PART TWO OF THREE

Where do you go after a whirlwind of activity and intense learning of five years comes to an end? Most would choose home, that one place of family and friends that you grow up with and where you are able to rest until the next step of your future presents itself. That was where Felicia Guliford went after her days in Tennessee.

Gallup was where her parents were, Lawrence and Ruth – both teachers in the Gallup McKinley School District. Her dad taught Special Education and her mother Art, and both were active athletic supporters and church members. Her three brothers Joshua (now 34 and working for Molina Healthcare), Maurice (32 and a financial analyst for IHS) and Daniel (a floor manager for Santa Ana Star Casino) were all out of high school and pursuing their own dreams, but here was the place where Felicia had been born and raised and it was a comfort to her in so many ways.

She eventually got a job at Miyamura High School teaching Biology and Chemistry after substituting in the classroom for a while. The steadier position allowed her to wait patiently for an opening in medical school, and she became involved in coaching cross-country.

“It was a brand new school and the team consisted only of freshmen, sophomore, and juniors,” she said. “The team placed third in state both years.”

In July of 2010, two events occurred that would propel her to even further heights than she had scaled previously. One was the acceptance from UNM into their medical school, where she earned her medical degree and “white coat” on May 8. Even more important – her self-described “greatest honor” – was her marriage to Eric Taylor a week before school was scheduled to start back in 2010.

She had met Eric in Ford Canyon by chance. Taylor was coaching for Gallup Catholic at the time and both were practicing with their teams when a friend of Eric’s told him he should meet her. He didn’t see much of her for a while, but when they finally did get together, it was only a matter of a few months before they were ready for marriage.

Eric had come to Gallup in 2009 from Atlanta for a job opportunity and found two, one at Gallup Christian School and one at Gallup Catholic, where he worked with Angelo DiPaolo. He described Angelo as becoming a surrogate father to him – important to him because of the recent loss of his biological dad.

Following their marriage, the young couple settled in Albuquerque for Felicia’s post-graduate work and Eric coached at East Mountain and West Mesa High Schools. Born in Houston and living there until the age of 14, Eric had moved to Dallas with his family when his dad was transferred by the U.S. Navy as a Senior Chief Petty Officer, and then to Virginia, where his love and success of soccer really came to the forefront of his life.

His talent at that game sent him to Rochester College in Michigan, but after two years and an associate degree he left the frigid climes of the north to finish his education at Freed-Hardeman University in Tennessee with a B.A. in Communication.  His first job was coaching a girls’ soccer team at Ohio Valley University in West Virginia. The Division II position was a “tough job” according to Taylor, but was also good experience.

Now married, the focus of this pair abruptly changed as they supported each other in their different avenues of life. Felicia was busy, and sometimes preoccupied, with her course work while Eric brought in the steadier income. Felicia continued receiving other honors, selected to the NM Coaches Association Athletic Hall of Fame in 2011, and being a nominee in 2014 for the Gold Humanism Honor Society.

Then there were the scholarships she received from UNM SOM Full Tuition Grant (2010-2015), American Indian Graduate Center Fellowship (2010-2015), Michael Berger Endowment (2010-2011), H.J. Holden Endowment (2010-2011), Margaret and Sidney Jaffe Endowment (2011-2012), Marie Hutton Endowment (2011-2012), Edmund and Thelma Evans Endowment (2012-20133, La Tierra Sagrada (2014), UNM SOM Alumni (2014), and the Dr. Anthony Martinez Memorial (2014).

But the greatest honor for the couple was the birth of their son Lake during Felicia’s third year of medical school. Past and almost gone from her memories of injuries and other hardships she had endured at U.T., this new member of their family rapidly became a new focus for them, or as Felicia so eloquently put it, “Lake is a reflection of our love for each other.”

All of the above is not the end of the story, though. Life continues with the latest challenges and accomplishments of this amazing couple.

The conclusion of this story will be in the next issue of Gallup Sun, covering what the couple is doing now and where they see their future going.

Technology is a double-edged sword. Lately, Rehoboth McKinley Christian Health Care Services management and patients have been learning that lesson the hard way.

Amid escalating tensions between some members of the community and hospital management, phone outages at the College Clinic were the last straw. Patients vented on Facebook about problems reaching their care providers and making appointments.

Eventually, they organized and took to the streets in protest, braving the wind and snow Feb. 2, and coming out again on Feb. 9, under sunnier skies.

“When the protesters came out it was on the heels of a couple of weeks of frustration with the phones,” RMCHCS Interim CEO Don Smithburg said this week. “I’m assured we have a temporary fix now.”

Rose Eason, an RCMHCS patient and mother of two pediatric patients (both born at RMCH), was among the protesters. She joined up with the informal organization, Community Health Action Group, after weeks of problems trying to make appointments and reach her children’s doctors at College Clinic.

“It’s scary to not be able to call your kid’s doctor or to feel like the administration does not care about patient access,” she said.

She confirmed Feb. 8 that she was finally able to get through after RMCHCS got a temporary fix into place.

CHAG organizer Constance Liu, OB-GYN, who works at Gallup Indian Medical Center, said the phone issue was the immediate problem, but CHAG also wants a more productive relationship with the hospital.

