Golf and pickleball / p. 16
An edition of the East Valley Tribune
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Sunday, June 4, 2023
Ex-Bistro owner looks to serve town in other ways
Inside
This Week
BY MARK MORAN Tribune Staff Writer
NEWS ...................... 6 School vouchers cost to taxpayers approaching $1 billion.
COMMUNITY.......... 14
Nonprofit helps close digital divide, save Earth.
A
fter more than 17 years running two restaurants, and with a few decades of experience as a professional chef, Queen Creek resident Blake Mastyk – owner of the popular and always busy Bistro restaurant –is hanging up the spatulas, apron, and crazy hours. “The restaurant business is hard,” Mastyk said. “Especially when you’ve been doing it with your wife the past 14 years and then she’s not there anymore.” Mastyk’ s wife, Nicole, developed cancer in 2018 which took her out of commission and away from Mastyk’s side at the restaurant, forcing him to go it alone and making an already difficult profession even harder. “Since she developed cancer, she hadn’t been around too much anymore,” he said. The good news is that her cancer is in remis-
Blake Mastyk of Queen Creek sold the Bistro Restaurant and has started a nonprofit to help the town
see REMY page 8 in a number of ways with his dog Remy, a registered service dog. (David Minton/Tribune Staff Photographer)
SPORTS ................. 20
QC athletes shined in state’s spring championship season.
COMMUNITY ............. 14 BUSINESS ................. 16 OPINION ................... 17 SPORTS .................... 19 CLASSIFIEDS ............. 23
Barrel racers thriving at Horseshoe Park events BY MARK MORAN Tribune Staff Writer
J
ill Starkey does not horse around. She started barrel racing horses for the thrill of it at age 6. “I guess I like adrenaline,” said Starkey, now 52, a local resident and co-founder of the Queen Creek Barrel Racing Association,
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which hosted the Too Broke for Vegas (aka “2 Broke 4 Vegas”) Barrel Race at Horseshoe Park and Equestrian Centre last weekend. “There’s an element of danger to it so I guess that makes it exciting and thrilling all at the same time,” she added. “And I like going fast, so that makes it a lot of fun.” So fast, in fact, the horses are timed to one one-thousandth of a second because the
contests are so close, as opposed to the one one-hundredth of a second typical of timing in most sports. Barrel racing boils down to mastering accelerating a horse in quick, straight lines, decelerating quickly, and making tight turns around a series of three barrels as fast as possible – all of
see BARREL page 4 SCAN TO FIND YOUR PATH
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