Future Stars: 10 people inspiring Tucson's tomorrow

Eight-year-old Ella Lipham didn’t want toys for her birthday.

Not this year, and not last year.

Instead, she turned her November birthday party into a packing party, stuffing shoeboxes with goodies for children around the world. Last year, she collected more than 100 boxes. This year, the total tally came in just over 200.

“I was thinking, well, I have a bunch of stuff, and I know there are a lot of needy kids, so I really, really wanted to give some of that away,” Ella says. “So I sorted through my room, what I want and what I want for OCC.”

OCC stands for Operation Christmas Child — a cause the second-grader has made her own. And she hasn’t had her fill yet. Next year, she aims to collect 300 boxes.

Operation Christmas Child is a project of the Christian nonprofit Samaritan’s Purse. Each year, the organization collects shoeboxes full of hygiene items, school supplies, toys and candy for children around the world.

The project is also one of Christian evangelism.

“Every child who receives the shoebox hears the gospel of Jesus Christ after they receive the shoebox,” says Mary Jane Smith, an OCC coordinator for the Tucson area. As of Dec. 21, the Tucson area had donated about 14,800 shoeboxes.

For Ella, it all started in the summer of 2014 at a fine-arts camp, where in addition to preparing for a performance, the kids packed shoeboxes.

“I was like, ‘Oh, I really want to do this,’ and just God spoke to my heart and I wanted to do it,” Ella says.

Her Nov. 19 birthday falls in the midst of the OCC collection period, says her father, Bill Lipham. Both he and mom Judy Lipham encouraged their daughter but didn’t push.

“I’m at least enough of a veteran mother to know that if she is excited about something, wait 20 minutes and it might pass,” Judy says. “I’m not going to discourage it, but I was like, ‘We’ll see if she’s really this excited closer to her birthday when she could be getting presents.’”

She was. This was no whim. Ella wanted to go big. They wouldn’t pack 50 shoeboxes; They would pack 100.

At her seventh birthday party, volunteers packed 75 boxes at the family’s church, Emmanuel Baptist Church. Online donations through the Operation Christmas Child website pushed them past the 100-box marker.

Again, Judy put no pressure on her only child.

“After the party last year I said, ‘I’m not going to force you to do it again,’” she says. “‘If you want to, we can do it. If not, we can talk about Pump It Up or something. But she’s driving this train.”

Ella’s determined compassion comes despite struggles of her own.

As a 3-year-old, she was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes after her body began to shut down before preschool one day. Now, she deals with blood tests about 10 times a day and insulin pump changes every three days. She also helps her mother when Judy’s rheumatoid arthritis flairs up. Ella is a miracle. Judy thought the disease would prevent her from having children.

Still, her daughter struggles with her own health issues.

“I’m used to it, but I wish I didn’t have diabetes,” Ella says. “It stinks.”

Some days, she can forget she has it. Rarely does she let it define her.

“This is not what her life is about,” Judy says. “She has something else to focus on.”

And that’s helping others.

More than 100 people showed up this year to pack boxes at Ella’s school, Desert Christian Schools. Some brought their own supplies, boxes and $7 to cover shipping. Others just came to pack supplies donated by the Liphams and Smiths, who connected with Ella after giving an OCC presentation at her school.

“Ella, she is such a sweet, sweet little gal, and her mother and father are too,” Mary Jane says. “It’s just so wonderful to see a little heart so giving for children, and that’s contagious, because so many of her friends are doing it.”

At this year’s party, three straight hours of packing produced 176 shoeboxes, and monetary and online donations bumped the total over 200. Ella also sent out a letter asking for financial donations to help cover the $1,400 needed for 200 shoeboxes.

To meet 2016’s goal of 300 shoeboxes, packing and shopping will have to begin long before Ella’s November birthday party.

But for Ella, it’s worth it.

“A simple notebook and a pencil can mean the difference between an education or not, and we take that for granted,” says Judy. “Ella and I were just talking earlier that this is something somebody her age can do. It’s not that tough. But it’s like she has figured out this is her little corner of the world she can make better.”

