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This Week
NEWS ............................. 3
Bluegrass led ‘Yankee’ to become a banjomaker
COMMUNITY ......... 11 Falcon Field pursuing biomedical tech campus development
SPORTS ...................... 21 Wrestler overcame setbacks to be honored by state, national groups
EAST VALLEY
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Legendary brownie maker fine-tuning image Sunday, November 12, 2017
As EV teen suicides mount, Queen Creek takes new action BY JIM WALSH Tribune Staff Writer
A
fter experiencing the heartbreak of teen suicide, Queen Creek residents are uniting to combat the problem as high school officials have taken the unusual step of screening all their students, and others are launching a youth commission. Queen Creek’s holistic response comes after at least two students at Queen Creek High School committed suicide since May and two others in the area were reported. There have been at least 10 teenage suicides in the East Valley since July. A series of other education and prevention efforts have been held throughout the East Valley, giving a frightening problem a much higher profile. They have ranged from Desert Vista High School’s conference in Ahwatukee last week to previous sessions at Mesa Community College, sponsored by the Mesa Chamber of Commerce, and another in Gilbert. But only 24 hours after the Tempe Union High School District sponsored a teen suicide conference in Ahwatukee, a third student in two years from one of the district’s schools took his life. The latest tragedy occurred Nov. 7 in Chan-
(Kimberly Carrillo/Tribune Staff Photographer)
Jodi Brocki, left, cries with Christina Nguyen as they hold signs outside Corona del Sol High School last Thursday to remind students they aren't alone. They were responding to the Tuesday suicide of the third Corona student in two years.
dler when a 15-year-old Corona del Sol High School sophomore shot himself to death at the apartment complex where he lived. His death follows a Corona student’s suicide last year and one in 2015 that occurred on the campus. In reaction to that suicide, about a dozen people held a “Kids Matter’’ rally outside Corona del Sol on Thursday, carrying signs directed at teenagers arriving for school reading “we
care,’’ “you’re not alone,’’ “reach out we care.’’ Jodi Brocki was tearful at the rally. She had attended the educational forum at Desert Vista. “It just deeply hurts my heart,’’ Brocki said. “I am deeply concerned about these kids and I am truly concerned for my three boys.’’ See
SUICIDES on page 8
Polytechnic students try robots on real-world problems BY WAYNE SCHUTSKY Tribune Staff Writer
EXHIBITS .................. 24 Life and death in ancient Rome comes to Phoenix
COMMUNITY.......... 11 BUSINESS.....................14 OPINION.................... 18 SPORTS......................... 21 FAITH............................ 23 CLASSIFIEDS............. 28
H
undreds of white amur fish navigate SRP canals throughout the East Valley to control the growth of weeds that can damage the canal system. But those fish are not a viable option in some smaller canals, leaving the utility searching for alternatives to remove the unwanted vegetation. That is where students at Ari(Kimberly Carrillo/Tribune Staff Photographer) zona State University’s Polytechnic Students in Assistant Professor Panagiotis Polygerinos’ Bio-Inspired Mechatronics campus in Mesa come in. Lab are developing an autonomous quadcopter, or drone, to monitor SRP canal “We are looking at applications systems for contaminants.
and areas in SRP where they don’t have a technical solution right now,” assistant professor Dan Aukes said. Aukes, a Gilbert resident, supervises students working in ASU’s IDEAlab, which stands for Integrating Design, Engineering and Analysis. The lab is a nexus for solving an array of problems with robotics. Those problems are the focus of some projects funded by Salt River Project, but Polytechnic students are working on inventions to adSee
INVENTIONS on page 6