ANCHORAGE, Alaska (KTUU) – Phyllis Sullivan has certainly led a life worth celebrating.

Born in 1926, Sullivan moved to Alaska with her husband and three children in 1959 to teach, first in the village of Kwethluk in Western Alaska and later at Wendler and Mears Middle Schools in Anchorage.

All the while, she left strong impressions with countless students and acquaintances, some of whom gathered in the basement of Anchor Park United Methodist Church in Anchorage Saturday to celebrate Sullivan’s century of life.

“Education has been the primary thing in her entire life,” her son Dennis Sullivan said. “She’s always been a school teacher and she’s been one of the sweetest people in the entire world.”

As a slideshow featuring vintage photos from her life and time in Alaska played, Phyllis, wheelchair-bound but high in spirit, stopped to chat with every new person who entered the room, some of whom she hadn’t seen in years.

“It’s impressive that this many people are here,” she said. “That’s very encouraging. Makes me think maybe I did something right along the way.”

Aside from family members, most visitors were there because of the impression Phyllis Sullivan left on them during her many years in the classroom.

“She gave us this one assignment: to memorize a poem,” former Mears student Tina Arend recalled. She said Phyllis Sullivan was her 8th grade English teacher.

“And when she gave us the assignment, she said, ‘I’ve had students come back many, many, many years later and recite the poem to me.’ And we actually still remember the poem,” Arend said of her and her husband, who was also in attendance. They both went on to become teachers at Mears as well.

Matthew Nicolai, whom Phyllis Sullivan taught in Kwethluk, has similarly fond memories.

“The Bureau had ordered that teachers do corporal punishment for speaking Yup’ik,” Nicolai remembered. “Even though we spoke Yup’ik, she never did that, never cracked our hands. Other teachers did, but not her. That’s why we never forgot her.”

In addition to teaching, Phyllis Sullivan also found time to open her home to those in need. She and her husband once took in a family with seven kids who had been displaced by flooding in Fairbanks in 1967.

“It touched our heart because they bought us a lot of stuff that we needed because we lost a lot of stuff during the flood,” David Solomon, one of those seven kids, said. “We stayed there for over three years.”

Phyllis Sullivan said she is enjoying life and is doing fine.

“My mother made it to 103,” she said. “So, I’ve got a while yet.”

See a spelling or grammar error? Report it to web@ktuu.com

The University of Arizona and Tucson are known for yearlong warm weather, but when is it too much? With temperature reaching record highs in March, the city of Tucson has already reported increased temperatures for this year. 

In the wake of the third annual Southern Arizona Heat Summit, integrating voices throughout the City of Tucson, community stakeholders and experts from UA gather to speak about possible solutions and policies to address rising temperatures and extreme heat. 

The summit strives to ensure that the lived experiences of Southern Arizona residents are voiced. The first summit commenced in 2024, in response to the declaration of an extreme heat emergency in Arizona by Gov. Katie Hobbs, as part of a larger plan called Arizona’s Extreme Heat Response Plan. 

With representation from organizations such as the American Red Cross, the National Council for Occupational Safety and Health, Arizona Jobs with Justice, Tucson Indian Center and many more, the summit emphasized the importance of the perspective and concerns of stakeholder groups throughout the community. 

The summit included a variety of UA experts, including faculty representing the School of Geography, Development and Environment; the Udall Center for Studies in Public Policy; the Mel & Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health and the College of Architecture, Planning and Landscape Architecture.

One particular project, led by Ladd Keith at the School of Landscape Architecture and Planning, is a part of the Southwest Urban Corridor Integrated Field Laboratory, which is funded by the United States’ Department of Energy to explore extreme heat throughout Arizona. SW-IFL works in collaboration with other national laboratories including those at ASU and NAU. 

The team works to analyze extreme heat in the southwest and rural areas, and how communities deal with heat by conducting interviews. The team has also prescribed policy to Pima County and the City of Tucson regarding more effective strategies to combat rising temperatures, such as green stormwater infrastructure. 

Anne-Lise Boyer, a post-doctoral researcher with the Climate Assessment for the Southwest, shared that the team particularly analyzed extreme heat in three parts: heat mitigation, heat management and heat governance.

Mitigation deals with prevention through strategies such as green infrastructure and planting trees, while management includes cooling sensors and heat warning systems. Governance allows these measures to be enacted through policy.

In Tucson, some of the most meaningful work the team has engaged in has been drafting the City of Tucson’s Heat Action Roadmap in 2024, which outlines goals to mitigate and mandate extreme heat and its impacts while prioritizing community voices.  

The goals of the roadmap include informing and educating citizens of Tucson on the adverse effects of extreme heat and cooling people’s homes and neighborhoods by incorporating heat risk in regional planning. These steps are essential to practicing heat management, especially as the city of Tucson grows. 

