Local Heroes

A Pitbull With a Smile

Photographer Nadia Larsen reminds women facing cancer treatment that they’re beautiful

Now that Nadia Larsen is cancer free, she has a New Year’s resolution: “I’m gonna be a selfish bitch.”

Before Larsen got cancer, she was supermom. She did it all and put her husband’s and children’s needs before her own.

“When you’re dead and gone, nobody’s gonna put a big statue there, reading ‘Mother of the Year,'” she says. “My goal now is to take care of me.”

When the centenarian saguaro in her front yard fell over, she didn’t care. When her husband asks her to find things—a frying pan, scissors, etc.—she tells him to find it himself. In planning her breast reconstruction surgery, she told her doctor she didn’t need a nipple.

“Why would I have a nipple reconstructed on a fake boob?” she says. “If somebody doesn’t like it, fine. I’m not going to be on a nudist beach, and if I am—I don’t care.”

Nadia may not give a flying fart what people think of her, but she does care what women dealing with breast cancer think of themselves. That’s why she started the Nadia Strong Foundation, doing free photo shoots of women with breast cancer.

“When you’re going through cancer, you feel like hell, so you look like hell,” she says. “I’m trying to show them that you can be beautiful beyond breast cancer.”

During what Larsen calls her “year from hell,” she had chemotherapy, radiation, a bilateral mastectomy, surgery to remove lymph nodes and two reconstructive surgeries. In after-surgery photos, a bright-red patch on her shoulder blade, over a zipper of black stitches, documents the reaction of radiation coming through her, from the front of her body.

While going through treatment herself, Larsen connected with other women she met at her clinic. One woman was struggling financially under the burden of cancer-treatment costs and, Larsen says, was too proud and embarrassed to ask for help.

So Larsen started making calls on the woman’s behalf to places like the American Cancer Society, which led to assistance with medication costs and rent. Thereafter, the woman compared Larsen’s fierce tenacity to a “pitbull with a smile.”

“Just having breast cancer, women feel like they did something wrong,” Larsen says. “My focus is to help women, which literally helps me.”

Helping other women helps Larsen continue to heal, she says. Talking, relating and exchanging ideas with the only ones who can really understand what she went through feeds her soul. And one bit of advice she gives them: “Find a passion. I turned my passion into a foundation.”

Last month, Yolanda Weinberger did a photoshoot with Larsen. The photos show her in a pink dress, matching the flowers behind her. She has a bald head and radiant smile. Weinberger says the photos are a memorial to her journey through breast cancer and a remembrance of her defiance.

“What a way to turn something horrible into something redemptive,” Weinberger says about the photoshoot. “Even though my body is being destroyed, I refuse to be defined by that.”

Larsen did another shoot of Weinberger with her family to use as Christmas cards. The experience reminded her that she’s loved and supported. Weinberger has five chemo treatments and several surgeries still to go. She’s also documenting her journey, at yolandaweinberger.com.

On the Nadia Strong website, which Larsen recently launched with the help of her friend Robert Hernandez, she shares her coping and recovery tips. Larsen detoxed from chemo with a naturopath, whose contact info is on the website. She also switched to an organic, vegan diet and avoids as much stress as she can.

Women can also document their stories and connect through the website (a segment that’s just getting started). And people and businesses can offer services to help women with breast cancer.

Larsen’s also looking for donors and sponsors to help her open a photography studio. People can donate or buy ad space on the site for a small fee.

Hernandez met Larsen when she owned Choc-Alot, a gourmet chocolate store with treats she made herself. They became friends on Facebook, where she started documenting her cancer treatment. Hernandez followed her journey and tried to put himself in her place.

“She knows how to tell a story,” he says. “She’s got a way to open your eyes.”

When Larsen was nearly halfway through treatment, she brought her doctor a present. Going into the office with a tray of handmade chocolates, she shared the elevator with a woman who looked down at the tray curiously.

When Larsen handed the gift to Dr. Brooks, he recognized the chocolates immediately. “Chocolate boobs,” he said. “Just what I need.”

Larsen couldn’t wait for cancer to be in her past and to move forward, but she never let it dull her sense of humor. As soon as her hair began to grow back, she died it pink. And when people asked her about it, she told them it just grew in that way.

“Cancer is not written on your forehead,” Larsen says. “You’re not defined by cancer. Feel like a model for a few hours. Feel good about yourself and your fight and moving on with your life.”

—Danyelle Khmara

Women with breast cancer can set up a free photoshoot with Larsen by going to the Nadia Strong website at nadiastrong.org or calling her at (520) 245-8888. To make a donation or advertise, go to the “connect” and “partner” tabs on the site.

Book Booster

Doug Forester’s love of books is a boon for the Oro Valley library

Doug Forester is happiest when bogged down in the minutiae of book-keeping and book moving.

