(Tom) This week on Arizona Illustrated, stories produced by students from the University of Arizona for our show, starting with a photography group free of mansplaining.

(Cora) Every time I go to Femme Photo Club, there's this lack of pressure that I feel.

(Tom) A very special food truck will melt your heart and your grilled cheese.

(Tamara) The parents coming in and telling me how grateful they are and how they've seen their child change.

(Tom) Meet a former U of A student body president with a passion for politics.

(Patrick) Student government is as powerful as you make it to be.

The governor doesn't just meet with anybody.

It takes relationship, it takes taking yourself seriously.

(Tom) And meet the man behind one of Tucson's most notorious hot dog empires.

(Daniel) I got into the restaurant business because I was looking for sazón.

I was looking for flavor in my mouth.

Hello and welcome to Arizona Illustrated.

I'm Tom McNamara.

First up, all of the segments you'll see in this show were produced by students from right here at the University of Arizona School of Journalism.

We provide the students with internships and hands-on experience.

In turn, they help us out with their social media expertise and by producing stories with their unique perspective.

This first story was produced by recent graduate, Noor Haghighi, who was an exceptional student employee for us.

Femme Photo Club invites women and non-binary photographers of all proficiencies into a safe space without the burden of mansplaining to develop their skills, whether they're using a top-of-the-line camera or a cell phone.

I like this like long path of light, so I'm trying to get it to like lead people - lead people's eyes to the edge of the frame.

My body is gonna be interrupting it.

[ FILM ROLL ADVANCES ] Alright, one, two... [ SHUTTER CLICKS ] Ugh, it looks so good.

♪ SOFT UPBEAT ELECTRONICA (Cora) A typical meeting we usually get to the space, do some intros and say what brings you to Photo Club.

[ MEMBERS INTRODUCE THEMSELVES ] After we do intros we have a short lesson that After we do intros we have a short lesson that can be like anywhere from 20 to 45 minutes.

There's usually a visual aspect to it, whether it be a PowerPoint or books like photography books that the artists bring in.

After the lesson we typically just break off into little groups or partners and do a lab that implements the lessons that we learned.

(Karina) I really do love self-portraiture, but it's hard to admit that because it [ SHUTTER CLICKS ] feels like an ego-centric thing.

But when you come down to it, it's more about like being able to like express yourself the way that you feel from the inside out, and I think that's like super valuable because in this world it's a lot, it's really hard to have your voice heard.

♪ SERIOUS ELECTRONICA It's just really valuable to see other people around you striving to do the same thing and it's a huge motivating factor for me to be able to feed off of that energy and not only just because it allows us to take images that we're proud of but also because it has a greater meaning in what we want our society to look like.

(Cora) I went to film school and my friend Katie, who also went to film school, we just decided sometime early last year that we wanted to create a space where we can continually practice and like hold each other accountable for practicing regularly.

We met up one day at Reid Park and were scouting a location and we wanted to have a meeting for femme photographers.

a meeting for femme photographers.

We decided to put out the invitation to the community through Instagram and there just was a larger response than what we expected there would be.

It just kind of snowballed from there.

[ LAUGHTER ] Having a femme-centered space is just inherently less competitive, to me at least.

It's just so nurturing and supportive and we all just get so excited when we post our photos and when we see improvement in our work.

And it just doesn't have to be this dominating, competitive ladder that we're climbing.

We're all growing together as a group collectively.

I've been doing photography for over a decade now - um - and there's a lot of reasons I wanted to become a cinematographer but I think one of the main reasons I wanted to work in film was because I feel like photography was a lot lonelier.

It was more individual and as much as I do appreciate that, what I loved about working in film was the teamwork aspect of it all.

I love being part of a team and feeling like your teammates are working toward a specific goal to lift you up, and...

I've gotten back into photography now a lot more because of Photo Club, because it kind of exactly is that.