Besides, having tons of presents is overrated.

“Well, if I got lots of presents, then my room would probably be cluttered with presents,” she says. “And I believe there’s a Bible verse that says it’s better to give than to receive.”

Someday she hopes to meet the kids who receive her gifts. She says she feels excited and joyful when she watches videos of kids around the world receiving shoeboxes.

“I wish I was there to have fun with them,” she says. “To play tag or maybe tickle them.”

Ten years ago, Benjamin Chapman wanted nothing to do with martial arts.

For about a month, he watched, bored, as his younger brother learned the ways of a white belt. Eventually, he reasoned that if he had to sit there for his brother’s classes, he might as well get involved.

Now, he is a third-degree black belt and head instructor at West Coast Martial Arts, the studio that taught him discipline and confidence.

Martial arts has changed his life. The studio, 7225 E. Broadway, emphasizes physical, mental and spiritual work and the development of good character.

“We always have kids who come and parents say they’re shy — I was definitely shy — or (parents) say they just want their kid to be active,” says Chapman, 19. “Martial arts is one of those sports and lifestyles that can attach to any aspect to make it better.”

As a head instructor, Chapman works with every class at the studio — usually four or five a day — teaches beginner classes, talks with kids and parents and steps in if master instructor and owner Jason Cole is out.

When Chapter first showed up at the studio, “In terms of martial arts, he wasn’t the most gifted kid, but he had a good work ethic and didn’t let anything stop him,” Cole says. “He refused to quit when things got tough — and in our system, a challenge for young people is when things get difficult, they stop training at that point.”

Not Chapman. He wants to own a studio one day and is a sophomore studying business at the University of Arizona.

“Unlike a lot of people at a young age, when they get a job and are hired, you give them a job description and that’s what they do. It’s black and white,” Cole says. “The thing with him is he was never afraid to take it a step forward. He took a lot of initiative.”

Chapman started helping with classes as a blue belt in 2007 or 2008, joined the staff several years later and became head instructor in 2014. In June, he plans to test for his fourth-degree black belt.

“After my first-degree black belt, I was almost always at the studio. When you come up in training, you have to be there from 4 to 8 p.m. to train and practice,” he says.

Even after earning the belt, he continued with the schedule, helping and cleaning around the studio. He keeps a similar routine these days, Tuesdays through Fridays from 3:30 to 9 p.m. and a few hours on Saturdays.

The first time Cole left Chapman in charge of his school for the day, Chapman wasn’t yet 18. When Cole called to check in later that day, he discovered Chapman had signed up two new students.

“I started ignoring his age and said, ‘You’re doing this. Let’s challenge you and see if you can handle that,’” Cole says.

Chapman works with about 150 students every week, while juggling his UA coursework.

He does it because he saw how martial arts changed his own life.

“I was kind of a chubby kid before, but now I’m constantly active,” he says.

He also learned to set and achieve goals.

“I think that’s the biggest thing people struggle with,” he says. “We have recently been talking about New Year’s resolutions. People start goals and drop off them, but as martial artists, we have to try and set a goal and complete it no matter what it is.”

His own day is to someday own a studio that transforms students — kids and adults — into confident and focused individuals. Cole was impressed early on when Chapman began pulling aside struggling students after class to connect on a personal level.

Of the classes Chapman teaches now, the “Little Dragons” — or kiddos ages 3 to 6 — is his favorite. There, transformation often happens quickly, with first-day tears and jitters replaced by excitement in future classes.

“I had one recently hugging up to her mom and crying. She didn’t want to do class,” Chapman says. When that happens, he gently explains what happens in class and coaxes students to the mat.

“She cried the entire class, but she did everything. It wasn’t like it was something hurt her or there was something wrong, but it was a new thing for her. A week after that, she was coming and high-fiving me and smiling the whole time.”

It’s not uncommon to see a Tanzanian man herding cattle and jabbering into a cellphone, Katie McCracken says.

