By JUNO OGLE
Daily Press Staff
It’s been a long journey back home for Jason Acosta and his family, but on Tuesday, they drove the final few miles with an escort from area fire departments and law enforcement agencies.
Jason, 6, still has a long road ahead of him as he recovers from being shot Jan. 12 while sitting in a car with his family in Hurley.
“He is blind in his right eye and the right side of his body is impaired, so that’s why he’s in the wheelchair,” his mother, Mariah Palomarez, told the Daily Press on Wednesday.
Jason enjoyed the parade into town, which included fire departments and police officers from Hurley, Bayard, Santa Clara and Whiskey Creek, along with the Grant County Sheriff’s Office and G&G Towing. When the parade reached Silver City, it took a turn through downtown before heading to the family’s home.
In Hurley, where the agencies, family and friends gathered at the Gateway Plaza for the parade into Silver City, Jason and his family were presented with several gift bags, stuffed animals, replica badges and a fire hat.
“He took the ride pretty well,” Palomarez said. “He likes saying ‘hi’ to everybody. He enjoys the company.”
Jason was initially flown to El Paso for treatment, where he underwent several surgeries. He was later transferred to an Albuquerque hospital, his mother said, where she and the family have stayed to be close to Jason.
“It’s been a big change for us, just because we haven’t been able to work throughout this process, so it’s definitely been hard,” Palomarez said. “It’s definitely different just trying to adjust to Jason’s disabilities and other things as well.”
Jason will need more therapy to assist with his impairments, but Palomarez said those professionals are available in Deming and Silver City.
Also adding to the family’s stress was dealing with the New Mexico State Police investigation into the shooting and pretrial court dates, she said.
Palomarez, Jason, 5-year-old younger brother Josiah and Jason’s stepfather were sitting in their car outside the stepfather’s mother’s home in Hurley on Jan. 12 when, according to a State Police press release, a black Dodge pickup dropped off a 14-year-old boy near the car and drove off. The teenager allegedly fired multiple gunshots into the family’s car, and Jason was struck.
The teen was seen running from the scene by Hurley police officers, who detained him, finding a dismantled handgun and ammunition in his pockets, according to the press release. He was charged with attempted murder, shooting at or from a motor vehicle, tampering with evidence, aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and unlawful carrying of a firearm.
Palomarez said the assault was captured on video, making the trauma more difficult for the family as they met with attorneys.
“It’s been super hard just seeing that video and having to deal with all the lawyers, and seeing it over and over,” she said.
She said the family is pushing to have the 14-year-old charged as an adult.
“Right now, we’re not too sure where it’s leaning towards, so we’re really just waiting for court dates,” Palomarez said.
According to Wilson Silver, public information officer with the State Police, a plea hearing that was to be held June 24 has been rescheduled to Aug. 19.
It’s not just Jason who has suffered from the shooting, Palomarez said.
“Josiah, honestly, he is pretty traumatized. He remembers everything that happened, so I’m definitely hoping to get him into some therapy,” she said.
Palomarez said she will also be seeking counseling for herself and Jason’s stepdad.
The family is not asking for donations, but said if people want to assist them, meals would be the biggest help. A page on mealtrain.com has been set up under Jason’s name. Palomarez said items such as baby wipes, baby soap and pull-ups would also be helpful.
Anyone wishing to help can contact Palomarez at 505-313-3960.
“I just want to thank everybody — the Sheriff’s Department, the police, the fire, everybody who was involved in the parade,” she said. “I thank everybody for the support from town. I just thank everybody for their prayers.”

Juno Ogle may be reached at juno@scdaily press.com.

