These stories are not in a particular order, but were chosen based on their impact on Gallup and McKinley County as a whole.
In some cases, the stories were chosen because of the amount of time a writer spent on them. Some are fun community-based stories, but they still hold impact.
LAST SEEN IN GALLUP
Forty-five people are listed on the FBI’s “Indian Country Cases” webpage, which asks for the public’s assistance on the multitude of missing persons cases involving Indigenous people. Indigenous people experience violent crimes at a much higher rate than any other group in America and are often reported missing.
In the May 19 issue of the Sun, reporter Holly J. Wagner called attention to another aspect of the Missing and Murdered Indigenous People crisis: a regional health care scam that targeted vulnerable Indigenous people.
Even if someone is itinerant, homeless or dealing with sobriety issues, relatives often know their patterns. It’s not unusual to not hear from that person for days at a time, but those relatives know when it’s been too long.
Sadly, that may be the first indication that scammers have “recruited” – read abducted – a vulnerable family member. That’s when the search begins. Families are forced to expend time, money and resources to go out and look for their missing kin.
Most often, family members have been left to search for their missing loved ones, unaware that they may have been lured into a van with food and alcohol on the spot and promises of substance abuse treatment and shelter at their destination.
From there, the victims are transported to group homes known as pop-up rehab facilities in the Phoenix area. The scammers may change their victims’ names or other information to apply for public health and welfare benefits the victims never receive.
Those who refuse may be dumped on the street hundreds of miles from home, with no resources or contacts to get back. Others who remain in the pop-up homes may face physical abuse. They are forbidden to speak their native language under threat of having their phones taken away.
Navajo Nation Council Speaker Crystalyne Curley’s voice broke during a May 17 press conference when she spoke of receiving a call from the family of a man who had been missing for three months after making what should have been a routine visit to Gallup for medical reasons.
“Ever since then he has not been back home. Usually he does a one-day trip, hitchhikes into town for dialysis or to donate blood,” she said.
At the time of that initial Sun article, the Gallup Police Department, McKinley County Sheriff’s Office, and the Navajo Nation all vowed to track these scammers down and help those with missing loved ones.
The “Don’t Be Taken for a Ride” outreach program was launched by the state of New Mexico in July, which introduced a new hotline for victims, allies and near-misses to use the 988 mental health emergency line to report encounters with potential scammers.
The scammers have not been caught, although Arizona launched a review of sober living facilities and started pulling funding of those found to be out of compliance with state law – nearly 200 as of October. One man was indicted for alleged “patient brokering” in Arizona in early November and eight more were arrested later that month.
So far New Mexico’s 988 line has received only three tips about the rehab scam, New Mexico Human Services Department spokesman Tim Fowler said. But he emphasized that the hotline is there to address any type of crisis.
“If you or anyone you know is in crisis, in any sense of the word, that’s why 988 is there to call, chat, text and have somebody who can listen to you and provide some help,” he said. “That includes if you’ve seen something that doesn’t look right and you want to make sure that somebody else knows about that and it can be followed up on.”
NEW POLICE CHIEF, SAME MOM
Erin Toadlena-Pablo’s promotion to police chief lined up almost perfectly with the Mother’s Day holiday. Her swearing-in ceremony took place on May 2, and the Sun featured her in its May 12 Mother’s Day edition.
In the article, Toadlena-Pablo talks about the challenge of balancing being a mom to six children and a member of law enforcement.
When Toadlena-Pablo started her career with the Gallup Police Department 21 years ago as a detective, it was difficult to leave her children at home. Her daughters Kymberly and Kiana were only babies, and her two sons Kobe and Joshua were in elementary school.
“Having to work a 12-hour shift and not being able to get them ready for the day in the morning and then when I got back [home] they were already asleep and redoing that the next day, that was a lot harder when they were younger,” she said. “But as they got into middle school and high school, I hate to say this, but my kids probably got used to my absence.”
When she was a detective, Toadlena-Pablo had times where she was on-call. This meant that her family couldn’t travel or go anywhere too far away from Gallup when she was on-call. Now, as Chief of Police, Toadlena-Pablo is on-call 24/7, seven days a week, every day of the year.
Toadlena-Pablo said she relies on her husband and other family members on the days her demanding job pulls her away from her kids.
“I don’t normally get off at 5 pm, for example the city council meeting is tonight, so I won’t get home until 8 or 9 pm depending on how late the meeting goes. So dinner is not going to be made by me tonight, so I rely on my husband to take care of that, or sometimes my mom will come over and get them dinner,” Toadlena-Pablo explained.
