It’s exactly 5 a.m. on a Saturday morning as I begin this, and the
sun is about to appear behind Whale Mountain. My neighbors’ roosters
are doing their thing, and the slight breeze jostles the wind chimes on
the porch.

It’s another day in paradise, as people around here are fond of
saying.

“Here” is Ajo, 130 miles southwest of Tucson, the most remote rural
area in Pima County. An unincorporated community of approximately
3,700—swelling to maybe 5,000 with winter residents—it’s
had a hardscrabble existence since 1985, when Phelps-Dodge closed the
mine after a bitter strike and copper prices tumbled. And still, Ajo
held on.

Growing up in Tucson, my brother and I joked there were two places
we’d never live: Yuma and Ajo. We were smart boys back then. He
ended up living and working in Yuma early in his career, and I’m living
in and loving Ajo at the end of my own.

Today, Ajo is home to retirees and Border Patrol personnel, artists
and snowbirds, crusty old-timers and brash newcomers—a ripe mix
of personalities. Home-ownership is high; the cultural diversity is
deep and rich; the town is growing. There’s an active arts community;
the Spanish Revival-styled town plaza is being revitalized; businesses
are opening.

It’s a very good place.

Friday evening, June 19, on my way home, I stopped at the market. In
the parking lot, I spent a few minutes talking with our local newspaper
editor, then with a former neighbor. In the store, I made a few
purchases, but only after engaging with several other friends who were
shopping or working. That happens all the time.

That Friday night, though, it was much different. The talk in the
parking lot and the aisles wasn’t about how we spent our day or about
paradise: Our community was beginning to come together to mourn. Friday
night, paradise was somewhere else.

The day before, on Thursday, two girls, riding their bikes, found
another girl, age 7, dead in a wash near her house. The details are
difficult and ugly. An arrest has been made. Families and neighbors are
in despair; lives have been shattered; there is collective
shellshock.

The news began to ripple through town Thursday night, unbelievable
and frightening and painful. Friday, the life maps were being
charted—she was this person’s sister, daughter, granddaughter;
that person’s friend, student, neighbor. A friend, a neighbor of the
family, brought into the office a ThumbDrive with photos he had taken
of her several weeks ago—smiling and toothsome, swinging in an
old tire strung from a tree. He wanted to make prints for the
family.

Word went around that the city media was calling, hungry for “color”
and details. Almost imperceptibly, the ranks began to close, to
protect.

I know the news biz and understand that hunger to feed an audience
we think needs and wants to be fed. But, living here, I also know there
are more important things: closing in, being sensitive, helping to
heal. These are not wounds that need to be touched by the world at
large. And, I doubt the world at large becomes any better for the
tale.

That Saturday’s Arizona Daily Star was full of this story, in
greater detail than I think probably anyone needed to know. I looked at
it with an eye well-trained to the value of the news, and a heart
becoming deeply entrenched in this community. I wondered what it
served, how it informed, why the details were so important. A child was
lost—can there be anything more horrific than that reality?

The next day, Sunday, the Star‘s front page was filled with
another horror in another town in Southern Arizona. I grieve for that
loss as well.

This is a resilient place. The Fourth of July will be celebrated
with a parade and fireworks about which there is no controversy. The
International Day of Peace will come in September, and there will be
gallery openings, holiday festivals and more in the year and years
ahead. The Elks and the Chu Chu Club, the Veterans of Foreign Wars and
Rotary will continue to meet and do good works. We will all
continue.

But, for now, we mourn. It may be a
shake-your-head-and-wonder-about-rural-America, quick-and-hot news
event elsewhere, but here, it’s hug tightly, chat softly and sigh.
We’ve lost a member of our family.

This article appears in Jul 2-8, 2009.