so that people can come and understand them and reflect on each one of them.

Tucson has such a diverse community economically, socially, politically, and it really showed how varied the crowd was who was there that morning.

It shows so much about the people who were who were killed, the people who were wounded.

But there's so many things around there that that put it in perspective of Tucson's long history, too.

When you look at a courthouse built in the 1800s, this is a location.

And even before that when the indigenous people were here and meeting to confer and to have community conversation and dialogue that's what this area has been since before we were a state since before we were part of the United States.

And now we hope it's where people continue to come and to have conversation and dialogue.

Why do people go to memorials?

A lot of times it's a piece of history, but a lot of times it's for their own reflection and whatever they're dealing with in their lives.

And that from the get go was what we wanted is a place where people would come not just to reflect about January 8th, because it may be years from now somebody from out of town will come and know nothing about it.

And what I hope is they see beyond the architecture, but to the lesson of what brought that space, that community that came together.

I know when we started working on this, the first thing we did was begin to talk with other communities who have experienced this and been through it.

And that was a bond in itself.

And now we continue to talk to others and other communities to reach out to Tucson.

Once people see it.

See it during the day and see it again during the night.

I think they will really appreciate what what we have done.

It will serve as a place where people, no matter what they're struggling with can go and just have a few minutes of reflection with the water and the and the quiet.

I hope that history looks back on that particular moment in 2011 and the response of the community as a beacon for future generations.

The COVID-19 pandemic was a time of loss for so many of our neighbors in Southern Arizona.

But next we take it to a neighborhood that transformed an alley into an art gallery to come together, stay positive and create community.

(birds chirping) Josie: The last five years of my teaching experience, I had the best job ever.

I taught a class called outdoor learning.

And basically allow me to use my philosophy that I believed in, which was letting children be able to play outside, to be learning from their environment to respect public spaces, and to be stewards of keeping that space beautiful that they want to be part of.

The alleys is a public space, and we basically have taken ownership.

I lived in this neighborhood for 40 some years, and I have become real close to my neighbors, Rosanna and Luis are one of my closest friends.

This pandemic had been a real hard on all of us.

I lost five family members, close friends.

And so I try to do positive things to keep myself going.

And then I got the idea of creating an art gallery in the alley because the alley was used for dumping old furniture, Rosanna and Luis were the first one, They said, yeah, let's do something with it.

And so I was amazed at what they created.

Luis: We lost our chess teacher and I lost my grandpa as well.

And just like my dad still miss him.

I lost them when I was eight years old, and it was hard getting through that loss and everything.

Every single Saturday, we would have a music night and he would put on different types of music.

And that's why I started loving music and then I started doing art.

I just really like to just free draw and just lots of coloring and drawing.

It expresses my my emotions a little bit because the loss of my dad and everything, it brings it ou just a little bit more, but not that much.

Josie: The sixties and the pandemic were very similar to me in emotion.

I grew up in a generation that was very scary.

The same feeling because I was in high school when they first killed the first soldiers in Vietnam.

And it turned out that I lost friends from high school and relatives.

At the beginning of the epidemic I felt the same feeling of not understanding what's happening.

And as a pediatric nurse and educator, I have been real worried about the long impact of isolation for one year.

And parents are worried about their jobs and they're also isolated with their work.

And children didn't have the experience to play freely outside and express their feelings, their fears and making happy experiences.

Luis: My friend Autry.

His parents, they were nervous about the pandemic, and I don't blame them because it's pretty scary.

And he had a lot of anxiety.

So playing video games with him, helped him and telling him, like, hey, you can make art and then you just send it to me and I'll hang it up.

We're slowly going back to normal.

But I always want to encourage people to like love art.

And virtually everyone already does.

So half my work is already done.

Josie: Since we've had the gallery, we haven't had any furniture dropped off.

We haven't had trash and we've had a good response from people walking.

And it's an opportunity to meet new people and opportunity to share ideas and feelings.

And so it's going to be an ongoing process, as long as I'm healthy and and have the energy we'll keep doing it.

