Champion Lion Killers Pat, left and Ken Holloway pose for a photograph with their Rodesian Ridgeback show dogs “Whispering Oaks It’s Kismet,” left, and Courage of Tshaka Bill Jimal,” Thursday, in front of their motor home in Gallup, The dogs are champions and the motor home transports the dogs and their owners from show to show around the country.

(related story)

Photo by Craig Robinson

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4-way race for city judge flying under local radar

Bill Donovan
Special to the Independent

GALLUP — It’s the one race on Tuesday’s city ballot where being the incumbent or first on the ballot may have some effect on who is elected. And it’s also the position that most city voters probably are the least familiar with. It’s municipal court judge and on Tuesday four people this year are running for the position, including incumbent Linda Gasparich Padilla. The municipal judge, as she explained recently, handles traffic citations, petty misdemeanors and violations of the city code. Padilla has been the municipal court judge for nine years and unlike other court cases in this year, her decisions don’t often make the news. In fact, the onlyreal mention of the municipal court in recent years was in 2002 when city officials criticized her court, saying that their efforts to force people to abide by city trash and clean-up codes was being hampered by Padilla because the court wasn’t convicting anyone for code violations. Padilla said the lack of code violation convictions “wasn’t her fault since she has “never been given the opportunity to rule on the trash cases.”

She said that every time that a code violation was filed, attorneys for the city would sit down withthe offenders and work out a deal to resolve the matter.

In assessing her role as municipal judge over the years, she said that the one thing she is proud of is the fact that everyone who has appeared before her receives a fair and honest hearing.

“There were no back door deals,” she said.

Dennis Moeckel, another candidate who owns a security business in town and had 22 years of experience in law enforcement, said he would also treat everyone who comes before him equally.

“I’ll work closely with other law enforcement officers to make this a better and safer community,” he said.

He said he would also work more with parents to make sure that children in the community aren’t out late at night causing trouble.

He would be a tough judge, he said, in that if a person commits a crime, he or she will understand that they will have to address their problems.

“Someone has to get people to understand that they are responsible for their actions,”he said.

He said he also wanted to do something about a problem that isn’t mentioned very much but is getting worse - the number of outstanding warrants for area residents who have failed to comply with court sentences or failed to show up for a hearing.

“We have 3,000 outstanding warrants and we need to clean this up,” Moeckel said.

The third candidate in this race is Ken Tuttle, who has 24 years of military experience, including those years as a reservist, and 30 years as an educator.

He’s retired now and said he would devote full-time to being the municipal judge if he is elected.

“I want to be a policeman’s judge,” he said, indicating that he wants to be stern on those people who continue to violate the law.

He said he also wants people who would come before him to know that they would get a fair and impartial hearing.

“The time for slapping hands is over,” he said, adding that he would like to see more done to keep drunk drivers off the streets.

”I have studied the law and I will do a good job if elected,” he said. “I will also get a lot of the problems now
facing the municipal court resolved.”

The last candidate on the ballot is Freddie Espinosa, who also said he would be a full-time judge if elected.

At 29 years old, he is the youngest of the candidates and a life long-resident of Gallup.

“I decided to run for municipal judge,” he said, “because I felt we needed a change and I finally decided to do it myself.

He has worked as a reservist in the McKinley County Sheriff’s Department and has seen the crime problems
that county residents face first-hand.

But he said his law-enforcement background doesn’t mean that he will just throw the book at everyone who comes before him. “I feel I will be able to listen to all of the facts and render a fair decision,” he said.

He would also like to use his position as judge to speak out for stronger and tougher DWI sentences, especially for repeat
offenders.

“People are being charged with DWI over and over again and this has to stop,”he said.

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City police get $20K to impact 7 worst intersections

Andrea Egger Staff Writer

GALLUP — High vehicle accident rates at seven intersections in Gallup have caused the state to award the Gallup Police Department a $20,000 grant for overtime to target the locations for a year.