It's just this beautiful community-based thing [ SHUTTER CLICKS ] and you don't have to feel so lonely doing it.

[ KATIE GIGGLES ] I just have my camera and I thought it'd be really cool to just capture myself sitting with the lines because I really like how it's very structured on its own.

I kind of have this vision of trying to get my hair flowing.

I think where I'm kind of struggling is getting that close-up that I want but that's what the point is of this is to kind of figure out, get some shots.

Okay, this isn't working now I can adjust to try something else.

(Karina) The other day, we had some really beautiful bouquets of flowers, and the models were doing sword fights with them.

[LAUGHS ] Or like...

Being in all these really cool, different environments, like an adobe house that's just filled with musical instruments and being able to zoom in on parts of somebody that you don't normally get to see images of.

It's just really fun to be able to take a second to envision something in your own-in your own voice.

And I think that's a really cool thing about Femme Photo Club is that when you see an image posted on Instagram or in the Google Drive, you could kind of automatically tell which photographer it was that took that image because it's stamped with their own character and their own voice.

Every time I go to Femme Photo Club, there's this - um - lack of pressure that I feel.

It's so free and it almost makes me feel like, "Oh, this is just fun and games.

This isn't serious business.

We're just like having fun and hanging out."

At this pool party I was just like, "Yeah, let's just like, easy breezy, like take some pictures."

But there were so many amazing photos that came out of that session.

One in particular, Karina.

Her photo was just so amazing.

It was just like a top-down into-the-water of this swimmer and it's so ethereal and didn't look like anyone else's images.

It's just really surprising.

♪ SERENE ELECTRONICA (Karina) A lot of my life I've just been selling myself short with photography and not really interested in taking the educational route.

But then Femme Photo Club, it was just like automatically like my guards were completely down and it was just really a natural process into learning manual photography because I had never done that before and it was just love at first club meeting.

[ KARINA LAUGHS ] [ SHUTTER CLICKS ] Tucson and Tamara Varga couldn't find a job for her 16 year old son with autism.

So she created one.

Together with her business partner, Bill Harmon.

They created an inclusive environment and workplace for people with special needs.

And the glue of this business is grilled cheese and love.

This story was produced by Laura Holanszky, who aside from being a great student producer was also an NCAA national champion on the women's triathlon team.

♪ INSIGHTFUL MUSIC (Speaker 1) How many are there, like five?

...four, six...

Potentially do that tonight.

(Alex Barrentine) Yeah.

That will be good.

I have a son with autism and he had turned 16 and like 16-year-olds he wanted a job, but we couldn't find him a job, anyone that was willing to train him or work with him having autism That's when we decided to take matters into our own hands.

(Alex) Order number 39, your order's ready, 39.

Hi, my name is Alex Barrentine.

I work on this truck, this grilled cheese truck with Special Eats I started when I was 17.

(Tamara) My partner Bill, he just really wanted to come up with a concept that was easy enough for individuals with special needs to be able to make, and then also something that is a comfort food and good for food trucks as well as great tasting.

So my main goal is to teach these guys enough to go get a job somewhere else.

They come to me with very little skills to none so I teach them everything from cashiering, cleaning, prepping, shopping and cooking.

(Alex) I could do anything.

I pull out numbers, I take orders, I can cook a little bit.

Order up for a quesadilla chicken and a grilled cheese.

Quesadilla chicken and a grilled cheese, order up.

(Bill) I let them come up with the specials of the month every month.

I let them fool around and make new menu items.

They actually are the ones that came up with the quesadilla option on our truck.

(Greg) I'm very proud to work for this company.

I'm learning how to be a chef and stuff because I love to cook and...

I enjoy everyone here and stuff Everyone makes me feel good and stuff.

I've seen people come to me non-verbal to the point where they're my... they won't stop talking.

They came to me thinking they'll never have a job, quiet, hiding in the corner to outgoing and cooking on my truck.

They love it.