Look out for a story about Toadlena-Pablo’s first year as Police Chief sometime in 2024.
GALLUP COMMUNITY HEALTH KEEPS DOCTORS, PATIENTS CLOSE
Amidst all of the happenings at Rehoboth-McKinley Christian Health Care Services over the past few years, the former Chief Medical Officer Dr. Valory Wangler stepped up and started her own non-profit clinic that offers primary care for patients of all ages, as well as reproductive health care, urology services, LGBTQ+ health care and medication-assisted therapy for opioid use disorder.
The clinic opened in 2022 and celebrated its first anniversary this year.
In a June 30 article, Wangler spoke about the clinic’s early success. The clinic was born in Wangler’s backyard, an idea that bubbled up among colleagues.
“We started brainstorming about what we thought were the greatest barriers to care in the community and how we thought we might be able to make the biggest difference,” she said. “It was twofold: We knew there was a lot of need, patients were waiting too long to get in for care, but also there were a number of physicians that really loved working in Gallup and being part of the community – they were going to leave the community.”
One area where GCH has really stepped up is prenatal care. The clinic started offering those services in December 2022 after RMCH closed its Labor and Delivery unit last year.
“That’s been great for patients, not to have to go to Grants or Albuquerque for care,” Wangler said. “You need 12 to 15 visits, at least, over the course of a pregnancy, so that is really difficult to do outside of the community.”
The GCH staff are grateful for the community support the clinic has received in its first year, Wangler said, and patient satisfaction is part of what fuels the mission.
“Whenever patients are content with the care they receive, whenever they are telling their friends and family to come here for care, that’s definitely one of the highlights and one of the things that makes us feel like we are doing the right thing, meeting a need and being successful,” she said.
HONORING LARRY CASUSE SERIES
In honor of the 50th anniversary of his death, the Sun did a three-part series on Larry Casuse in late March.
Casuse spent the last moments of his life fighting for what he believed in: protecting Indigenous people from the alcohol industry and the way it took advantage of them. He specifically wanted a bar, the Navajo Inn, outside of Gallup on Highway 264, on the border of the Navajo Nation, to change its ways.
After going through the normal channels — he filed petitions; went to court to try and shut the bar down; sent appeals to the state liquor board; and had spoken to the mayor and city council multiple times — he decided to tackle issues he had with the city in a more drastic manner.
His fight ended March 1, 1973, when he was reportedly shot and killed by Gallup Police after he kidnapped and held the mayor at the time, Emmett Garcia, hostage. He was 19 years old.
In the series, the Sun took our readers through the events preceding Casuse’s death, what reportedly happened on March 1, 1973, and how people remember Casuse and what he stood for.
Ursula Casuse Carrillo was 12 years old when her brother died. She wants people to understand how caring her brother was, and that he simply wanted the Navajo Inn to close up shop, or at least change its ways.
“Larry was just a young man who got his heart pierced when he moved to Gallup. He saw that the Native Americans needed help and that’s what he wanted to do,” Carrillo said. “He tried by every means to get help to them, to close that bar down. This mayor just didn’t listen.”
David Correia, an author and professor of American Studies at the University of New Mexico, became fascinated with Casuse’s story after he met his family in 2013. He wrote a book about the Casuse family titled An Enemy Such as This: Larry Casuse and the Struggle for Native Liberation in One Family on Two Continents across Three Centuries in 2022.
“I couldn’t walk away from that story. It only took such a long time to write because it was such a difficult thing to write, a biography of a family, many who are still alive,” Correia said. “I didn’t want to write a book in which I used Larry’s life and death to make some argument about colonialism. That seemed like it would cheapen his memory and legacy.”
The Navajo Inn did eventually close soon after Casuse’s death. Correia noted that Garcia made a promise to shut it down, but when he didn’t win reelection, Correia said that’s when Garcia changed his mind and kept the bar open. Correia said it only stayed open for a few more months after Casuse’s death though.
When it comes to the controversial, and sometimes violent, contention of Casuse, Correia said he doesn’t want people to think of him that way.
“He was a really quiet, intelligent person who couldn’t take it anymore that people were being brutally killed and dying in great numbers every single year around these liquor stores in Gallup,” Correia said. “It’s not glamorizing violence to say he made a really courageous decision that day [he died] and he decided to sacrifice his life to try and protect other peoples’ lives, not knowing if that would really help. …”
THE MYSTERY OF BILLY THE KID
As a fun way to kick off 2023, the Sun looked into the legend of Billy the Kid, and his possible connection the Gallup/Ramah area.