Gallup Police Lt. John Allen said Thursday that the Traffic Safety Bureau of the New Mexico State Highway Transportation Division recently awarded the grant after the Gallup Police Department’s Traffic Division submitted a grant proposal to the bureau. The grant will cover overtime for officers on eight-hour shifts to patrol the high crash locations in hopes that more visibility from the police will cause people to drive more sanely, according to a press release from the Gallup Police

The seven intersections were de termined to be the worst for acci dents in the entire Division Six of the state, which includes McKinley, Cibola, Sandoval and Catron coun ties ó the cities of Gallup, Grants, Bernalillo and Quemado, Allen said.

Crash statistics show that the in tersections are worse on Fridays and Saturdays on the first and fifteenth of each month because of an in crease in traffic on those days throughout Gallup, according to the press release. On those weekends, many companies in Gallup typically issue paychecks, and general assist ance checks are received by those who qualify in the city and on the neighboring reservations.

Areas in Gallup of particular con cern are the intersections, which include U.S. 666 at Lincoln, Metro, Maloney and Jefferson, as well as Highway 66 at Second and Third streets downtown and Ninth Street and Maloney Avenue, according to the Traffic Division.

“This is a forewarning that there are going to be officers up there and to be careful so we can turn these statistics around,” Allen said.

He added that it’s only natural for those intersections to have a lot of accidents since that’s where the stores and the Gallup Flea Market are located. “If we move traffic to another location in the city, we would have more accidents there,” Allen said.

Traffic is high in those areas on the weekends until late afternoon Sunday, when many shoppers re turn to the reservation.

While some of the collisions in volve fatal injuries, most do no more than cause minor injuries but a lot of vehicle damage. The intersection then becomes more congested while the accidents are investigated, Allen said. Many of the collisions are due to driver inattention and speeding, he said.

“Seat belt use is definitely a factor in injury accidents,” Allen said.

Of course, alcohol consumption is a factor in many local crashes. Failure to obey traffic signs and stop lights also contributes to collisions.

“There is a lot of failure to yield in making left-hand turns. We see that a lot,<cm DEQ> ” Allen said.

With more officers on the streets, police hope Gallup won’t be the city in District Six to have the most crashes anymore.

“Officers are doing this for every one’s safety, not to be mean, but for everyone’s safety,” he said.

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March Arts Crawl has something for everyone

Elizabeth Hardin-Burrola
Special to the Independent

GALLUP — This Saturday’s Arts Crawl in downtown Gallup will feature six art show receptions, a Celtic fashion show, a book signing, and a couple of live music venues. The first art show reception of the day will be local muralist Be Sargent’s, “Art and High Tea at Be’s.”Sargent will be showing a collection of her paintings and an exhibit of ceramic goddesses by artist Candice Lee from 2 to 6 p.m. at 113 E. Logan Ave.

The remainder of the Arts Crawl receptions will be from 7 to 9 p.m. Coyote Books, 112 W. Coal Ave., will host a book signing by Julian Tatarsky, the Thoreau author of, “If Only Growing Clever Kept Going Forever and Ninety-Nine Other Rhymes.”

Desert Rose Fashions, 206 W. Coal, will be featuring a 7:30 p.m. Celtic fashion show as a preview event for next weekend’s Fifth Annual Celtic Festival, which will be held on March 7 and 8 at the First United Methodist Church in Gallup. The festival’s theme, “Celtic Saints and Heros,” will be also mirrored in the fashion show.

The Coffee House, 203 W. Coal, will be featuring an exhibit of digital prints by various New Mexico artists, and Nicholas will provide live music for the evening.

The black and white photography of Chip Thomas will be on exhibit at Crashing Thunder Studio, 228 W. Coal.