“I think the most interesting thing about being based in Tucson is that because the heat has been here for a long time, it’s like a laboratory in itself,” Boyer said. “We have all this research and all this collaboration happening with local actors because it’s a pressing issue in Arizona.”

As the annual heat summit recurs, new ideas and perspectives continue to be shared throughout the community. Boyer shared that this year, the Southern Arizona Heat Summit focused on the youth perspective, highlighting middle school and high school students and how heat impacts their everyday lives. Many students spoke about how heat shaped their lives at home, school and sports.

“That’s one of the goals, to have community members participate and give their input in how they wish the city will deal with the heat,” Boyer said. 

Boyer and Kirsten Lake, a program coordinator for the SW-IFL team, also shared how the impacts of extreme heat impact some neighborhoods and communities in Tucson more than others, and that their research often evaluates these factors to determine where heat management efforts would make the greatest impact.

“Its important when you’re putting into effect some of these measures, that you make sure you put it where it’s going to make the biggest difference,” Lake said.

The work of the SW-IFL team is not just locally known. The Brookhaven National Lab based in New York deployed a specialized truck to Tucson to collect information on the atmosphere and rising temperatures. The SW-IFL team hosted the Brookhaven team.

Additionally, Keith’s work has led to a guidebook called “Planning for Urban Heat Resilience” which focuses on the adverse effects extreme heat poses to marginalized communities across the country. 

“It is so different from place to place and neighborhood to neighborhood because you have to take the whole context into account,” Boyer said. “They recommend first to document the heat impacts in your communities.”

Follow the Daily Wildcat on Instagram and Twitter/X

A Bay Area couple charged in the murder of a 2-year-old girl who reportedly overdosed on fentanyl earlier this year failed to appear in court last week to face the charges.

The tragic incident occurred just after 5 a.m. on Feb. 12, according to the San Francisco County District Attorney’s Office.

Officers with the San Francisco Police Department responded to an apartment in the 3800 block of 18th Street, near Mission Dolores Park, after receiving a 911 call reporting that a child was not breathing.

“Medics arrived at the location and pronounced the two-year-old child deceased,” the DA’s office said in a news release. “Medics observed signs of rigor mortis and lividity, indicating the child had been dead for several hours.”

Responding officers noted that Michelle Price, 38, the girl’s mother, was slurring her speech and had “an emotionless demeanor,” according to court documents. Investigators also observed drug paraphernalia in the apartment, including three pipes, lighters and torches, a used Narcan container, white powder ultimately identified as fentanyl, bottles of spoiled milk and stained sheets on the bed.

Price was arrested for child endangerment.

Her boyfriend, Steve Ramirez, 43, allegedly attempted to flee the apartment on a bicycle, leading police on a chase during which an officer was injured. At the time of his arrest, Ramirez was reportedly in possession of a pipe inside a bag on his bike. Two additional pipes with burnt residue were also found nearby, investigators said.

Blood samples taken from Price and Ramirez at the time of their arrests showed high levels of methamphetamine and fentanyl in their systems, according to the DA’s office.

An autopsy performed by the San Francisco Medical Examiner’s Office revealed no obvious signs of physical injury to the toddler. However, toxicology testing showed lethal levels of fentanyl, as well as naloxone, commonly known as Narcan, in the child’s bloodstream.

“The cause of death was determined to be acute fentanyl poisoning,” the release stated.

Price was initially charged with felony child endangerment, possession of fentanyl and possession of drug paraphernalia. Ramirez faced the same charges, along with an additional count of resisting, obstructing and delaying a peace officer.

Over the objections of prosecutors, both Price and Ramirez were allowed to remain out of custody ahead of their arraignments.

On April 15, San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins announced an amended complaint charging the couple with second-degree murder, marking the first time such charges have been brought in a fatal fentanyl overdose case in the county.

“There wasn’t really anywhere safe for this child to be inside of this home,” Jenkins said during a press conference announcing the charges. “This is a moment in time where people have to realize that we take these situations very seriously and where, I believe, parents who knowingly possess fentanyl, who understand its lethality and the danger it poses, allow their children to be exposed to it, this is something that can come with respect to accountability if a child dies.”

At the April 16 arraignment, where both defendants failed to appear, Price’s attorney told the court she may have experienced transportation issues. An attorney representing Ramirez said he did not know his client’s whereabouts, according to KTLA’s Bay Area sister station KRON.

While both attorneys said the couple was mourning the loss of the child and struggling with addiction, Ramirez’s lawyer accused the district attorney’s office of turning the case into a media circus, claiming the publicity caused his client to panic.

The judge subsequently issued bench warrants for both Price and Ramirez. It remains unclear whether either has since been taken into custody.