Forester has volunteered with the Friends of Oro Valley Public Library since its inception in 2001, helping with everything from hauling hefty books to handling the group’s finances.

The retired IBM engineer moved to Northwest Pima County two decades ago, and knew he wanted to give back to the community.

He soon found his calling, lending his hand to the county after it started work on the Oro Valley library in 2001.

“I went over to see what I could help with and they had a lot of boxes of books to move,” Forester said. “So, I became pretty proficient in moving boxes around with a hand cart.”

Forester did just that in the years to come, lending whatever he could to help shuttle books to their new destinations, in addition to handling the Friends of the Oro Valley Public Library’s finances.

His immense knowledge of book-keeping helped him excel as the group’s treasurer, and provided him an outlet to do something that he truly loves.

“I like the idea of balancing books,” Forester said. “It’s got a certain completeness to it that you’ve got to really pay attention to. And that keeps my interest as well.”

Group president Jane Peterson is one of Forester’s many admirers and expresses great appreciation for the long-time volunteer’s efforts.

“He’s an engineer and he’s very exacting,” Peterson said. “He’s very good with figures. He created software for us for our Internet sales, and he’s a semi-professional ballroom dancer, too.”

Perhaps one of Peterson’s greatest accomplishments in his time as a member of the Board and as a treasurer with the group is his contributions to their Books for Teachers program.

The program, which provided free books to 212 K-8 teachers during the 2015-16 school year, requires a lot of logistical assistance, which Forester provides in spades.

Forester created a database that tracks and reports the number of books collected in the annual drive, which allows them to better serve the educational community.

He’s proud to give back, and enjoys helping the many dedicated teachers in the area provide the supplies they need for their students.

“We gave $46,000 to schools in Tucson, 54 schools in Tucson in total. And some of it was for libraries for the schools and some of it was directly to teachers so they could go and buy books,” Forester said. “I did all the accounting for that and the book work. It was really rewarding to be able to generate a report that shows exactly what was done.”

Peterson has high praise Forester’s impact on the group, and how much he’s meant to the library system in general.

“What we do is very labor-intensive and a lot of these books are heavy,” Peterson said. “The work load is truly relentless. But [Doug] is a perfectionist when it comes to the numbers and he keeps track of every cent that comes in and comes out, we’ve never had any problems. We’ve been audited by the IRS; everything comes out just fine because he’s so careful and good with our books.”

Forester, who grew up in Tucson and graduated from Catalina High School, hopes for he’ll be doing this for a long time to come.

“I just look forward to many more years of thing before I lose my mind,” he said, laughing.

—Christopher Boan

Power of Words

Teré Fowler-Chapman celebrates poetry on Fourth Avenue

The poetry community in Tucson is alive and strong with resources like the University of Arizona Poetry Center, a collection unrivaled across the country; Casa Libre en la Solana that houses poets in residence; and Tucson Youth Poetry Slam, among others.

One beloved monthly poetry event is Words on the Avenue, created by Teré Fowler-Chapman.

Fowler-Chapman is a gender-fluid teacher, student, publisher, speaker and poet who works in every aspect of their life to bring poetry to the community.

In 2012, Fowler-Chapman started Words on the Avenue, an open mic poetry reading and performance at Fourth Avenue’s Cafe Passe that happens on the last Sunday of every month.

“I created it because there was a need in the community that just didn’t exist,” Fowler-Chapman said. “There really wasn’t a space for people who were just starting out to go and perform.”

The event, which is entirely donation-based and free to attend, encourages poets of all ages and at all stages of their lives to share their work. Each Words on the Avenue evening includes 12 poets and a featured reader. Sometimes there are themes, but generally the stage is set and open for whomever wants to speak and share their work with the crowd.

“The community is really supportive, I mean the fact that we are still here speaks to that,” Fowler-Chapman said. “It has been great to see the event blossom. It’s great to hear the voices of the community come together at the end of each month.”

Fowler-Chapman spread her own voice and spoke to the power of poetics at the TEDxTucson event in January this year, an event that she auditioned for and sought after.

“That was the first audition that I had ever done and I was really scared,” Fowler-Chapman said. “I was obsessed with TEDTalks as we all are so I auditioned.”

After opening their talk with a spoken word poem, Fowler-Chapman dove into how poetry can affect everyone.

“I really wanted people to know that the power of poetry comes through ourselves every day and that we are all poets,” Fowler-Chapman said.

Along with doing their first audition and speaking at their first TEDx event, Fowler-Chapman has another first this year in publishing a chapbook. Fowler-Chapman’s grandfather had a dream to create a publishing company named HOPE Etcetera Press, standing for Helping Others Prepare for Excellence. So Fowler-Chapman fulfilled that dream by publishing “Bread &,” a chapbook of recent work.

“I feel like that chapbook is braver than me most days,” Fowler-Chapman said.