Billy the Kid was born sometime between 1859-1861, according to aboutbillythekid.com, although his actual date of birth is unknown. His mother died when he was 15, and after that, McCarthy’s life took a turn for the worst. He began stealing and picking fights.
But it wasn’t until the Lincoln County War in 1878 that McCarthy became a true outlaw. The War started when a man named John Turnstall came to Lincoln County, New Mexico, and set up a store. Businessman and store owner Lawrence Murphy and his business partners dominated the town and county of Lincoln, and they were not happy when Turnstall arrived.
The conflict came to a head when Turnstall was shot on Feb. 18, 1878. Turnstall’s cowboys, who called themselves “The Regulators,” went out to avenge him, and McCarthy was a part of that group. A battle ensued, lasting five days in Lincoln.
After the battle, McCarthy fled, officially labeled an outlaw.
McCarthy and three other men were eventually accused of murdering a man named Morris Bernstein, who was simply caught up in the gunfire of the war on Aug. 5, 1878.
McCarthy, a.k.a. “Billy the Kid,” was captured in December 1880 by Lincoln County Sheriff Pat Garrett and stood trial for Bernstein’s murder. He was sentenced to death by hanging in April 1881 but escaped jail on April 28, 1881, after he killed two deputies.
McCarthy was able to remain on the run until Garrett tracked him down on July 14 at a ranch in Fort Sumner, New Mexico, and shot him.
Or did he?
Many men have claimed to have been Billy the Kid, but the one with local ties was from Ramah and his name was John Miller.
In an interview with the Sun, Michael Giudicissi, a man who has a podcast about Billy the Kid, titled All Things Billy the Kid, explained John’s background, and shared some evidence that backs the theory that he was indeed Billy the Kid.
The first record of John is his marriage license from Aug. 8, 1881, which was less than a month from when Billy the Kid allegedly died. John married a woman named Isadora in Las Vegas, New Mexico. During the wedding ceremony, he was allegedly seen with a gunshot wound, Giudiccisi said.
Giudicissi listed a few facts that point to the possibility of John being the Kid.
“If you look at pictures of Miller later in life, he’s got the narrow shoulders like Billy did. ... You can look at him and ‘Okay, that’s a guy who could’ve been Billy,’” Giudicissi said. “The one photo that we have definitively of Billy was taken in 1879, maybe 1880, when he was no more than 20 years old, and could’ve been as young as 17 at that time. So to try and compare that old photo, which is in horrible shape, to a photo of a guy that was taken 60-70 years later, it’s pretty challenging. But there’s no obvious thing that says it couldn’t be him because John Miller had four arms or something like that.”
Another fact that suggests that John may have been Billy the Kid is the lifestyle he and his wife led. Although they did live in Ramah for a time managing cattle, they often moved around.
“The second thing is John Miller and his wife lived a kind of nomadic lifestyle. Almost as if they didn’t want to stay in one place too long,” Giudicissi explained. “So people who believe [John Miller is Billy the Kid] seize upon that and say, ‘well of course if he was Billy he wouldn’t want to hang around and be discovered.’”
Giudicissi said that there were a couple of times John admitted to being Billy the Kid while he was drunk, but once he sobered up the next day, he would deny what he’d previously said.
John died in 1937 in Prescott, Arizona, in a nursing home, according to Giudicissi. Isadora had died years earlier in a fire that consumed their home.
Giudicissi noted that after John died, a probate officer found a trunk in his room at the nursing home he was living in. He knew it needed to go to the next of kin, so he went on a mission to the Gallup/Ramah area to find someone related to John.
John and Isadora never had biological children, but they did adopt a Native American boy named Max. Giudicissi said he wasn’t sure if the man was able to find Max Miller when he traveled to the Ramah/Gallup area.
The trunk supposedly contained information proving that John was Billy the Kid. However, Giudicissi said the contents of the trunk were never disclosed publicly.
“I think the idea that there’s a trunk out there with something in it that could prove John Miller was Billy the Kid still fascinates some people,” Giudicissi said.
These are just a sample of the major stories that happened in Gallup in 2023. The Sun looks to continue covering major issues in the next year and beyond. And look forward to next year, as the Sun moves on to become a broadsheet newspaper!
By Molly Ann Howell
Managing Editor