The CLAY Festival’s website describes the annual event as a celebration and exploration of clay, mud and earth as the common ground of New Mexico’s culture and history — but that exploration can extend far beyond the state’s borders.
On Saturday, Bear Mountain Lodge, as it has done for several years, hosted a community workshop at Light Art Space at which people could contribute to a living exhibition on the lodge’s grounds, “One Million Bones.”
The project began in 2013 in Albuquerque with artist Naomi Natale, intended as a way to make genocide visible to the world. People from all 50 states and 30 countries made 1 million ceramic human bones, which were laid on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. After the exhibit, the bones were packed up for storage.
In 2017, Natale and Susan McAllister, project manager for “One Million Bones,” spoke at Western New Mexico University, where Linda Brewer, co-owner of Bear Mountain Lodge, was in the audience. During the talk, Natale mentioned the bones were in storage in Albuquerque, but that she wanted to find a permanent home for the exhibit.
Brewer, an artist herself, offered space on the lodge’s grounds, and in 2018, a large number of the ceramic bones made their way to Silver City on two semi trucks.
“I just thought it would be interesting to have a living art installation, one that was poignant,” Brewer said. “A lot of the art out there is very fanciful or fun, and it provides a good counterpoint, I think.”
About 50,000 of the bones went to Bosnia — where the Bosnian war in the 1990s targeted Muslims and Croats in killings and mass expulsions — and another 50,000 went to New Mexico Highlands University in Las Vegas, Brewer said. That still left a lot of bones to take their place here in Grant County
“There’s about 42 tons that went up the mountain, either by equine or by human,” Brewer said. “Back Country Horsemen took up 36,000 pounds.
“We have been steadily making bones to replace [those sent elsewhere] so we actually have the million,” she continued.
There’s a pile of ceramic bones that hikers can take with them to place in the installation, she said, something that started during the COVID-19 pandemic when state and federal recreational areas were closed and people went to hike at the lodge instead.
“It became a tradition for people to take bones, and I thought that was totally poignant for the pandemic. And people still do it. That part of it, as far as a community thing, I think, is absolutely fabulous,” Brewer said. “Especially with all the division and unrest in the world, I think it’s even more poignant now than when we received it.”
That current unrest is part of what drew some people to the workshop on Saturday.
“I think art is an important way for us to process what’s going on in the world,” Maia Larsgaard said as she worked to form a lump of clay into a sacrum, the triangular bone at the base of the spine.
Pam Donohue and Wendi Oliveira had not been out to Bear Mountain Lodge to see the installation, but saw a flyer for the workshop.
“I just think it’s important to contribute our voice and our hands to it,” Oliveira said.
Janna Mintz was thinking not only of current events but also her own family history as she contemplated what bone to create from her clay. She said she lived in Albuquerque 10 years ago and had seen the project, but didn’t participate at the time since she was busy with raising her children.
“It’s important to me because I lost family to genocide,” she said, referring to the Holocaust. “I don’t even know who I lost, because I don’t know their names. I don’t know what happened to them.
“I still can’t figure out who my grandfather’s family was because there aren’t any records for the town,” Mintz continued. “It’s got real personal meaning to me that we really remember the events.”
The Israel-Hamas war also has had an effect on her family, she said. A summer camp counselor from Israel who worked with her children when they were teenagers was killed in the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas on Gaza, she said. Some of their fellow campers were Israeli as well.
“They had Israeli friends from summer camp. They’re of the age that their friends were being called up” for service in the military, Mintz said.
There were some laughs to be had in the workshop, too, though.
“I want to make something with the knee, because I have so many knee problems, so it would give me a hands-on picture of what my knee is doing,” Oliveira said.
Brewer said what people make is often split along age lines. Children and younger people tend to make skulls, jawbones and teeth, while older people tend to make hands and feet and back bones.
“Those are the parts that hurt a lot,” one person at the workshop piped up.
Brewer said the bones made at the CLAY Festival will be fired in late September and will likely be available for their makers to take them to the exhibit if they wish.
The festival and the Silver City Museum also highlighted the works of artists from Mata Ortiz, which is a village in Chihuahua, Mexico, and the American anthropologist who helped bring the community’s work to prominence after discovering three replicas of prehistoric Mata Ortiz pots in a junk shop in Deming in 1976.
Author Charmayne Samuelson gave a presentation on her biography of Spencer MacCallum, discussing how his broken family life and several years of his youth in Mexico drove him to be an explorer.
The story of Mata Ortiz pottery has been told many times, she said, but not that of MacCallum.
“Spencer MacCallum was a fascinating individual, and I wanted to know what made him tick,” Samuelson said. “He could see what laid beneath, whether it was a person, whether it was pottery, whatever. He exemplified that all through his life.”
She said after buying the replica pots, MacCallum drove to Mexico to find the potter, Juan Quezada. He paid Quezada a monthly stipend to make pots, and he and other potters in the village became world- renowned artists.
Samuelson has given presentations with several of the artists working today, including Oralia Lopez, who was also part of the museum’s festival activities. She has been making pottery for 20 years, with the tradition passed down from her mother.
Mata Ortiz pottery has several characteristics that distinguish its style, she said.
“The mixing of the clay is different. The process for the form is different because it’s not using a wheel. The clay and the mineral pigment is from the area. The fire is different,” Lopez said.
Traditional styles of painting use human hair, her husband, Alex Rivera, said.
“Like pueblos and Native Americans, they use horse and camel, but the Mata Ortiz, they use human hairs, child hairs. That’s really important to use because there’s no chemicals — it’s more flexible and stronger,” he said.
Lopez painted a piece of pottery throughout the day with thin, intricate patterns made by the child-hair brush. Other potters — about 30 were represented at the sale at the museum — experiment with newer colors and designs, Rivera said.
“Some of the artists, they stick with the traditional designs, but the new generations, they try a new color, new designs,” he said.
—JUNO OGLE

Juno Ogle may be reached at juno@scdaily press.com.