During her year of volunteering with the Peace Corps in the African country, McCracken, 24, learned that even if computer access does not exist, cellphones — and, increasingly, smartphones — are everywhere.

That observation, and several others, has influenced her lab work back at the University of Arizona in water resources engineering. McCracken will complete her two-year master’s program in agricultural and biosystems engineering in May. She plans to continue work in the field of water supply.

Her decision to go into the Peace Corps came in part from a desire to see for herself the needs that existed in the world. When she graduated from the UA in May 2013 with a degree in biosystems engineering, she had already spent several years in the lab where she still works. Conversations with her colleagues began turning toward using smartphone functions to test water quality or food samples.

“There was a lot of discussion in the lab that we want to do this because this will be great for people in the quote-unquote Third World,” McCracken says. “Everyone has an idea of what people need elsewhere, but until you get to know somebody or go to see some place, you don’t really know their situations.”

She had an older friend who had traveled with the Peace Corps, and in Tucson, McCracken had volunteered with refugee families from Iraq and Somalia.

She wanted to see the world, and so to Tanzania she went.

She learned Swahili and taught high school math and physics in English.

“Whenever you’re working abroad or doing aid work, sometimes there’s a feeling that, ‘I’m going to do something for these people that they need, and it’s going to be great for them,’” McCracken says. “But it’s more about building capacity ... and asking them, ‘Hey, what do you want to do?’”

In her village in central Tanzania, McCracken’s focus shifted from water quality to water supply.

There was only enough fuel to pump water from the village’s single well once a day.

To purify the water, she learned to strain it through a cloth and then place it on a tin roof to be treated by the sun’s heat and ultraviolet rays. That method saved fuel.

Early in her Peace Corps training, volunteers made water filters out of ceramic buckets. McCracken left hers with a family. On a visit several months later, she found the filter dismantled and the buckets repurposed. It must have broken, she says.

“Coming back made me realize that things need to be more robust than we make them in the lab,” she says. “There’s not an Apple store in Tanzania.

“If something breaks, there’s not always someone there to fix it.”

Her lab work back at the UA is about enabling an average person to test water quality with a smartphone and a test strip.

McCracken is working with the UA Zuckerman College of Public Health and Tucson Water to test BPA (bisphenol A) in water samples. BPA is an organic material used in some plastics.

McCracken likens the procedure to taking a picture of a pregnancy test.

A strip of paper would be loaded with a reagent that would react with a specific contaminant — in this case, BPA. The reaction could cause a change in color or light quality on the strip. An app could then process a smartphone photo of the strip using a mathematical equation to provide additional information.

This technology could detect contaminants and pathogens in food or water samples, McCracken says.

“The end goal is being able to detect things that usually take a long time in the lab or require sensitive and expensive equipment, and bring those capabilities to the average person, so they can figure out what’s up with their own water,” McCracken says.

Although there are already kits on the market to test water quality, this method could detect bacteria or heavy metals, for example, accurately and inexpensively, says Jeong-Yeol Yoon, a UA professor of agricultural and biosystems engingeering and biomedical engineering and the director of McCracken’s lab.

In some of those kits, comparing color changes to a chart can be difficult or lack specificity.

And with the worldwide prevalence of cellphones and the ingenuity McCracken witnessed in Tanzania, a simpler test could work anywhere.

“I was all by myself in a village in the middle of Tanzania,” she says. “It definitely made me realize how much everyone everywhere has to offer. ... It also helped my perspective with technology, and helped me to see what actually might be useful.”

For months, Faith Trejo shoved piles of sports equipment up against one wall in her bedroom.

She sorted it and cleaned it, eventually transporting it to Sells, Arizona in the back of her dad’s pickup truck.

The 16-year-old collected about $8,000 worth of sports equipment for kids in Sells to earn her Girl Scout Gold Award. This is the organization’s highest award and requires high school girls to find a problem, figure out how to solve it and then follow up with an extensive paper.