Luis: After the construction is done, it'd be pretty cool, like having a whole entire art gallery alley way, just like walking through it and hanging up pictures or paintings like saying helpful words to get through the pandemic and for them to be calm and encouraging them.

And that like me and maybe just a little bit hard, but you can get through it.

Josie: I think the pandemic we're healing in in different ways.

I see a lot of compassion and love and wanting to help.

Those skills are not lost in children.

Especially Luis.

He's had difficult losses, and to me, he's my hero.

The Copper Queen Library in Bisbee is the oldest continuously operating library in Arizona, and it's been getting some national recognition in recent years.

Next, you'll see how the library, located in an historic building, is also meeting the modern needs of Bisbee residents.

(Jason) This is our third library building for the Copper Queen Library.

This was built in 1907 by a local architect.

You can really tell from the arches of the balcony its Romanesque revival.

Thats the key feature are the balconies.

(Cristina) This is, to me, one of the most protected, well-kept secrets of my life that I enjoy just escaping from Main Street and looking at the horizon.

The sky's gorgeous.

It's beautiful.

(Stephen) It's such an incredible resource with wonderful people I don't have enough words.

[quirky music] (Jason) Funny story at the time that they built this library there was a column in the paper that it was too modern.

You know, Bisbee was changing too fast.

And now we're so happy they did that because, you know, we've got this beautiful building that, you know, we can operate the library out of and it's, it's a local treasure.

One of the defining features of the interior of this library is our staircase.

And if when you look at that staircase, you see 115 years worth of people walking up and down, it.

[footsteps] To us, that's a snapshot right there of our history because, you know, today people are doing the same thing.

They're coming in there, running up to the third floor to grab a book or grab a DVD.

And so they're adding to that history.

(Stephen) Their old book section is things that were published in the mid 1800s.

And I'm a Western history freak, so I can go in there and read things that were published the day it happened.

It's not filtered through modern technology, or current thought, or any of that.

And it's right here.

We are a small town, but we never let that inhibit us in terms of the way that we think as a library and the way that we approach offering services.

The Copper Queen Seed library, which we started in 2017, offers free seeds for our patrons, and it's proved super popular.

I would say we check out about 800 packs of seeds a year.

(Marcia) As you can see, I have so many seeds from so many places.

As soon as the library began to develop the seed program, I became involved in it right away.

[rustling flowers] I'm a lifetime gardener and I save seeds, donate seeds to the library, etc.. Libraries are more than books.

Not that books arent the best, but to have a seed library is really just a genius thing and seeds are everything.

They are.

They're everything.

(Jason) Yeah, we're just looking at ways to really engage our community.

I like to say, instead of outside the box, outside of the book.

We just installed a bicycle repair station at our annex.

For neighborhood bicyclists to come in and pump their tire up.

We've got sports equipment to use in our city parks.

We've got bocce ball sets and pickleball sets.

We're trying to really think beyond the old paradigm of libraries.

[chatter] (Allison) This is the Copper Queen Library Annex, which is not a separate branch of the Copper Queen library.

It is what we call an offsite collection.

We have things like a lawnmower, a shop vac, a hundred-foot extension cord, because sometimes you just need that item once.

When I first started here, I think I was the one who was shushed by patrons, but we don't shush people anymore.

We foster conversation.

We foster interaction.

We foster groups using this space and really being more of a community center that's free and open to everyone.

[kids dancing] (Sonia) I got involved with this program teaching the kids how to dance at the library annex just by some friends that were volunteering with the program and that knew I had a background in Folklorico and I really have a heart for working with the kids.

(Rose) Ive been taking my children here to the library since my first born son was about a year old and I started going to the preschool story time.

(Rose) And they want involvement for the for all ages of people.

From the moment you're born, pretty much they set you up with books and there's classes all the way teaching older people about technology or whatever it whatever it is, there's classes or something for everybody.

(Rose) Make sure you bend your knees, it goes out to the side.

