Gem of a show/ P. 20
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An edition of the East Valley Tribune
Sunday, January 1, 2023
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INSIDE
NEWS..................... 8 Former Mesa Councilman Scott Somers takes the "former" off that title.
COMMUNITY...... 13 Nonprofit Waste Not leader expanding her horizons.
Mesa parents sue Snapchat over son’s fatal OD BY SCOTT SHUMAKER Tribune Staff Writer
Z
ach Plunk, 17, died of a fentanyl overdose outside his family’s house in Mesa in August 2020. His final moments were caught on his parents’ doorbell camera, which recorded the football player leaving the house at 3 a.m. to buy a pill from a dealer, then sitting down on the curb outside the house. “He didn’t even make it back in the house,” his mother Wendy Plunk told the Tribune. Zach was found unconscious by a 15-yearold boy jogging at 5 a.m. He called 911 and see
BUSINESS............ 15 Family bringing taste of Costa Rica to Mesa. COMMUNITY .............................. 13 BUSINESS ................................... 15 OPINION ..................................... 16 SPORTS ...................................... 18 GET OUT ...................................... 20 CLASSIFIED ............................... 24 ZONE 1
BESTOF
2021
SNAPCHAT page 2
AZ firefighters pioneer ‘forever chemical’ treatment BY SCOTT SHUMAKER Tribune Staff Writer
D
onating blood can save lives, but in the future, doctors may also prescribe rolling up a sleeve and exposing a vein for the health of certain donors.
Research from Australia published in 2021 suggests blood donations reduce the donor’s concentration of a class of toxic substances called “per- and polyfluoroakyl substances,” or PFAS, popularly called “forever chemicals.” PFAS don’t really last “forever,” but they
earned the moniker because some stay in the body for almost 10 years and accumulate in organs, blood and bones with repeated exposures. Recent research link PFAS to higher cancer rates, decreased birth weight, hormone see
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Wendy and Roy Plunk of Mesa lost their son Zachariah in August 2020 to a fentanyl overdose after he bought counterfeit oxycodone through Snapchat. (David Minton/Tribune Staff Photographer)
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