Every day is a new story and I love every day.

(Greg) My story is here to get the experience to work in the kitchen in the future and stuff and become a chef someday.

Because I like to go back to school and become a chef and... own my own restaurant.

Because I'm Mexican-Greek.

I want to make Mexican Greek food someday.

Order number 20!

Order 20 20?

Just the fact of working with people with special needs, they want to go to work.

They want the job.

So you're not going to work with a bunch of people saying, "I don't want to go to work today" So, you're coming in, everyone's got a smile on their face, everyone's ready to go.

And I have a disabily but it doesn't it stop me from doing things I'm very proud of my, what I am and stuff.

(Alex) I love it.

It's just pretty cool to work with other people that have the same, like, autism stuff.

(Speaker 2) Yeah, I love coloring.

It's so relaxing.

(Tamara) So many of our special needs population don't have friends and they don't have someone that they can talk to.

And so we really provide a family here, and you know, they do stuff outside of work, together, they call each other and it's really been so beneficial for them to have that love and support.

Actually, Special Eats is like my second family and stuff.

I'm proud to say that.

I want everyone to know and stuff.

Yeah.

And not only that, but the parents, coming in and telling me how grateful they are and how they've seen their child change.

(Greg) This job, it's teaching me how to learn how to work with different people and stuff and different needs and stuff.

And I'm very proud to do that.

(Tamara) We employ 45 individuals with special needs and then we have 20 job coaches that we also employ.

So the job coaches are their mentors.

They help them to stay on task and to learn the job.

They train them.

The individuals with special needs do all kinds of jobs.

We actually even have a garden that they're responsible for.

We have a shopping crew that does all of our shopping for our food trucks as well as our merchandise, they make all of our merchandise.

So they make shirts and aprons, hats, jewelry, earrings.

Cecil, he passed away unfortunately in January, but he was our oldest employee and he was 69.

And everyone has stories of something that they bought from Cecil because he was just the best seller and he would be so excited when someone bought something.

He would come grab me and say, "Tamara, I just sold some earrings!"

We really do give a lot of people was just displayed in the Oro Valley Library for three months.

We couldn't do this without the community and their love and support.

The dessert truck just opened in January and it's already becoming popular and people are requesting us.

So it really allows us to expand and to hire more people because I have a long waiting list of people that want to work and being a special needs mom, every time I have to put someone on... on the waiting list, It's... it hurts!

(John) 35, your order's ready!

(Greg) It made me a hard worker in life, It made me... it taught me how to work hard and work as a team, and more socialized cause I'm not really a sociable person, but Special Eats just teaching me how to be more sociable in life and hang out with people more and stuff.

(Speaker 1) Beautiful sandwich, Greg!

(Bill) Making them smile and say thank you for telling them they did a good job makes my day worth it every day.

My personal goals are just to continue to support them and love them and show them that they're a vital part of this community and the world.

Give them a chance.

They want to work, and they will show up every day, which is really hard to find sometimes.

(Alex) There you go...

Enjoy!

(Tom) Former University of Arizona Student Body President, Patrick Robles always had a passion for public service.

And that ambition was amplified during his time in office here.

This story was produced by our former intern, Allison Fagan from the School of Journalism.

(woman) Can we interest you in some donuts?

(Patrick) Yes.

Where are the donuts from?

(woman) Krispy Kreme.

Thank you so much.

(Patrick) All right.

I'll advertise you guys.

(soft music) My name is Patrick Robles, and I have the privilege of serving as the student body president of the University of Arizona.

I grew up going to football games.

My family, we've had South end zone tickets for 20 plus years.

And it was exciting to sit in the Zona Zoo.

Especially this year.

Right.

And I remember my family talking about Lute Olson back when he was coach.

I mean, it's ingrained in me.

Even though I'm a first gen college student, I'm a third generation Arizona Wildcat fan.