Faith received her Gold Award this April, along with recognition for the accomplishment from NASA, the White House, the governor and others, says her mother Carol Trejo.

“It took me a while to think of (the idea), but once I had the idea, I was like, ‘Yes. This is what I want to do,’ ” Faith says. “I love to do sports and teach people about health and how to play. There was a lot I really liked about it, and nothing else could really top this.”

Faith, now a junior at Canyon del Oro High School, traveled to Sells the summer after her freshman year with her church youth group to distribute the equipment and teach kids how to play softball and baseball.

The equipment she gave to the Sells community center was enough to form five teams and create a softball league for girls ages 6 to 12.

“Her father and I just feel like we’re proud of the fact that she has compassion for others, and she continues to inspire us by giving back,” Carol says, adding that earning a Gold Award is no easy task.

To collect the baseball and softball gear, Faith worked with the Oro Valley community for more than a year, reaching out to club teams, the Canyon Del Oro Little League and Oro Valley Fast Pitch Softball for old equipment. Faith was a softball player herself until high school.

Most of the gear was gently used. Some items were brand new. Faith, who donated some of her own stuff, inspected the quality of each donation.

In Sells, she started the kids off with a game of Wiffle ball, teaching them to swing bats and throw balls.

“They were lined up against the fence ready to go, like, ‘Let’s play!’” Faith says. “They loved it.”

One boy showed up barefoot. He had lost his shoes several days prior.

“Luckily we had cleats that fit him,” Faith says. “He played in those all day.”

Although Faith still doesn’t know exactly what she wants to do in the future, an interest in health and promoting active living has been a developing theme in her life. As a student at CDO, she has lettered in golf and track and has competed in basketball and swim.

Among other school activities, Faith is part of a national club promoting the healthcare industry called HOSA — Future Health Professionals. HOSA stands for Health Occupations Students of America.

Girls Scouts, which she has done since first grade, helped her put that interest into action:

“Girl Scouts gave me a reason to actually complete my Gold Award and actually be able to do such a big project and affect so many people.”

When the Victim Services Division of the Pima County Attorney’s Office opens a northwest location in 2016, 24-year-old Deanna Lopez will spearhead it.

Lopez began working as a victim advocate in Domestic Violence Court after volunteering there as a University of Arizona undergrad.

At the new satellite office in the Oro Valley and Marana area, Lopez will train and work with a new hire to develop a municipal court advocacy program in the region. Advocates usually help victims of offenses such as assault, stalking, domestic violence or harassment through the criminal justice system, says Laura Penny, the director of the Pima County Attorney’s Victim Services Division.

A Spanish and psychology double major, Lopez didn’t know what she wanted to do professionally, but when she began volunteering in victim services before her May 2013 graduation, she discovered a passion for helping victims better understand their rights.

About eight months after graduation, a position opened for a domestic violence advocate.

“It’s a lot of talking to victims and explaining the criminal justice system and providing resources to them,” Lopez says. “It’s a lot of crisis counseling and letting them know they’re not alone and there are resources available to them in the community.”

Lopez is not a lawyer, but she works closely with law enforcement, prosecutors and judges. Speaking Spanish is another asset.

“We’re the go-between for lawyers and victims, and we’re always there for victims if they have questions or concerns they want to address,” she says. “Anything they want to talk about with us is confidential, and we don’t have to disclose it to law enforcement or the county attorney unless it’s exculpatory or we’re in fear for their safety.”

Before volunteer training as a UA senior, Lopez had no experience in this field. She had always respected law enforcement — her father is a Border Patrol agent — but had no idea how to talk to someone experiencing a crisis and no in-depth knowledge of the criminal justice system.

“I watched ‘Law & Order: SVU’ and all those crime shows, but it’s so different,” she says. “In ‘Law & Order: SVU’ the criminal justice system just goes by so fast. In reality it takes so much time.”

Lopez helps to train volunteers every spring and fall, often working with students from the UA or Pima Community College who are where she was not long ago.

Now, she and another advocate handle 400 to 500 domestic violence cases at a time, assisting those victims through the court system.