“The immediate goal is to make sure that people who have been reaching out to us reporting that their access to care is suboptimal are able to make appointments again, when sick children can see their pediatricians, when elderly folk can get their prescriptions refilled and not have to come in to make an appointment,” she said.

“At the heart of it, we believe that a hospital, to succeed, needs to be patient-centered and patient-focused. We see a lack of community or patient representation on the hospital board of trustees,” she continued. “Our organization’s goal is to continue to be positive, be solutions oriented, and ultimately to show that there is great value to patient suggestions and dialogue with the community.”

The clinic’s issues arose when the new technology collided with outdated infrastructure, which included a 1970s phone system.

Smithburg said the tech overhaul entails building a whole new phone system that will integrate with the existing computer system. And while workers were running new cable and making adjustments above the ceiling and below the ground, it caused problems with the phone lines.

“We have a temporary fix in now,” he said. “By April it should all be a digital system, fully integrated with our regular patient care and financial computer systems. I haven’t heard a complaint in a several days, and we’re monitoring it very closely.”

Meanwhile, Smithburg acknowledged that the communication gap needs to be tightened between the hospital and members of the community.

“Things happen at a hospital that are really good and we don’t announce it to the world because it’s our mission,” he said. “Sometimes things happen that are annoying that we are working on fixing and it’s inconsistent. Maybe that’s a lesson learned.”

Some patients felt the phone outage left them with nowhere to turn, and a promise that everything will be sorted out by April was of little comfort.

So, where can community members air a grievance in the meantime?

The hospital has a patient liaison, Wonda Johnson, whose job it is to help patients with issues. She can be reached at (505) 863-7206. Patients may also email comments or complaints to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .'; document.write( '' ); document.write( addy_text80384 ); document.write( '<\/a>' ); //--> This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

The City of Gallup inspects local hotels and motels annually to ensure they are up to code and suitable for guests. During the Jan. 25 city council meeting, Gallup’s Planning and Development Director Clyde Strain shared the 2021 findings.

He said six motels received red tags and were told they had to close their businesses due to code violations. The six were the Hacienda Motel, Blue Spruce, Arrowhead Lodge, Lariat Lodge, Zia Motel, and Redwood Lodge.

“What I can tell you is I’ve been doing these inspections for 20 years … and progressively these particular motels have just gotten worse and worse and worse,” Strain said. “They haven’t gotten better over the years.”

The inspections took place between May and June. Code Enforcement worked with a building inspector and the Gallup Fire Department to perform assessments of the interior and exterior of each motel. Among the things they checked for were working smoke detectors and parking lot surfaces free of potholes.

It was determined that all six of the motels had violations that posed a threat to the public’s health, safety, and welfare. The problems ranged from structural issues to sanitation and insect and rodent infestation, broken fixtures and furniture, and lack of regular cleaning and maintenance.

According to Strain, the motels were informed of the violations during the inspections. Additionally, follow-up reports were hand-delivered along with attached pictures and information about how to fix the violations. A certified letter was also mailed to the motels and property owners.

Code Enforcement informed the motels that they were willing to do another walk-through to explain what could be done  to fix the problems. However, they received no requests.

Each motel was also informed that they would need a contractor to file for a building permit when making repairs/upgrades to structural, mechanical, electrical, or plumbing work.

As of the Jan. 25 meeting, none of the motels had filed a building permit for repairs; therefore, all six motels have remained closed. The city learned that illegal construction was going on in one of the motels without a licensed contractor.

Strain noted that the owner of the Blue Spruce Motel has decided not to reopen.

“The property owner talked to me and he said he had no interest in repairing the motel or reopening because of the clientele that were frequenting it,” Strain explained. “He said they were just destroying his business.”

There is currently wire fencing in front of all the rooms of the Blue Spruce Motel. Strain said people broke into the rooms and slept on the roofs.

Gallup Police Chief Franklin Boyd was at the meeting. He said Gallup Police have responded to many calls from the motels. Boyd said his department was putting a report of all the calls from the motels together.

Gallup’s Fire Marshal Jon Pairett also spoke at the meeting. He explained that the most common violations the fire department finds at the motels are inoperable smoke alarms and holes in the walls, floors, and ceilings. He said the fire department works with the motel owners a lot.

“One of the things that they’ve addressed with us is [that] they’ll fix a lot of the issues and then that week when they rent [rooms] out to some of the clientele it gets damaged again,” Pairett said.

Strain stressed that the city has already told the motel owners exactly what they need to do to bring their buildings up to code and that he really can’t be any clearer.

“We’re not going to design it for them, because that’s not our job,” Strain said. “What they were instructed to do is have a contractor go through their rooms and see what was needed to bring the rooms up to code.”

He noted that the owners might need to get an architect involved, depending on what the contractor finds.

He told the council that one contractor reached out to him to ask if they could fix one room at a time and then open that room, so that the owners could bring in some income to pay for the expenses. However, Strain said that couldn’t be done because the city doesn’t want to issue 30 building permits for a single motel.

In response to a question from City Councilor Linda Garcia, Dist. 1, about whether the motel buildings were structurally sound, Strain said his team did not have the expertise to make such a determination.

By Molly Ann Howell
Sun Correspondent

The FBI is offering a reward of up to $5,000 for information leading to the identification, arrest, and conviction of the individual(s) responsible for the death of James Naswood, of Red Rock, N.M.

Tips also can be submitted online at tips.fbi.gov.