The chapbook is a 40-page collection of poetry that focuses on topics such as resilience, strength, blackness, gender and joy according to Fowler-Chapman, who hopes to publish one or two works a year.

Fowler-Chapman says poetry should be part of everyone’s life.

“Words are so powerful and I feel drawn to how people use language,” Fowler-Chapman said. It’s something that can imprison you or it can break you free,” Fowler-Chapman said. “If you can recognize and access that then you can write your own destiny and write your own truth.”

—Tirion Morris

Sister Act

Eileen Mahony has dedicated her life to caring for others

After over 30 years with St. Elizabeth’s Health Center in Tucson, Sister Eileen Mahony continues to dedicate her life to compassion and caring for others.

Mahony is a family nurse practitioner at the Health Center, a faith-based health clinic in Tucson that serves patients without insurance or state funded medical aid. In her work at the center, she does exams and helps patients receive the medical care they need. Though she commonly provides care for women, Mahony sees patients of all ages.

She has been involved with women’s health at the center and in helping women with breast cancer, including running a support group for women who are both survivors of breast cancer and currently receiving treatment for breast cancer.

Being a nurse has been a calling for Mahony for most of her life.

“Since I was a teenager, I wanted to be a nurse,” Mahony said. “I always wanted to be a nurse.”

Becoming a nurse has led her to a life of being able to help and care for others.

Before she landed in Tucson, Mahony worked as a missionary in a clinic on the Atlantic coast of Nicaragua. Civil war in the country forced the missionaries to leave, including Mahony.

After leaving the clinic, she came to Tucson, where she started working with St. Elizabeth’s, where she has been since 1985.

Mahony has seen numerous changes to the healthcare field over her time as a nurse at the health center.

“Healthcare was much simpler years ago,” Mahony said.

Now, due to the ease of having online records, the health practitioners at the center enter their records on the computer. But Mahony said she prefers to conduct her appointments with patients without a computer in the room because she likes to have the face-to-face contact with her patients.

Once she has finished with a patient, she goes out of the examination room and enters information from her handwritten notes into the computer.

“We do a lot of listening here and people tell us what’s going on in their hearts,” Mahony said.

Mahony continues to work in healthcare. She chose to be able to continue working at the center two or three days a week. Over the 32 years she has worked at the center, she has maintained the same primary role.

“Because I’ve been here awhile, I’m seeing third generations and many second generations of children.” Mahony said.

When she works with patients at the center, she often finds that they’re looking for someone to listen, so she’s happy to do just that.

“I feel really good when people understand how to care for themselves and take the steps to do so,” Mahony said.

At St. Elizabeth’s, the center has traditionally seen patients who are uninsured. More recently, the center has expanded to include patients who are underinsured, as well as patients who are undocumented immigrants.

Mahony said often the pain a patient is carrying is larger than the pain that brought them into the clinic. When she can provide assistance to these patients, she sees the difference it makes to them personally.

“Humble people express gratitude in different ways,” Mahony said. “It’s the look in their eyes, or releasing the burden of pain.”

Mahony also was recently named a finalist for Outstanding Women’s Health from the Tucson Local Media 2017 Health and Medical Leader Awards.

“Everything I have done has been in teamwork,” she said. “Everything we’ve accomplished, we accomplished together.”

—Leah Gilchrist

Peanut-Butter Relief

Community sandwich drive helped feed the homeless

Armed with bags of Wonder Bread, tubs of Jif Creamy Peanut Butter, spatulas and a heaping load of goodwill, dozens of area residents set up shop at Riverfront Park, earlier this year, to assemble sandwiches for Tucson’s less fortunate. At the forefront of it all was 15-year-old Oro Valley resident Shivansh Srivastava, guiding his crew of well-doers on a mission of vital importance.

While spending a Saturday morning at the park with family and friends is a long way from sleeping in and playing video games, Srivastava was at home amidst the controlled chaos of spreading and sandwiching, directing it all with ease.

“I just feel that by helping others, I am playing my own part,” said Srivastava, a junior at Catalina Foothills High School. “Whatever I can do to make a difference, it may not solve the situation immediately, but I know that I am doing everything that I can.”

The sandwich-making drive was made possible thanks to a $500 grant from Generation On, in collaboration with Disney, that the young man earned through his placement on the Arizona Governor’s Youth Commission. Shivansh serves on the Oro Valley Youth Advisory Council.

Shivansh said that when he submitted his application for the grant, he stated that the money would be used to help feed the homeless.

“When I was very young, in Florida, I used to go for walks with my family, and we used to always see a few homeless people on the street,” he said. “As a kid, that would really strike me—I was a very emotional kid—and my heart really went out to them. As a growing young man, I like to do everything that I can.”

Srivastava does what he can every year by habitually dedicating his own birthday festivities to a more universally meaningful pursuit, instead of amassing gifts. This year, that selfless desire manifested in a drive to make peanut-butter sandwiches to benefit the Casa Maria Soup Kitchen.