“This is one of our highest volume caseloads, and it is a very challenging population to work with, and she volunteered for it,” Penny says. “She is beloved by the victims she supports.”

Lopez manages night and weekend crisis shifts occasionally, meaning that if law enforcement requests a victim advocate on site, she either organizes a team of volunteers or goes herself.

On scene, a victim advocate explains available resources, such as how to make funeral arrangements or enroll in a class about domestic violence.

“We are trained how to speak to people in crisis, and we leave brochures for them in case they aren’t in the state of mind to hear everything,” Lopez says.

Despite trauma, the people Lopez works with often surprise her with their openness. That can be difficult on a personal level.

“Working in this field, you get what we call vicarious trauma because you are around so much trauma,” Lopez says. “In domestic violence relationships especially, it’s because they still love this person even though they’re harming them, and they will usually go back to them, and that can be hard to see.”

But Lopez never shows it, Penny says. Her compassionate and professional demeanor does not waver.

“She shows up for them and is there for them, even though inside she may be thinking, ‘Please, don’t put yourself at risk again,’ ” Penny says.

Lopez decompresses with her coworkers and family — she is paying for her younger sister to be a member of a UA sorority — and Jax, a 6-month-old puppy she rescued. Reading and binge-watching Netflix also help.

“I like helping people, and I feel like these are the people that need to have their voices heard and need to have access to resources,” Lopez says of working with victims of domestic violence. “This is a crime that can affect everyone.”

To earn his diploma from Sunnyside High School, Edgar Casas, 19, fought for his life.

As a high school freshman, he was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia.

At the time, he was living in Phoenix with his grandmother and had never been seriously sick before. His schooling ceased when treatments began at Cardon Children’s Center in Mesa.

There, he met Monica Molina and her daughter Marissa Molina, who was at the hospital to receive treatment for bone cancer.

“He took care of himself a lot during his treatment and was often by himself,” Monica says. “But he was always smiling and always stayed positive. He didn’t feel sorry for himself or anything like that and didn’t have the support that most of the kids had there.”

Monica remembers Casas taking taxis to and from treatment and making trips to the grocery store to make his own meals. Monica, her daughter and many of the nurses rallied around the teen.

Casas didn’t give up on school. Instead, he earned 12 credits through homebound schooling via Bostrom High School in Phoenix.

But treatment didn’t go well. He relapsed twice. The cancer came back despite chemotherapy and radiation.

With his immune system weakened from chemo, Casas says he developed a brain infection that could have cost him an eye. After almost three years of treatment, he was done.

He decided to go back to Mexico, where he had lived as a child after being born in California. His mother still lives there, and Casas believed his quality of life would be better with his family.

“It was a scary decision ... but it was worth the risk,” Casas says.

His doctors pleaded with him to stay, telling him he would not live long if he stopped treatment.

“I had so much hope in me that I knew they were wrong,” he says.

Casas spent about six months with his family in Mexicali, taking no prescribed medications and undergoing no treatment.

“I felt like God wanted more for me than what they had given me,” he says. “I felt like I deserved more.”

And so he needed to finish school.

He reconnected with the Molinas, who promised him they would help enroll him if he moved to Tucson. Monica works as an administrative assistant for the Sunnyside Unified School District office.

Casas moved to Tucson in spring of 2014 started school in August and got involved in Youth On Their Own, a nonprofit that helps unaccompanied teens graduate.

“Nowadays, if you don’t have a high school diploma, you don’t get a good job,” Casas says. “The diploma is the first step towards your career.”

But another setback came in the form of pneumonia and a trip to Banner-University Medical Center toward the end of 2014.

Doctors noticed Casas had a low count of platelets, which help blood clot. A follow-up visit in January revealed Casas had MDS, or myelodysplastic syndromes, meaning his bone marrow did not make enough healthy blood cells.

“The transplant doctor said it was critical and that he needed to get a (stem cell) transplant right away,” Monica Molina says. The hospital admitted Casas in March, and he began chemotherapy to prepare his body for the transplant.

