Still reeling, Tucson tries to brace up, begin to heal

TUCSON, Ariz. - The scene of the crime is a suburban strip mall as typical as any in America. Anchored by the Safeway, it includes a Walgreens, a florist, a dry cleaner, a nail salon, a pizzeria, a barber shop, a cell-phone store, and, reflecting the neighborhood's many retirees, a place to buy hearing aids.

"Arizona is kind of a hotbed right now, but this could have happened anywhere," said Jeff Edwards, a driver for the florist. "Tucson should be known for our nice weather, not this."

Edwards was perhaps the plaza's busiest employee last week, delivering lilies to Christina Taylor Green's elementary school, white sympathy roses to Judge John Roll's courthouse, carnations to Rep. Gabrielle Giffords' hospital, and a mixed arrangement to Patricia Maisch, who stopped the shooter from reloading and killing more than the six who died.

"I'm past the anxiety stage," said the floral manager, Sarah Horton, who was in the Safeway buying brownies during the shooting. "But I don't think Tucson will ever be the same."

The Jan. 8 assassination attempt might have rattled the nation, but it has knocked Tucson from its moorings.

"Even though this is a town of 1 million, it's a small town in a lot of ways," said Greg Byrne, athletic director at the sprawling University of Arizona, which dominates central Tucson. "When you go to the grocery store, you're going to see someone you know. You come to a game on campus, you're going to know someone in the crowd."

There were so many victims in the rampage - six dead and 13 wounded - that dozens of people interviewed cited a connection to it.

"This is a personal event for many of us," said Emil Franzi, a local conservative columnist and talk-radio host. His daughter went to school with Christina's mother. "For us, it's our mini 9/11."

Fairly or not, the shootings led to a focus on the national political discourse and on Arizona's reputation as a conservative state with permissive gun laws and a controversial immigration policy.

"A friend used to tell me that when Arizona refused to go along with the rest of the country on daylight saving time years ago that it was just a diversionary tactic - everyone thought we would just be one hour behind the times, when really, we're a century behind the times," said David Eisenberg, an environmental engineer who was involved with the nearby Biosphere 2 project.

But liberals who share Eisenberg's view have drawn criticism for their off-the-cuff remarks imparting blame for the shooting to conservatives who make mean-spirited off-the-cuff remarks. In the early hours following the attack, two popular local figures were accused of exacerbating tensions before all the facts were known.

David Fitzsimmons, a columnist and cartoonist for the Arizona Star, the Tucson daily newspaper, said on CNN: "I'm pretty shaken, frankly. . . . As a columnist who's covered politics in this state, it was inevitable from my perspective." He later apologized.

The sheriff, Clarence Dupnik, said: "We've become the mecca for bigotry and prejudice. The vitriol we hear on talk radio and some TV stations is toxic. We've become a very angry country." Since then, he has largely stuck to discussing the facts of the crime.

Franzi, the conservative commentator, is a longtime supporter of Dupnik's but was surprised by his friend's comments. "Sheriffs are supposed to quell lynch mobs, not incite them," he said.

Tucson is perhaps the least likely place in Arizona for this to have happened. The city is more liberal than the rest of the state, and Giffords' district, which extends to the Mexican border, is probably as politically diverse as the rest of the nation.

She is a Blue Dog Democrat who supports gun rights and immigration reform and voted against Nancy Pelosi for House Democratic leader. Giffords narrowly won reelection in November, defeating a tea party candidate by less than 2 percentage points.

For many, in the week since the shootings, the reaction has switched from shock and anger to sadness.

"The narrative has shifted," said Brint Milward, director of the University of Arizona's School of Government and Public Policy. "When this first happened, people assumed that it was related to the political culture in Arizona" – to the immigration controversy, the most recent acrimonious election cycle, gun rights – "but the facts make a difference. And the facts are that this is a very disturbed young man who was living in a world of his own creation."

The accused shooter is Jared Lee Loughner, 22, a college dropout whose Internet postings suggest a history of mental illness. He is charged with attempting to assassinate Giffords and murdering two federal employees, and could face a death sentence.