Participants, mostly family friends and relatives, arrived bright and early to the park. Even though the goal of 500 sandwiches within roughly three hours seemed at first quite the task, the gathering quickly realized they would blow through that amount well before their deadline.

They did, to the tune 953 sandwiches.

To Oro Valley Councilmember Mary Snider, who helped make her fair share of sandwiches, the event was the perfect example of the “sense of community” that small towns like Oro Valley develop when the residents work together to achieve common goals. Snider said that any time youth are giving up their time to help somebody else, whether that’s a food drive, academic mentoring or anything else, “it just heartens you about their character.”

Snider was integral in the formation of the town’s Youth Advisory Council, and said that Srivastava is a perfect example of the leadership characteristics the council was developed to foster in local youth.

“They come from so many different backgrounds, different perspectives, and that’s what makes them so unique,” Snider said. “They’re not afraid to jump in and take something on, because they do have those leadership skills. Sometimes they don’t know it yet, but that’s one of the purposes of the council. To recognize it, give it a platform, light it up and let them find success so they can recognize it and believe in themselves.”

Also attending the food drive was Oro Valley Mayor Satish Hiremath, who said that the event was not only a testament to the character and integrity of Srivastava, but of every member of the group who participated on Family Volunteer Day.

“Society is often critical of its youth, and with events like this, and kids like this that come out and show true compassion, caring and kindness for their fellow man, that says a lot about the youth—especially in the town of Oro Valley,” Hiremath said. “…what this group of individuals is doing is what’s right with our society, and I think that needs to be emphasized.”

—Logan Burtch-Buus

A Cop’s Christmas Chowhall

Patti and Stan Thibaut help make Christmas merry for police who work that day

Come Christmas Day, when the rest of y’all are watching meaningless NBA games or plotting how best to return (or re-gift) those nasty gifts you got, Patti Thibaut and her husband, Stan, will actually be all wrapped up in the true spirit of the holiday.

The Thibauts are both retired from the Tucson Police Department. When Patti left after 24 years on the job, she was a sergeant. (Stan was a motor officer, which means that, as in all good marriages, she will forever outrank him.)

“Back when I was a sergeant,” she explains, “those who worked on Christmas Day had a shift from 9 a.m. until 7 p.m. That pretty much took up the entire day. A lot of the people who worked on Christmas Day were younger people with young families. They’d only have 45 minutes for a lunch break, so we worked to see to it that they could have a nice Christmas meal. We set up a schedule where their wives and kids could meet them at a certain time and have a Christmas meal together. It worked out really well.”

After her retirement, she spent 32 months in Afghanistan, but that’s a story for another time. When she came back to Tucson, she got a job teaching Law, Public Safety and Security at a local high school. She and her husband joined a new church, one that appealed to their sense of community and giving.

“The members of our congregation want to be the church, not just attend it,” she says.

Her experience with TPD and the sense of mission inspired by her church coalesced into an annual labor of love. Each Christmas Day, the Thibauts and other members of the congregation prepare and serve a full holiday meal to law enforcement personnel who find themselves on duty that day. They make turkey and stuffing, mashed potatoes and vegetables, home-made biscuits and pie for dessert.

They have cleared it with the chief of police and gotten the word out to all of the commanders at the substations. Officers on duty know that they can stop by the church for their lunch break and get a home-cooked meal.

Sadly, Patti Thibaut would rather not have the name of the church made public. While what they are doing is decidedly a good thing, there will undoubtedly be the random knucklehead who turns to the adjacent stoner and says, “Wow, that church is feeding cops. I think that since we don’t have jobs or anything, we should stay up all night and spray-paint our misspelled names on their wall. And then when we’re done, we can sniff what’s left. Oh wait, I forget, do we sniff first and then misspell or the other way around? Anyway, damn cops!”

While the Christmas meal was originally planned for TPD officers, in recent years, invitations have also gone out to members of the Rincon sector of the Pima County Sheriff’s Department. (Thibaut says that they have not invited Border Patrol agents because, as she explains: “They do a pretty good job of taking care of their own.”)

Word of the meal has spread. After serving just a few meals the first year, they got up to 25 in subsequent years and last year served 40 meals and actually ran out of food. (“We’ll be prepared this year,” she promises.)

The officers have a choice of sitting down for their meal or taking it boxed to go. One year, two officers had just sat down to eat when they were called away on an emergency, leaving their full plates on the table. That prompted the Thibauts to add the to-go option. Last year, two officers sat down to eat and then took with them 18 boxed meals for the people working at their substation.

Patti Thibaut is already busy planning this year’s meal. “It’s a lot of work, but it always ends up being one of our favorite days of the year.”

—Tom Danehy

This article appears in Dec 14-20, 2017.