October 6–19, 2018 | www.SanTanSun.com
Relentlessly local coverage of Southern Chandler and our neighboring communities
Parents taking the lead in teen suicide prevention BY JIM WALSH Staff Writer
Denise and Ben Denslow, LeAnn Hull and Tim Warnock know the endless pain parents suffer when their child dies by suicide. That’s why the three parents attended a Chandler Unified School District governing board meeting two weeks ago, urging the district to pay more
attention to the heartbreaking problem. Their pleas came in the wake of two apparent teen suicides reported within a week in Chandler and Queen Creek earlier this month. Since their appearance, three more East Valley teens have taken their lives, bringing to at least 20 the number of East Valley young people who have been lost to suicide since July 2017. One victim was 10 years old. The grieving parents are part of a
grassroots effort to save other children, knowing that it is too late to save their own. “I don’t want another family to go through this. No family should feel so lost,’’ said Denise Schatt-Denslow of Gilbert, whose 15-year-old son, Jacob Edward Machovsky, a Corona del Sol High School freshman, killed himself on Jan. 16, 2016. “This isn’t a nightmare. You get to wake up from a nightmare,’’ she said. “The
best way to honor him is to save another child.’’ The parents are acting, as state officials have yet to fill a suicide prevention coordinator position that the legislature created in May. Lorie Warnock, an English teacher at Mountain Pointe High School in Ahwatukee, started advocating for more teachers See
SUICIDE on page 12
Parents assail Chandler vets get a ‘thank you for your service’ CUSD over molest claims BY COLLEEN SPARKS Managing Editor
BY JIM WALSH AND COLLEEN SPARKS Staff
The parents of a 10-year-old Tarwater Elementary fifth-grader who said she was sexually harassed and touched inappropriately by a male student are upset about the Chandler Unified School District’s use of a standard form to report the incidents to police. They criticized the CUSD officials at a school board meeting last week, saying the district minimally complied with the state’s mandatory sex crimes reporting law when it sent a one-paragraph, handwritten form to Chandler police. But such a serious incident involving minors required a more robust response, the parents said. At a minimum, the principal should have called police and had an officer respond to the school, they said. Instead, the parents called police themselves after concluding the district did not take the incident seriously enough. The form said that the victim and a witness claimed the boy made several inappropriate, sexually-oriented statements, including, “I want to have sex with her under the table’’ on Aug. 2. The girl also reported that the same boy had touched her chest earlier in the same week. Chandler police are investigating the case, with a sex crimes detective planning See
TARWATER on page 5
The Chandler home of two U.S. Army veterans was a flurry of activity last month as workers rolled paint brushes over walls, installed new fencing, built a patio and got their hands dirty with lots of other work on a hot weekday morning. Watching over all the action, homeowners Dwight and Mary Blanchard smiled and seemed overwhelmed by the gesture.
“It’s just been an incredible few weeks here,” Mary Blanchard said. “It’s like, how do we deserve all this?” The major renovations to the inside and outside of the Blanchards’ home came courtesy of the Home Depot Foundation and HandsOn Greater Phoenix. The Home Depot’s associate-headed volunteer group, Team Depot, sent 20 members to the Blanchards’ home for preparation work, followed a week later by 116 workers who created a magical
transformation for the Blanchards. “At first, honestly I didn’t believe it,” Mary said. “I told everybody. I started crying.” Valley nonprofit HandsOn Greater Phoenix teamed up with Home Depot around project management and provided tools while a Home Depot Foundation grant paid for paint, rocks, plants, flooring, fencing and other supplies. See
HOME DEPOT on page 18
Kimberly Carrillo/Staff Photographer
Above: Volunteers from The Home Depot’s associate-headed volunteer group, Team Depot, spruce up the yard and make other upgrades at the house of veterans Dwight and Mary Blanchard, a married couple in Chandler. Right: Dwight and Mary Blanchard, who are U.S. Army veterans, were humbled and grateful to receive a major house renovation from The Home Depot Foundation and HandsOn Greater Phoenix recently.
F E AT U R E STO R I E S FBI crime stats good news for Chandler . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Community . . . . Page 04 Jobs pouring in Chandler, EV . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .BUSINESS . . . . . . . . . Page 25 Moms of multiples bond . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .NEIGHBORS . . . . . . . Page 43 Fall in Chandler has a lot to offer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .ARTS . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 54 Eat and dance at Greek fest . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .EAT . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 68
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