Andy Martinez is a groundskeeper at UNM-Gallup who has a passion for making children happy.  Andy lives in a Gallup trailer park and noticed kids walking the neighborhood and wondered why they weren’t on bikes.  Andy fondly recalled his own youth where he always had a bicycle, although it was often a hand-me-down version requiring repairs.  When Andy realized that many of the neighborhood families could not afford to buy bikes for their children, he set out to collect used bicycles, renovate and repair them and distribute them around the neighborhood.  “I was one of five children in our family so if I wanted a bike of my own, it usually meant getting a broken one from a sibling...

The last time boxing was alive and well in Gallup was several years ago when Jimmy Montano, now the head softball coach at Miyamura High, was working with the Police Athletic League program. Since then, nothing, except for a much more modified event called MMA which involves cage fighting.

Joe Olivas, who has been in Gallup for about five years, hopes to change that with his small group of young “Lights Out” fighters, aided by his assistant Raymond Yazzie. Olivas, a boxer from the age of seven in Oxford, CA had 176 bouts as an amateur and fought in the Olympic Trials in 1988 at the age of 18 at 135 pounds. He turned pro four years later at 140 pounds and trained with...