My passion for public service and politics began in sixth grade at Challenger Middle School in the South side of Tucson.

I was in the We the People program.

I was much more shy.

You wouldn't catch me talking to you.

But I had a teacher.

Her name was Miss Higuera and she taught me the importance of the Constitution, the value of government.

And we, the people standing up for what we believe in and standing up for what we want to see.

And so with that, it's driven me throughout middle school.

Serving as student body president, middle school throughout high school at Sunnyside High School, serving as student body president, and now here talking to you as the student body president of the University of Arizona.

And throughout my young life, I'm 21 years old.

I've been involved with the red for ed fight.

I've been involved with public education advocacy.

The fight for fair free transit and other fights that involve uplifting our community, specifically those who are from marginalized communities and folks who would have never seen themselves in positions of influence like the one I'm in right now.

(Eddie) Patrick is one of my most closest friends.

Immediately off the bat, like we just kicked it off and it was just an amazing friendship that grew into him mentoring me and really helping me decide kind of what I want to do as I grow and how I can get myself involved.

(Patrick) Fare free transit is a critical issue for students here at the University of Arizona.

Many of us have seen the sun link, that rides throughout our university takes us through downtown, the West Side or whatnot.

It's been free as of March 2020 due to the pandemic.

Last fall, September, we learned that the city government was going to reinstate transit fares.

We, the students, have been taking advantage of this service and were worried that transit fares would limit our ability to travel, to commute to school, to go home, because it's a necessity.

And so my administration, with my leadership, with the colleagues within our city government, we got together and said, no, this can't this can't be.

So we began lobbying.

Each member of the city council spoke to the mayor's team.

We began mobilizing students here at the university.

(Eddie) I remember when the free transit meetings were happening, I was at City hall.

He was here, like watching them all night, taking notes on what certain council members were saying.

And he was just that committed to ensuring he knew everyone's perspective and how he can advocate for different perspectives as well.

(Patrick) As a student and more importantly, a Tucsonan I find myself concerned about what the reinstatement of public transit fares would mean for all people in this community.

Each local media platform covered this effort that students here at the university were fighting for.

And so thanks to the pressure and the relationships we built, fair free transit was extended until June 2023, until the end of the school year.

And I have no doubt in my mind that a large part of this is due to the movement that we, the students started the hashtag Why I Ride Movement.

It's cool getting on there, seeing how many people use it, and realizing that the fight we put on was worth it.

Student government is as powerful as you make it to be.

The governor doesn't just meet with anybody, nor does a Congress member, nor does a U.S. senator's team.

It takes relationship building.

It takes taking yourself seriously.

When a student can buy groceries, can eat a good meal once they get home, can ride public transit for free.

That student is going to do better academically, therefore making their life easier, especially when they graduate from college.

I haven't shared this story publicly like this before, but on my first week in this office, I went to a meeting and I'm going to say who was at that meeting.

But I was told that there was people in those in that meeting that were uncomfortable with the fact that I was speaking Spanish at an event earlier that week that they were uncomfortable with the sign on my desk that says, si se puede.

This was in 2022.

I'm not the first Mexican-American or Latino in this room.

But it dawned upon me that these issues around racism, around bigotry still exist.

And I took that moment, I bit my tongue and I said, okay, game on.

You don't like the fact that I'm speaking Spanish.

yo hablo español.

And I'm going to do a good job.

(Eddie) We all grew up in areas that were underfunded, underrepresented, and we've had, you know, we faced many hardships.

So we all bring that here and on a university level and trying to really figure out how we can create the change here on the university for other students who may be facing that.

(Patrick) We've got great leaders coming in and we're going to continue to become a more diverse student government, a government that has people who are going to fight for issues that directly impact students.

So I'm very, very excited that we laid the groundwork.

And I know that that work is going to continue.

You might not think of a hot dog as a delicacy, but the Sonoran dog from El Guero Canelo won a James Beard Award.