Juno Ogle may be reached at juno@scdaily press.com.

By JUNO OGLE
Daily Press Staff
The delivery was delayed somewhat, but Gila Regional Medical Center opened its new Women and Newborn Services Unit with a baby shower-themed opening Wednesday.
The completion of the project, funded by $2 million in capital outlay from the state, was delayed somewhat by plan revision approvals, but it will be open for patients on Friday, said Jasmine Parra, director of the unit. Construction on renovations to the former Maternal Child Department started in January.
As visitors, hospital staff and county officials enjoyed cake and other treats, they viewed one of the four delivery rooms, each larger, more brightly lit and with windows overlooking the area around the hospital. Another two rooms in the unit are for triage and four will be for gynecological services, and there’s also a larger level-two nursery for infants who need extra care, such as oxygen, antibiotic therapy or phototherapy, registered nurse Amanda Mondello said.
The level-two nursery offers care just below that of a neonatal intensive care unit, and Gila Regional has partnerships with the University of New Mexico and El Paso Children’s Hospital for infants who need a higher level of care, Mondello said.
Overall, the unit was designed to be more welcoming and spacious, Parra said.
“Our other rooms were very tight,” she said of the previous space.
“Sometimes we were working shoulder-to-shoulder,” Mondello added.
“So now we have room to spread out and we have brand-new surgical lights they put in for us, and we got our new updated fetal monitoring system that helps charting become more efficient for the nurses, so less time trying to get stuff documented and more time here at the bedside with the mom and baby, making sure they have everything they need,” Parra said.
“As a baby-friendly designated facility, our goal is always to keep mom and baby together throughout their stay,” Mondello said.
Fred Fox, chair of the Gila Regional board of trustees and a retired doctor who practiced at the hospital, said he was happy with the transformation.
“This just looks like a different place. It’s so bright and airy. I love the layout. It will make much better use of staff,” he said. “Having a good service is a benefit for the community. You need that to have young people to feel comfortable in the community.”
The unit has a staff of about 36, and the hospital averages about 30 births per month, Parra said.

Juno Ogle may be reached at juno@scdaily press.com.

Members of the public and public officials alike flowed into the Grant County Veterans Memorial Business and Conference Center on Tuesday afternoon to give their input on how the state’s regional water planning should be restructured.
The New Mexico Interstate Stream Commission has conducted a series of open houses in each of the 16 planning regions this summer as it seeks ideas on restructuring water planning from the ground up. The final sessions wrap up in early August.
In its 2023 session, the Legislature passed SB 337, the Water Security Planning Act, which requires the changes.
“They erased the whole statute that did regional [water] planning, and we got a whole new statute,” said Andrew Erdmann, statewide planning manager with the Interstate Stream Commission.
The commission is now tasked with the fundamentals of re-creating a water planning system, such as figuring out the number of regions and what their boundaries should be, what the governing board should look like and how stakeholders are represented.
“We basically have done this twice before, and we managed two different ways to quite upset people. That’s really not the intent,” Erdmann said. “We really are trying to get buy-in from folks and figure out how to build this thing in a way that works.”
Under the previous legislation, the state was divided into 16 planning regions, and while the commission visited those in 2016, it hadn’t been back since, Erdmann said.
“We’re really trying to get out and talk to folks where they live about what makes the most sense for them and where they’re at,” he said.
The open house consisted of various stations with poster boards of information and questions, with attendees ranking what they thought most important about different aspects of water planning. Forms also let them leave written comments.
The information and questions presented at the open houses are also available online at main streamnm.org.
“All of the questions are pretty important, but the most tangible is the question about how we can redraw the boundaries,” Erdmann said.
The next step after the open houses will be to compile all the input and draft it into rules. Erdmann said the rulemaking process will likely start at the beginning of 2025.
Among those at the open house were District 3 Grant County Commissioner Alicia Edwards and District 5 Commissioner Harry Browne.
“Statewide water planning is an essential government function, and is just getting more and more important as water supplies decline,” Browne said.
“And local government has got to be involved in that process,” Edwards added. “Like you said, it’s an essential process, and we have to be educated about what’s happening.”
Browne said this was the third water planning process he’s seen in the state, and said the approach the Stream Commission is taking this time is the best yet.
Water planning will especially have an effect on municipalities, which must have 40-year water plans filed with the state. Counties do not have that same requirement.
“When a municipality submits its water plan to the state, it has to project what kind of development demands there will be,” Browne said.
The concern is that there will also be development — either industrial, such as mine expansion, or residential — within the surrounding county as well, Edwards said.
The number of water authorities throughout the county could also be another issue involved in water planning and development.
“We have a couple dozen or more water authorities throughout the county, many of which have limited capacity, to put it mildly. That limited capacity is what comes into play when you get a proposal for housing,” Browne said. “The state needs to help smaller communities delve and keep capacity, to develop, train people to run these systems and retain them. The state could help us get there.”
—JUNO OGLE