President Obama's visit Wednesday for a memorial service drew an overflow crowd to the Wildcats' basketball arena, and Arizonans waited in line as long as 10 hours to attend. Once inside, they cheered the local heroes - including the intern who applied first aid to Giffords and the doctors who later operated - as if they were rock stars.

In his speech, Obama cautioned the nation against jumping to conclusions and urged Americans to act with more civility: "Bad things happen, and we must guard against simple explanations in the aftermath. . . . We may not be able to stop all evil in the world, but I know that how we treat one another, that's entirely up to us."

At times, the event took the flavor of a pep rally rather than a memorial service, something that struck some conservative commentators as offensive. University and White House officials insisted it was part of the healing process.

"It's been a hard week of shock and sadness," said Chad Westerland, who teaches law. "People needed a public opportunity to celebrate the community and for that to be OK."

Katie Herron, an Arizona junior and a Republican, attended because she thought the event would be apolitical, and said she was offended by attempts to link the shooting to conservatives.

"It's a bunch of baloney," she said. "I don't see how we can attribute any political motives to this. It was just a hate crime in general."

Others aren't ready to remove politics from the equation. Political science professor Bill Dixon said, "Any act against a public official performing public duties is an act of political violence."

Jason Pekau, a cell-phone store manager who heard the shots at the Safeway and ran to help - "It was a pretty insane, gruesome scene" - takes a more nuanced view. An avid sportsman, Pekau said he doubts the shooter was motivated by pure politics, but thinks this shouldn't be dismissed as the random violent act of one mentally ill man.

"There's a lot going on behind the scenes, in terms of hate crimes here," he said. "People, even if they don't say anything directly, you can just see it, sense the hate. Any time there's a comment about race or guns or immigration, you see people get tense about it. It's a touchy subject down here. I guarantee you this is going to happen again."

Most elements of the crime are linked to an upper-middle-income neighborhood on the city's Northwest side, Casas Adobes, near the foothills of the jagged Catalina Mountains. The Safeway, the judge's church, the girl's Little League field, the big-box store where the alleged shooter bought his gun, and the community college he was asked to leave - all are just minutes apart.

The neighborhood is relatively young, scattered with pockets of one-story homes. It was largely desert scrub and orange groves until the 1940s, when a wealthy Italian immigrant from Chicago, Sam Nanini, brought his wife here to the warm, dust-free climate to help cure her bronchial asthma. Grateful for her recovery, Nanini fell in love with the area and developed three subdivisions on 300 acres, and built the Tucson National Golf Club.

Today, the region is choked by suburban growing pains. The main highway to Christina Green's school is jammed with construction vehicles and workers widening the road. The division of the community college Loughner attended is a gleaming new structure built into a hillside. But bits of the frontier atmosphere remain. In the campus parking lot, there are signs with pictures of rattlesnakes that read, "Warning: Check your surroundings for venomous creatures."

People here are more likely to be attacked by a scorpion or a rattlesnake than a man with a gun, local authorities say. "We're used to robberies and domestic incidents, nothing like this," said Jeff Piechura, the fire chief.

What makes the shooting especially painful, many neighbors said, are the types of people who were attacked: a moderate congresswoman, a well-respected federal judge, a 9-year-old who aspired to be the first woman in the major leagues, a public servant who dedicated his life to helping people with developmental disabilities.

"All these people are really good people, salt of the earth - people who walk their talk," said Mary Benedict, a chaplain for a community medical organization. Long before the shootings, she had met multiple times with Giffords and two staffers, the slain Gabriel Zimmerman and the wounded Pam Simon.

Politicians and radio talk-show hosts might believe they are speaking in hyperbole when they use gun analogies, she said, but they should realize this is "almost permission-giving for some people."

"As a pastor, I know that our words and actions in public have an effect on people," she said. "It sets the tone."

Slowly, buoyed by Obama's appearance and the cathartic nature of the funerals, Tucson is healing, said Emily Fritze, president of the Arizona student body.

"And the events of Saturday are going to make people, at least for the time being, think about how they disagree with people, and the rhetoric they use," she said. "I think right now people are trying hard to be kind."