Gallery 211, located at 211 W. Coal, will hold a reception it its Solo Gallery for, “Digital Ever After... The Early Years,” a show of color digital photographs by Milan Sklenar and William Siebersma. The show is worth a visit if just to read Siebersma’s artist statement. In Gallery 211’s Main Gallery, the group art exhibition “Sights & Insights” continues through March 29.

NexWave Studio, 231 W. Coal, will also feature the art and images of Gallup photographer Milan Sklenar, but in this show the artwork will be on T-shirts. The work of area high school art students will be shown at the Red Mesa Art Center, 105 W. Hill Ave.

As the Arts Crawl winds down, a Gallup-flavored Mardi Gras celebration will be kicking into gear. Rusty Strings and the
Flat Tones and the Back Porch Band will be performing at the El Rancho Hotel beginning at 8 p.m. A basic cover charge of two dollars will get partygoers admitted; an extra dollar will provide Mardi Gras beads with the admission.

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Gallup couple owns champion lion killers

Gaye Brown de Alvarez
Staff Writer

GALLUP — Everyone knows there are dog people and there are cat people.

But not everyone knows there are dog people and then there are SHOW DOG people. A different breed altogether.

Gallup residents Ken and Pat Holloway are members of that different breed. For years they have raised and shown Rhodesian Ridgebacks, a breed of dog from Africa, bred to hunt lions.

Their house in Gallup is full of photos of their two dogs winning accolades in different dog shows around the western U.S.
Their furniture is covered with blankets, a large RV sits in the driveway to ferry the animals to and from the shows. Owners of Rhodesian Ridgebacks for 22 years, the Holloways are serious dog lovers.

“Our house is furnished for the comfort of our dogs,”Pat Holloway said in an interview from the couple’s home. In a busy year the couple will take their two dogs to 15-20 shows where their handler, a Rhodesian Ridgeback breeder from San Diego, parades the dogs around in the hound group, hoping to take top honors.

Their two dogs, “Courage of Tshaka Bill, Jimal” 8, and “Whispering Oaks, It’s Kismet,”5 exemplify the breed with their red wheaten coats, brown eyes and muscular builds. Tshaka Bill and Kizzy are big, strong dogs that Ken Holloway exercises almost everyday by letting them run almost 2 miles behind his truck along a dirt road south of town.

“I let them run one at a time,” Holloway explains. “If I tried to exercise them together, they’d just take off.”

The breed itself dates back to the early 16th century when European settlers explored the interior on the Cape of Good Hope and found with the Hottentot tribes, a domesticated dog with the hair on his spine turned forward. It is thought that the origination of the Hottentot hounds was a dog from the island of Phu Quoc in the Gulf of Siam, but it has never been definitely determined, according to the Rhodesian Ridgeback website.

As the breed was crossbred with the dogs brought by the Dutch, Germans and Huguenots who migrated to South Africa, a dog was developed that could flush partridge, pull down a wounded stag, guard the farm against marauding animals and prowlers at night, and most importantly, withstand the rigors of the African bush, holding up under drastic changes in temperature and going 24 hours without water, if need be. Thus the breed became a loyal and serviceable hunting dog. Size standards for the breed are: Males — 25-27 inches in height, and at least 85 pounds; females —24-26 inches in height, and at least 70 pounds. Although they have excellent noses, the breed is referred to as a “site hound” meaning they hunt by sight, as opposed to many hounds who hunt by scent.

Holloway, who is retired, was the band director for Gallup High School for 30 years. The couple has three children who are grown and have families of their own, son Max lives in Gallup, Terri in California, and Marco in Albuquerque.

It was their son Max who introduced his parents to the breed.

“He came to visit and brought his dog,” explained Pat Holloway. “And we just fell in love with her, so we bought one from Aztec”

The dogs have engaging personalities and they’re “hard to resist,”Pat says. They make excellent guard dogs.

The Holloways don’t breed the two dogs because, they say, the female has never come into a full heat. But they are considering getting a new puppy from a breeder in San Diego. Show quality puppies can sell from about $750 to $850
a dog.

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