The next phase of improvements to Little Walnut Road will get underway in about a month, thanks to a bid awarded by the Silver City Town Council at their meeting Tuesday.
The council voted to award phase four of the Little Walnut project to Deming Excavating Inc. for $2.9 million, which includes a little more than $223,000 in gross receipts taxes to be paid by the town.
Town Manager Alex Brown said the project will be paid for with $3 million in grants, giving the town some leftover funds that would cover change orders as the work progresses.
The work will include new pavement, improved drainage, bicycle lanes, Americans with Disabilities Act-compliant sidewalks, signage and lane striping over a half mile from just north of Chavez Lane to Jack Frost Drive.
Brown said the work should begin in mid-August, and continues work on Little Walnut Road that began in 1995. Grant County has also done its own improvement projects on the road beyond the town limits, with the goal of creating a safer thoroughfare to the Gila National Forest.
Mayor Ken Ladner said the work has made the road safer for hikers and cyclists.
“Use of that Little Walnut Road the way it used to be was really dangerous,” he said after the unanimous vote. “There was no curb, and you basically had to ride on the main road. I would encourage you to take a ride on Little Walnut Road and look at what the city has done so far and look at what the county has done. It’s a beautiful, beautiful road up to that point.”
The council also gave approval to the final version of the town’s $71 million budget for the fiscal year which began this month, after approving an amendment for adjustments in revenue projections.
“The revenue for the general fund came in about $1.3 million over what we had projected last year,” Brown said. “I usually try to always be conservative on my revenue projections. This way, we’re conservative on expenses as well.”
Revenues above projections are used for needed expenditures, such as when the council requested increased police patrols in the Brewer Hill area, Brown said. Some of that extra coverage was also funded with the town’s American Rescue Plan Act money.
“We used ARPA money there, but we also used general fund money as well,” Brown said. “I was confident we could do those projects because the revenues were coming in well above what we had projected.”
District 2 Councilor Nick Prince asked about budgeting for overtime, especially with departments like police and utilities facing staffing shortages.
“We do have the money for overtime, but at some point, those employees are going to burn out, and so we’ve got to work diligently to increase pay so we can be competitive,” Brown said.
Pay increases are the only changes from the version of the preliminary budget introduced earlier this year, he said. That includes raises negotiated with employee unions and for exempt employees, and a $2-an-hour increase in starting pay for utility department employees.
“We’re competing against the mine for all the plumbers and stuff in town. If we don’t have water, we don’t have sewer, we don’t have sanitation, we don’t have a town, so there’s no need for police or fire,” Brown said.
Prince said town officials should make sure they keep in mind what their employees are spending their money on, especially with the difficulty of finding housing and financing to purchase homes.
“I would encourage city management — as well as us, when we get to go up to Santa Fe — we have new, creative programs then to ensure that we’re providing housing for all of our public employees, that we’re able to help allay the cost changes that we’re seeing our employees spend on,” Prince said.
The council also approved a resolution ratifying its annual agreement for services with the Southwest New Mexico Council of Governments for $6,993.57. Brown will continue to serve on the COG’s board and economic development board, with Assistant Town Manager James Marshall as his alternate, and Public Works Director Peter Peña will be the town’s representative to the Regional Transportation Planning Organization, with Jacqui Olea as his alternate.
“The benefit we get from the few dollars we pay to participate — I would say we are getting $100 for every $1 we give them, at the least,” Brown said.
The council also unanimously approved a resolution with the final quarter financial report for fiscal year 2024. The town’s total budget for last year was about $68 million.
The mayor and Brown accepted a plaque for the town from VFW Post 12212 for its support of veterans organizations.
“We just want to thank the town of Silver City for their continuous support,” Commander Jacob Madrid said. “What you’ve done for us is very instrumental to our survival, existing here in Grant County.”
—JUNO OGLE