Published: 09.01.2006
GV Samaritans take on grisly task

Tucson Citizen
Bethia Daughenbaugh's stomach lurched when she spotted the jeans behind a clump of low-lying mesquite bushes. Her mind searched for an explanation. Maybe the person was asleep. Maybe it was just discarded clothing. But in her gut, she knew whoever lay there was dead.
"It was my worst fear come true," the 65-year-old Green Valley resident said.
A couple more steps and she could see it was a man. He lay under a mesquite by a barbed-wire fence with his head tilted back and arms neatly by his side.
Daughenbaugh and three others made the discovery south of Arivaca Road on Aug. 22 while on patrol with the Green Valley Samaritans, a group of mostly retiree volunteers who search the desert for illegal migrants in distress.
The Pima County Medical Examiner's Office identified the man as Alfonso Salas Villagran from Chicoloapan in the state of Mexico. He died from a combination of heart disease and heat exposure, said Pima County Medical Examiner Dr. Bruce Parks. He carried a Mexican voter identification card, an address book and a compass. He was 64.
"My God. That's nearly the same age as us," Daughenbaugh said.
Daughenbaugh joined the Samaritans a year and a half ago, soon after moving to Green Valley from Seattle, where she was a social worker for 40 years. She first learned about the large numbers of migrants crossing the border illegally while working a part-time job selling beverages on a Green Valley golf course.
"They'd come up to me on the golf course, asking for directions or wanting to buy some water," Daughenbaugh said.
Green Valley's Samaritan group has grown steadily since it was founded two years ago and has 75 regular volunteers who patrol seven days a week.
"These people are dying in our backyard," said founding member Shura Wallin, 65, who patrols the deserts around Arivaca two mornings a week and was with Daughenbaugh when she found Salas. "We knew we had to do something."
A week after the discovery, Wallin and Daughenbaugh led around 50 people to the spot where they had found Salas, to hold a memorial service.
Wallin and the Rev. John Fife, a retired minister of Southside Presbyterian Church, dug a hole for a cross inscribed with Salas' name. Others stacked stones, flowers and incense at the base of the cross. Fife, together with the Rev. Delle McCormick of BorderLinks, a religious-based group that leads educational trips along the border, and the Rev. Bob Carney from St. Francis de Sales Parish, led prayers and songs.
Since October, 146 illegal immigrants are known to have died crossing the Tucson sector, according to the U.S. Border Patrol.
Salas' son, Oscar Salas, 47, who drives a taxi near Los Angeles, said his father was headed to Atlanta, where he'd worked in construction for several years. His father had left Atlanta 18 months ago because he decided he was too old to work anymore and wanted to go home. But economic circumstances were so bad in Mexico, and wages so low, that he decided to return to support his wife and younger children, Oscar Salas said.
"I don't have words enough to thank the people who found my father," he said in a telephone interview. "Please tell them how much this means to our family. My father was a good man."


http://www.tucsoncitizen.com/daily/local/24720.php

Ernesto Portillo Jr. : Illegal crosser's death leaves us wondering: Who's next?
Ernesto Portillo Jr.
Tucson, Arizona | Published: 09.01.2006
advertisementA stranger in our land died last week. His name was Alfonso Salas Villagran. He was 64 years old.
His body was found at the bottom of an embankment, under a scraggly mesquite tree, next to a creek covered with waist-high weeds off the Arivaca-Sasabe road.
A group of Samaritan volunteers, including the four who found the body, prayed for Salas Wednesday morning.
They erected a white cross bearing his name where he died and tied it to a barbed-wire fence.
They recited scripture: "You shall treat the alien who resides with you no differently than the natives born among you. . . . For you too were once aliens in the land of Egypt."
Salas died of exposure and a bad heart, according to the Pima County medical examiner.
Salas was a sojourner. He was an illegal border crosser. He was a human being.
He was from near Mexico City. He had a son, Oscar Salas Aguilar.
He was 5-feet 6-inches tall and weighed 132 pounds. When he died he was wearing a black shirt, blue pants, dark socks, gray shoes and a black belt. He had a comb, a watch, some personal papers, a Mexican driver's license and a Mexican voter identification card.
That is the little we know about him. There is much we don't know about him.
We don't know whom he loved and who loved him when he ventured north.
We don't know what his thoughts were when he crossed the border or while he rested after walking hours in the late- summer heat.
We don't know if he had a low-paying job waiting for him and an American employer who cared how Salas got to the workplace.
We don't know if he was bitter at his country's business and political leaders for their indifference toward people like him.
We don't know if he was angry at his country for making it impossible for him to make a living.
We don't know if he had repeatedly tried to legally enter our country and how frustrated he became after years of waiting.
We don't know how much, if anything, he paid to a smuggler, who exploits the dreams of hungry people and the failure of two neighbor countries to develop a sound and safe immigration policy.
We don't know if he understood how dependent our country has become on people like him.
We don't know if he realized that people like him are made to be the scapegoats in our country.
We don't know how often he stumbled and fell, weakened from the lack of water and food.
We don't know the pain that coursed through his body as it searched for any trace of life-saving nourishment.
We don't know if he drank his urine in his final desperate effort to stay alive.
We don't know what words he mouthed in despair or whose face he saw in hope as he took his last gasp.
We don't know if he knew the spot where his body crumbled was a tenth of a mile away from a road — and possible survival.
But we do know this: At least 144 illegal border crossers have died around Tucson since Oct. 1, the start of the federal fiscal year.
We do know nearly 300 illegal border crosses have died in the U.S. since Oct. 1 from exposure, drowning and vehicle accidents.
And, we do know there will be more people like Salas.
Opinion by
Ernesto Portillo Jr.

http://www.azstarnet.com/allheadlines/144634