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Sound and fury: Noisy scofflaws enrage Santa Fe senior citizen
City’s bus service still hamstrung by staff shortage, despite big recruiting effort
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n the loudest, most maddening nights, Patrick Grace knows he will have no peace. Grace, 79, discounts any possibility of sleep. He walks the few blocks from his home to Cerrillos Road and St. Francis Drive, a prime location to collect evidence of lawbreakers stealing his town’s tranquility. He pulls out his cellphone and records speeding drivers in cars whose revved-up mufflers are designed to damage eardrums. Grace last week sent his recordings to three city councilors. He says his frustration has boiled over because a small percentage of motorists break noise laws with impunity. “This is how people go crazy. I can’t relax at night in my own home,” Grace said. He admits fantasizing about taking a BB-gun to the busy intersection and firing at thundering cars. That’s a bad idea. Grace knows it, but he says noise pollution has damaged his health and his outlook. “I’m angry. I have stress, and I have hate,” Grace said. Many more residents have called or written me about obnoxious noise caused by equally obnoxious drivers. Like Grace, they say laws are on the books to silence scofflaws but they aren’t being enforced. I decided to check. In the first week of June, I made a public records request for all citations Santa Fe police officers issued to motorists for violating noise laws in the first five months of the year. After seven weeks, I haven’t received a single record. On two occasions, the city records custodian sent me a standardized statement: “Your request is excessively burPlease see story on Page A-7
Long-winding rent case led to couple losing control of huge art collection Questions of history, heritage as widow tries to sell pieces of personal collection worth millions to cover $900k judgment By Phaedra Haywood
phaywood@sfnewmexican.com
Shrouded in bubble wrap, labeled with tape and piled in mounds, a massive collection of Native American, Oceanic and African art — including pieces believed by some to date back more than 3,000 years — is at the center of a court battle pending in the state’s First Judicial District Court since 2012. Described in court documents as “a culturally significant ethnographic collection” worth millions of dollars, the collection of “approximately 30 tons (60,000 pounds) of delicate art and artifacts of various materials and age” has been the subject of multiple court actions filed in state District Court, plus the New Mexico Court of Appeals and Supreme Court, as well as U.S. District Court and U.S. Bankruptcy Court. A couple in their 70s spent more than three years in the Santa Fe County jail on a contempt of court charge before agreeing in 2021 to allow some of the artifacts to be sold to satisfy a $900,000 civil court judgment against them. But two years later, reports from a court-appointed receiver reveal liquidating the collection has proven more difficult than anyone thought — in part because establishing provenance for the items is challenging and ensuring sales comply with evolving federal and international restrictions can be complicated. Meanwhile, one of the original plaintiffs in the case has died, leaving the collection in the sole control of his elderly widow. The woman’s attorney declined to comment, but Please see story on Page A-4
Obituaries
Today
Grace Trujillo, 84, July 18
Isolated storms. High 89, low 65.
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ABOVE: Driver Joseph Salazar sweeps his bus Friday as the end of his shift approaches. With the department struggling to fill its driver vacancies, several routes have been moved to on-demand service and many of the drivers are being asked to work overtime. TOP: Vince Copia, 55, rides the bus Friday after the engine of his car blew out. PHOTOS BY ANDREA VASQUEZ THE NEW MEXICAN
By Nicholas Gilmore ngilmore@sfnewmexican.com
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lyssia Lovato has been riding the city buses in Santa Fe on and off for several years now, but since taking in her two young nephews recently, she said it has become a necessity. “They always ask to ride the bus now,” she said, adding they love going to places like the Santa Fe Botanical Garden.
But taking the bus is also necessary for Lovato to get to work each day since the battery in her car started having problems. While the coronavirus pandemic and a shortage of bus drivers have led to reduced service for Santa Fe Trails, riders like Lovato who depend on the buses are hoping for a return to normal soon. Lovato takes Route 6 to her job at La Fonda. The route is one of several that currently offers only
on-demand service, meaning riders must call in to request a ride. The longest she has waited for on-demand bus service has been about an hour, she said, as opposed to the regular service, which came every half-hour. Of the 10 bus routes in the city, five were reduced from regular stops to on-demand service in 2021 because of the driver shortage. Please see story on Page A-7
At least 43 killed by bomb at Pakistan political rally Toll expected to rise as militant activity grows near country’s border with Afghanistan, Taliban By Christina Goldbaum and Zia Ur-Rehman
The New York Times
An explosion at a political rally Sunday in northwest Pakistan killed at least 43 people and wounded 200 more, officials said, the latest sign of the deteriorating security situation in the country, where some militant groups have become more active over the past two years since finding a haven in neighboring Afghanistan under the Taliban administration there. The blast occurred at about 4 p.m. in Bajaur, a district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province near Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan, said Feroz Jamal, the provincial information minister. It targeted a political rally organized by Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazl, an Islamist party that is part of the governing coalition in Pakistan. A video from the rally recorded before the explosion shows hundreds of men sitting outside beneath a cloth canopy as party officials addressed the crowd. As one district leader took the stage, enthusiastic party workers stood up, chanting, “Allah is great,” according to one rallygoer, Sharifullah Mamond, 19. Then an explosion rocked the crowd. “I lost consciousness for a few minutes because of the power of the explosion,” Mamond said in a telephone interview from a hospital in Bajaur where he was being treated for minor injuries. Provincial Police Chief Akhtar Hayat Khan Health & Science A-6
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Relatives stand Sunday around the hospital bed of a victim injured by the powerful bomb that went off at a political rally in Pakistan. At least 43 were killed by the explosion in the country’s northwestern district that borders Afghanistan, with the toll expected to rise.
told the local news media the explosion was set off by a suicide bomber. Initial evidence suggests the bomber appeared to have been near the stage when he detonated the explosives, according to an intelligence officer in Bajaur who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.
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Toll likely to grow The death toll was expected to rise, officials said, and a rescue operation to recover the wounded was underway Sunday evening. “The government is trying to shift critical patients to Peshawar and other hospitals through Please see story on Page A-4
174th year, No. 212 Publication No. 596-440