Again, his education went on hold.

He spent 72 days in the hospital but was able to resume homebound schooling until he could return to Sunnyside in August to finish his remaining credits in a modified setting.

Medically, he is in maintenance for the transplant, which means he visits the hospital every few weeks for checkups and to refill his medication.

There are no signs of the leukemia, though his weakened immune system still has him in and out of the hospital for various illnesses.

“There are just so many setbacks because the transplant put stress on his body,” says Marissa Molina, 19. “The doctors still say Edgar is not himself.”

It takes time to regain strength, adds the younger Molina, who has been in remission for about five years. She and Casas are dating.

Casas has hope for his future. Earlier in December, he completed his high school coursework at Sunnyside High School. He will walk in the graduation ceremony in May.

“He believes more in his God than the doctors,” Monica says. “He believed he had more to do here.”

Casas doesn’t know exactly what he wants to do next, but he is drawn to the medical field. Perhaps he will become a nurse or EMT, he says. He wants his own experiences to make cancer treatment less scary for other kids by explaining exactly what they can expect.

“The nurses don’t prepare you,” Casas says. “They tell you everything by the books, but they can’t tell you personal experience or what could happen just because they can’t release anyone’s information. ... But me, myself, I don’t care. I’ll tell them my story.”

Casey Way is basically tech support for the residents at the retirement community Splendido.

The 14-year-old started volunteering there around Christmas 2014 when his grandmother, a resident, noticed a number of packages had not yet been delivered to rooms.

So Casey started doling out packages.

Then, word of his tech savvy got out when he helped a friend of his grandmother’s with her computer.

“She told all of her friends, and more started asking me to help,” Casey says.

He works with service attendant Sue Martin when she makes rounds at Splendido at Rancho Vistoso, helping residents to change printer ink or reset routers.

Casey spends one or two Saturdays every month helping residents with all things electronic. Since last winter, he has donated about 200 hours of his time.

If the Internet goes down, Casey can probably fix it. When a cable box needs installing, Casey figures it out. He tidies tangled cords and teaches tablet basics.

Most of the residents have televisions and computers. A few have tablets and many have smartphones, he says.

Asking Casey for help gives residents a free alternative to paying for professional tech support.

“I really like helping people with their computers, because it’s something I’m good at,” Casey says. “It makes me feel good that I can take one of my talents and help people who don’t know what they’re doing.”

Casey thinks he was about 10 when his parents bought him a computer. Not long after, he took it apart and put it together outside of the case.

That was the beginning.

Now, he builds computers for his friends and fixes broken electronics.

“We just yell his name whenever anything breaks,” says Jodi Grassmeyer, his mother.

When Casey dismantles computers, he often saves the parts. They can come in handy.

“I remember there was this one lady who needed a new computer and didn’t want to spend a lot of money, so I bought the parts separately,” he says of helping a Splendido resident.

For less than $100, he purchased a new motherboard, CPU and RAM to pair with the existing hard drive and case, he says.

“Residents love him. He is patient, kind and explains things,” Martin says. “Some kids will know technology but not know how to explain it, but he can explain it to them in their language.”

Tech tutoring can get frustrating, but mostly Casey enjoys his interactions with seniors. Sometimes, he gets paid in baked goods.

“They appreciate a teen spending time with them and giving them attention and listening to their stories,” Grassmeyer says. “Casey does not run out of people who need help with digital-age electronics.”

Not much stumps Casey, and most answers are just a Google search away. Troubleshooting usually takes about 30 minutes. He loves when someone says, “How did you do that so fast?”

Outside of his volunteer work, Casey played football this year as a freshman at Pusch Ridge Christian Academy. Someday, he sees himself pursuing a career in computers and engineering.

“I like to volunteer because it helps people,” Casey says. “I think it’s important for people who have skills and who have time they don’t need to go and help other people who don’t have those skills.”

Kim Newhouse always knew she would lose her daughter Moriah, she just wasn’t sure how.