They recognize achievements in culinary arts.

Next, you'll meet the larger than life owner who's also planning his retirement, El Guero Canelo himself.

This story was produced by Emma Diaz, who finally got our Instagram account over 10,000 followers by making me say some crazy things.

So thanks Emma, I'll see you in the clurb.

(Daniel) Welcome to Guero Canelo, the best Mexican- -the best Mexican restaurant in the world.

(Jakob) The menu, there's not one bad thing.

You can go to like all kinds of different places, restaurants, but you get anything on that menu.

I mean anything and it's gonna be delicious.

I feel like I'm meeting like some- like he's really famous.

This is the guy, he's the creator.

(Daniel) They think I'm a celebrity and it's fine with me, but it's the love they have to me.

I just said that to a customer, right now.

This is the first time I use this in an interview.

We got the James Beard Award because of the Sonoran hot dogs.

So I put a lot of love into what I do.

Love, love love.

I love to eat.

[ LAUGHS ] I left my parents when I was almost 13 years old.

I left to somewhere else, Nakosari, and I become a tortilla maker, tortilla factory in Nakosari, in García, Mexico.

From 1979, I came to Tucson, and I've been here since then, so I'm from Tucson, basically.

[ LAUGHS ] We make our own bread.

It's the biggest difference in town.

My bread from the hot dog, we make it in Madalena.

And the carne asade.

Ay, ay, ay, makes me hungry already.

When you're craving for a Sonoran hot dog.

You want to have the best, come to Guero Canelo.

(Kassandra) You know the difference between a bun, you know the difference between a "frank," what the hot dogs have in it.

For example, the bread comes out really, really warm.

The "frank," like let it be pretty.

Everybody has their own little details, you know?

Do you have add-ons or not?

I just think these are the best hot dogs.

Like not just because everybody says it, but I've tried them somewhere else.

It's nothing compared to this.

(Jakob) First time I came here, I think I was like 10 years old.

It was after one of my basketball games.

I got a Sonoran dog and one of their carne asada burritos.

It was just, it was so freaking good.

I've been coming back ever since.

The bun, bacon wrapped dog, the pico on there, the yellow pepper.

(Daniel) Number one hunder- I got into the restaurant business because I was looking for sazón.

I was looking for flavor in my mouth.

I'm a very dragon, I'm a very- [ GROWLING SOUND ] I love to eat and I couldn't find that.

We started going to Nogales, me and my wife and eating hot dogs, carne asada, whatever.

And I told my wife, you know, I want to open my own restaurant.

Even I told my customers all the time, without having a dollar in my pocket.

One of these days, you're going to eat at my restaurants.

It came from my bottom of my heart.

And finally we opened a carreta, a little taco stand.

And then the rest is history.

I'm very happy, seriously.

We have good people working for us.

[ trumpet music plays out] (Kassandra) Every day is something new to me.

I started as being a cashier in the kitchen and I worked my way up.

But it's been a great experience learning everything I know today.

It's people you'll never forget being with honestly working with.

They become your friends, they become your family.

That's how I feel it.

We laugh at each other and that's daily.

Like there's never a serious dull moment.

Never, never.

It's everyday laugh, "hi," "good morning" and that's how we are.

Even to customers it's the same thing.

But it can never be serious.

[ CHUCKLES ] 10, 20 years, customers.

10/ 20 / '93 we sold the first taco at four o'clock in the afternoon.

I will never forget that.

[ LAUGHS ] My plans is "bye."

Adios.

No more.

2025 My plan, my personal plan.

My business plan, my son, Gregorio our general manager I don't know what they want to do.

They have to show me.

They can't handle it.

The business will stay open but me, bye-bye, no mas.

The love.

L-O-V-E for me it's everything.

I want to thank you, Tucson.

I'm very grateful for that.

Thank you everybody.

They made me what I am today.

Thank you for joining us here on Arizona Illustrated.

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