Being in our border community, Bisbee is a really artsy, loving community, and so it's really nice to share some of our local culture with the kids and how to move their body and yeah, it's it gives them a whole new perspective.

[cars passing] (Allison) Very important to reach this community of Bisbee.

This neighborhood, the San Jose neighborhood, is the farthest away geographically from the main library, and it doesn't have the same tourism aspects that old Bisbee has, but it's also the neighborhood with the most children and families.

The biggest resource in our community is our community.

Our people are diverse, come from many different backgrounds of education and training.

They volunteer for us, I should say, our volunteers are amazing.

So what's your top two or three?

(Cathy) Our job is to support them in every way we can.

You know, we are a small town and our city budget, as you can imagine, is not enormous.

So the city pays the employees and maintains the building, but outside of that, it's up to us to bring in the income.

So in the beginning of the year, we have a chocolate tasting in February, right around Valentine's Day, of course.

And that's our biggest fundraiser we've had as many as 700 people in this space that you're looking at right now.

So the altered books show the concept of altered books is that you take discarded or recycled books and turn them into a piece of art.

I love this.

I'm a book fanatic.

I went to libraries when I was a little girl, and that was my escape.

There are 125 people in town who have who belong to the “Friends of the Library”.

And if you talk to every single one of them, they would say something very similar.

Yeah, it's very dear to me.

It's my heart thing that I do in Bisbee.

(Jason) all of this, everything we do, we don't do it for ourselves.

We do it for the community of Bisbee.

In that sense, you know, this job is it's a privilege and it's an honor because, you know, we're not only caretakers of the building, but we're caretakers for the entire institution that's been going for 140 years.

It all gets tied together into this beautiful package that we call the American Library.

Elaine A. Powers is a Tucson-based conservationist and author with a passion for spreading science education through storytelling.

So let's show you how her whimsical rhymes and her rescued animals have captivated audiences.

(Elaine) Hello.

I'm Elaine A. Powers.

I always include the A in my name because some of you might remember that there was a national figure salon chain named Elaine Powers.

(TV Announcer) Elaine Powers.

Call.

All you have to say is help Elaine.

[static] (Elaine) I'm not involved in that at all.

[upbeat music] So I started doing iguana rescue in my house.

I was one of the few rescues that if somebody called and said, we have an iguana in danger, I would go and get it.

So I was on the speed dial for a lot of police departments and animal control facilities.

I have seven iguanas of four different species.

I have 11 tortoises of three different species.

I have two box turtles and a tegu.

This is a green iguana.

Her name is turquoise.

There we go.

Yeah.

My boy.

Now, blue is a Blue Caiman hybrid iguana.

And you can see he is shedding.

He's getting bigger.

This is a Sonoran Desert tortoise.

I got her through the state foster program.

You never want to take a Sonoran Desert tortoise out of the wild.

So this is Myrtle.

She is a red foot tortoise.

My name is Myrtle.

I'm a tortoise, not a turtle.

Being properly identified is my biggest hurdle.

Correct.

Names are important.

I'm sure you'll agree.

Let's look at the differences.

They're easy to see.

Some turtles swim and some live in the sea.

But that's a place tortoises never should be.

I took early retirement because I had a desire to write science based books.

I have written about 27 books that are out and published.

These books that you see here focus on plants and animals of the Sonoran Desert.

I really hope to educate children and the adults in their lives about real science, real issues, in a fun, entertaining way.

When I give talks, I now have a variety of tortoises and iguanas that I can introduce to the people I'm talking to.

I hope even if it's just a few kids, that I'm making an impact on their lives.

And showing them that science can be fun, you know, it doesn't have to be dull dry stuff.

We can eliminate my biggest hurdle if together we shout, Please don't call me turtle.

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Like, follow, and subscribe to Arizona Illustrated on Facebook, Instagram, and X. Thanks for joining us here on Arizona Illustrated in 2026, and we wish you a very Happy New Year.

I'm Tom McNamara.

We'll see you again next week.