Kim named Moriah, now 19, for the mountain in the Bible where Abraham almost sacrificed his son Isaac. After the voice of God commanded Abraham to spare his son and a ram appeared as an alternative sacrifice, Abraham named the place “The Lord Will Provide.”

When Kim heard a sermon about that story, the message stuck. At the time, she had only given birth to one child, Moriah’s older sister. Because of a chronic pain condition, she did not believe she would have any more children.

“I felt God saying, ‘You will lay her on the altar, and I will provide,’” Kim says of her realization that having more children was not impossible.

Perhaps that meant a miscarriage, she thought. Or maybe a young death.

But then, as a 5-year-old, Moriah shared with her parents a dream she had about becoming a missionary. It clicked for Kim. For her, placing Moriah on a figurative altar meant giving her up to mission work.

The family encouraged Moriah cautiously, not sure whether the interests of a 5-year-old would persist.

They did.

“We looked for an opportunity to get Moriah out of the country,” Kim says. “We always believed in her and wanted to get her there to see if it would pan out.”

Since then, Moriah has worked hard in Tucson and internationally to care for other people, taking on both labor-intensive jobs and creative projects.

As a 10-year-old, she went on a trip to Kenya with her father.

“On the trip, I fell in love with the culture,” she says. “I just loved spending time there and the smells and what everything looked like.”

Moriah returned to Kenya in 2010 as a 13-year-old to help build new dormitories and classrooms for Deaf Opportunity OutReach International, an organization that translates the Bible into sign languages and trains deaf leaders.

She has also traveled to the Dominican Republic with the Christ Community Church youth group, where the group built brick walls for a second-story classroom and ran a vacation Bible school for kids.

“We learned how to lay the blocks and mix the mortar, and it was all on the second story, so we had to pull up all of these blocks,” she says.

During the vacation Bible school, a young boy attached himself to Moriah. After learning that the boy lived with his older sister because his mother had died and his father worked in another city, Moriah decided to sponsor him through Kids Alive International. They now write each other letters and he sends crafts.

Moriah has since traveled to Mexico and the Navajo Reservation for similar construction projects. She finished high school in May 2015 and hopes to serve as a missionary full time someday.

“I believe there are a lot of people hurting out there, and they need to feel healing and love from that, and I believe I know the answer to true love and healing, which is through Jesus Christ,” Moriah says.

Because she wants to back her faith with actions and not just words, she joined Hearts on Fire, a local youth ministry that works specifically in the Tucson community, feeding the homeless, visiting nursing homes and doing construction projects.

Wanderlust can make it hard to stay here, but Moriah is learning to be content and care for people everywhere.

“I think I have a better perspective now that this is still my training ground,” she says, “and there are things I need to do here before I can go and do elsewhere.”

Stepping into a gown and onto a runway was a big deal for 15-year-old Michelle Fierro.

A director and model in the #Youth4Freedom Youth Fashion Show, Michelle overcame her own insecurities to raise funds for Sold No More, a local nonprofit working to stop sex trafficking in Tucson. The organization says 13 is the average age of someone sold into sex slavery.

“I was kind of antisocial in that I was really shy and just wasn’t confident at all,” says Michelle, a freshman at Desert View High School. “Me doing different things and stepping up and learning to dance and taking pictures was just different.”

The fashion show grew out of a presentation by Sold No More to Desert View’s Youth Empowered for Success (YES) Club, but just learning information about sex trafficking wasn’t enough for the students.

“They were like, ‘Now what?’” says Roseanna Gonzalez, the club sponsor and fashion show coordinator and head director. “I was scratching my head.”

From that enthusiasm grew the #Youth4Freedom Youth Fashion Show as a fundraiser for Sold No More. The show used dresses from the bridal boutique Free Ever After, a division of the nonprofit.

As one of the show directors, Michelle worked closely with Gonzalez in the months leading up to the September show. She handed out fliers, promoted the show in school clubs and Tucson churches, choreographed an interpretive dance for the show and performed a piece of spoken word poetry she wrote.

