Santa Fe New Mexican, May 8, 2014

Page 1

High winds herald first day of state tennis championships

Locally owned and independent

Thursday, May 8, 2014

Sports, B-1

www.santafenewmexican.com 75¢

Bridge work may again snarl traffic

Webber targets Martinez’s ties to Kochs Democratic rival Alan Webber uses helicopter metaphor to link governor to billionaire brothers in new TV election spot. LOcAL news, A-6

Hundreds die in militant attack in Nigeria

Crews are scheduled to resume work Friday on the North Tesuque Interchange north of Santa Fe and continue work through the weekend. LOcAL news, A-6

N.M. towns struggling to handle oil boom By Jeri Clausing

The Associated Press

CARLSBAD — The oil field trucks and big rigs rumble through morning and night, creating a first-ever rush hour in this otherwise sleepy 1960sera tourist and mining town. Hotel rooms along the clogged two-lane highway are mostly booked, some of them fetching nightly rates that rival those in Manhattan. Businesses desperate for workers will hire anyone who can pass a drug test, locals say. Finding a house, however, is another issue. So is getting a hamburger at the local McDonald’s, where crowds make a meal a drawnout ordeal. Carlsbad is centered in one of the most productive regions of the oil-rich Permian Basin, which is concentrated in Texas and stretches into New Mexico. The basin has long been a robust oil corridor, but the discovery of rich fields in southeastern New Mexico and advances in drilling technology have transformed once-quiet cities like Carlsbad into boom towns. As a result, the city of 26,000 people is struggling to keep up with its fast-growing population and the accompanying challenges, from housing shortages, higher crime rates and a spike in deadly accidents between big rigs and cars on narrow country roads. It’s one of the few areas of New Mexico experiencing

Please see BOOM, Page A-4

Obituaries Gandalf Gaván Richard R. Lemieux, 77, Santa Fe, May 1 Elizabeth “Betty” Haworth Lilienthal, Santa Fe, April 27 Robert Rodriguez, May 5

Today

PAGe A-10

PAGe A-12

Partly sunny and breezy this afternoon. High 63, low 35.

Pasapick Michael McGarrity

Remodel on hold after tipster reports violation to state officials By Daniel J. Chacón

The New Mexican

Gracie Hawkins, 5, a kindergartner at Agua Fría Elementary School, is congratulated by firefighter Mike Rivera on Wednesday, after she received the Roadrunner Hero Award during a school assembly. Gracie aided her mother during a diabetic seizure April 27. LUIS SÁNCHEZ SATURNO/THE NEW MEXICAN

By Robert Nott The New Mexican

D

arlene Lopez has a faint memory of her 5-year-old daughter, Gracie Hawkins, slowly feeding her pieces of Reese’s peanut-butter filled Easter eggs while saying, “A bite for me, a bite for you, Mama.” It’s still unclear whether Gracie had already called 911, or if that call came after the sugar, which pulled Lopez out of a seizure. Lopez, a diabetic, had gone to sleep the night before and didn’t wake up the next morning when Gracie was ready for breakfast. Fortunately, the Agua Fría Elementary School kindergartner acted swiftly to save her mother’s life. It was April 27, the Sunday after Easter, and the remaining holiday candy in the house came in handy. After calling 911 and calmly reciting her name, phone

Please see HeRO, Page A-4

A construction project at City Hall is on hold and facing increased costs after a tipster reported the city to the state for failing to pull permits for the work. Ironically, the $17,000 remodel was happening in the city’s Land Use Department, which oversees, among other things, building permits. “We were trying to keep it simple and inexpensive, and this has turned into a complete fiasco. It’s going to cost at least a third more than what we had anticipated,” Dave Pfeifer, the city’s Facilities Division director, said Wednesday. Pfeifer said it was his responsibility to pull permits, but the city doesn’t “typically” do so on smaller projects. “This was one of those that was on a borderline of whether we needed to pull a permit or not. We didn’t pull one. Somebody called CID on us,” he said, referring to the Construction Industries Division of the state Regulation and Licensing Department. The city is usually the enforcer of permit rules. Between 2010 and April 2014, the city has issued 599 stopwork orders. The city was unable to provide the amount of fines associated with those orders. “Some may have been issued a fine, some may have not,” city spokeswoman Jodi McGinnis Porter said. “But I don’t have a report readily available with that information.”

Please see PeRMIT, Page A-4

Michelle Lord, Gracie’s teacher

Growing number of Hispanics in U.S. leaving Catholicism

By Michael Paulson

By all accounts, Hispanics are the future of Catholicism in America. Already, most young Roman Catholics in the United States are Hispanic,

Classifieds B-6

number and street address, and her mother’s condition, Gracie called her grandparents, Ernie and Linda Lopez. They were both a mess. “I was freaking out, but she had it under control,” Ernie Lopez said of Gracie. “She kept saying, ‘It’s gonna be OK, Grandpa. Mama will just go to the hospital and get a shot, and she’ll be OK.’ ” Which is exactly what happened. Darlene Lopez said she was back home by noon. On Wednesday, the Agua Fría school community gathered with district officials and a half-dozen Santa Fe firefighters to honor Gracie with a Roadrunner Hero Award for her decisive action. Gracie, who was clad in a colorful skirt and animal ears (the school was having a “Let’s Go To the Circus” concert in the gym), accepted the award without saying a word.

Gracie is so strong and so silent. You have to seek out her “ strength, and then you see how strong she is.”

The New York Times

The novelist discusses and signs copies of Backlands, 6-7 p.m., Collected Works Bookstore, 202 Galisteo St., 989-4226.

Calendar A-2

Permit ‘Strong, silent’ hero snafu costly for city

Kindergartner honored for lifesaving actions during mom’s seizure

Population becoming more unaffiliated with religion, poll finds

www.pasatiempomagazine.com

Index

Islamic militants who have triggered international outrage over the kidnapping of Nigerian schoolgirls open fire on a busy marketplace. PAGe A-3

Comics B-12

Crosswords A-8, B-7

and soon that will be true of the overall Catholic population. But the Hispanicization of American Catholicism faces a big challenge: Hispanics are leaving Catholicism at a striking rate. It has been clear for years that Catholicism, both in the U.S. and Latin America, has been losing adherents to evangelical Protestantism, and, in particular, to Pentecostal and other charismatic churches. But

Lotteries A-2

Opinions A-11

Main office: 983-3303 Late paper: 986-3010 News tips: 983-3035

Sports B-1

as an increasing percentage of the U.S. Hispanic population is made up of people born in this country, a simultaneous, competing form of faith-switching is also underway: More U.S. Hispanics are leaving Catholicism and becoming religiously unaffiliated. The seemingly mind-bending result: Even as a rising percentage of American Catholics is Hispanic, a falling percentage of American His-

Time Out A-8

panics is Catholic. Nearly one-quarter of Hispanics in the United States are former Catholics, according to a poll released Wednesday by the Pew Research Center. By comparison, about 10 percent of all Americans are former Catholics, according to a Pew survey released in 2008; the difference is partly explained by the fact that a much higher fraction of Hispanics

Please see cATHOLIcIsM, Page A-4

Two sections, 12 pages

Scoop A-9

165th year, No. 128 Publication No. 596-440

BREAKING NEWS AT WWW.SANTAFENEWMEXICAN.COM

Congratulate your graduate with a

• Not to scale;

in The New Mexican’s special keepsake publication for local grads!

Actual size is 3. 791”x2” •

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Deadline: May 28, 5pm • Publishes: June 8th

Congratulatio We are so prou ns Ale! d of yo We love you! u!

$25 includes one color photo of your grad plus your personal message (75 characters max).

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