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AHWATUKEE FOOTHILLS NEWS www.ahwatukee.com
Wednesday, February 8, 2017
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Freeway builders try to address concerns around schools
BUSINESS
CHAMBER CHAMPS
AHWATUKEE FOOTHILLS NEWS
P.
BY PAUL MARYNIAK AFN Executive Editor
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A
s heavy construction equipment began rolling onto Pecos Road, the consortium building the South Mountain Freeway continued to try and ease the concerns of Ahwatukee residents who will be most affected by the work over the next two-and-a-half years. The effectiveness of that public relations blitz remains an open question. On Monday, a spokeswoman for Connect 202 Partners turned her attention to Lagos Elementary School, a stone’s throw from the freeway path and one of 17 schools within a half-mile radius of it. Theresa Dunn fielded questions from about a dozen people who showed up for the half-hour briefing. She explained why the first wave of heavy equipment rolled onto Pecos Road last week, disclosed that no median barrier will be installed on the four-lane interim Pecos Road and tried to ease parents’ concerns about the health and safety of Lagos pupils. She also reported that Pecos Road will be
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Local man leads new tour at seat of state’s power
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Get Out
DITCHING CHEWIE
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CONCERNS on page 10
(Larry Mangino/AFN staff photographer)
Heavy equipment began rolling onto Pecos Road last week as South Mountain Freeway construction began in earnest with work starting on the 17th Avenue Bridge, one of 40 that will cross the 22-mile roadway by the time work is completed in late 2019.
Back from Africa, couple starts over in Ahwatukee SPECIAL REPORT P.
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BY COTY DOLORES MIRANDA AFN Contributing Writer
TIME TO ACT Best time to sell your home is now
RE1
Voted one of the
BEST DESSERT
I
t was six and a half years ago when Ahwatukee Foothills residents John and Kay West sold their three-story house, their two cars and all their household goods to go half a world away to the Sub-Saharan African Kingdom of Swaziland to serve as missionaries. They’d lived in their Ahwatukee home five years, raising two boys, Zack and
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Jeremy. They had careers—she a music teacher and counselor, he 25-years with Cox Communications. They were established, settled. And yet, after visiting Swaziland together in 2009, they said they “felt a call” to go— and that was enough for them to uproot and move more than 10,000 miles away. All they took was their youngest son, Jeremy—son Zack was college-bound— their dachshund mix Barney and a Neapolitan mastiff Boaz. They said their faith in God was leading them.
On Jan. 16 the couple flew into Los Angeles International Airport and headed by car back to Ahwatukee, where they now reside after friends helped locate a rental home. They arrived with two suitcases each, two carry-ons a piece and two dogs—Barney and their newest, an African Great Dane named Zeke that came to them as a puppy but now looks more like a leggy, black pony. Also in tow were the memories of time spent in HIV-plagued Swaziland, and two See
AFRICA on page 14
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