She was also a model for the promotional material.

“That was probably the turning point for her when it came to her self esteem,” says Gonzalez, a special education English teacher at Desert View. “When she first did the photo shoot, she was like, ‘I don’t like this dress or the way I look’ and was tearing herself apart.”

Gonzalez quickly debunked those lies.

“We let her know she is valued and she does matter, and this is the reason why we are doing this fashion show,” Gonzalez says. “There are many girls and boys who do feel destroyed and not valued, and she could be the voice for those kids.”

Michelle found her confidence walking down the runway, dancing to the song “Beneath Your Beautiful” by Labrinth and reading her writing.

“I just went for it and decided to do it, to be confident and to trust in God,” she says.

She feels like a different person now — more confident and more compassionate.

“She manifested into an awesome performer,” Gonzalez says. “She was impactful and strong and had it together. She was not the same little girl I got when I first started.”

The fashion show not only taught her how to overcome her own insecurities but gave her a desire to help others do the same.

“It made me see that there is so much out there with how people are being treated and how teenagers these days are suffering through everything,” she says. “Before, I didn’t pay attention to it. I was just in my own world.”

The fashion show raised more than $1,000 for Sold No More, operating on a budget of $0. Michelle would do it again.

“I felt like I needed to do something to help people, because it’s not just sex trafficking,” she says. “It’s helping those who are confused and lost and can’t find somebody to help them.”

When Alex Brinckerhoff shows up in costume for Living History Days at Presidio San Agustín del Tucson, he imagines he is a Dutch pirate captured by the Spanish military.

For several years, Alex has donned the costume of a drummer boy one Saturday each month, traveling back in time to the 18th century.

Alex, 15, is the youngest re-enactor and part of the Garrison soldiers. He joined the “soldados,” or soldiers, after a presentation on medical practices from the era captivated his attention at an Arizona centennial celebration.

He was 12 at the time.

“They found documents of soldiers as young as 9 taken into the Spanish military, and they wouldn’t give them guns,” Alex says. “They would give them a sword and a drum. It fit my age ... so it would have been period-accurate.”

When he turns 16, he can get a musket, he says.

The very first day Alex joined the soldiers in his cotton shirt, wool jacket and felt hat, he marched with a flag in a St. Patrick’s Day parade, surrounded by the other marchers. If he lost control of the flag, he risked hitting someone.

“It was a breezy day,” says Bill Brinckerhoff, Alex’s father, a fellow re-enactor and board member of the Tucson Presidio Trust for Historic Preservation. “He’s the smallest member of the Presidio carrying this flag. He earned his stripes that day.”

Alex’s grandfather, Sidney Brinckerhoff, is also a re-enactor and is on the advisory board. When he visits his family each winter from his home in Seattle, he plays the part of a visiting colonel.

Alex attributes some of his passion for history to his grandfather, who was the executive director of the Arizona Historical Society for years.

During his career, Sidney worked to preserve the original Presidio and provide insight about military and architectural details for the museum.

“I was there during the urban renewal, and we were desperately trying to save buildings so there would be physical integrity,” Sidney says. “I’m doubly thrilled to see how Tucson has matured, in my view, as a cultural community, and I’m proud to have a small part of it. And to see your grandson out there doing it, too, I get goosebumps.”

But Alex didn’t join the the soldiers just because of his grandfather’s involvement.

“It didn’t start off as a family thing,” says Alex, a sophomore at Salpointe Catholic High School. “I had an interest in it and wanted to do it, so I did.”

His father started volunteering after he did.

“When I see kids who are younger than I am, and the smiles on their faces when they find it interesting, I do it for that ... .” Alex says.

On Living History Days, Alex joins the other volunteers to re-create life as it would have been during the days of the original Presidio. He marches with the other soldiers once or twice, and mans a table with props that Spanish soldiers might have used.

The information Alex shares he learned from other volunteers or through personal study. For a school paper, he spent hours researching online and reading his grandfather’s books about Spanish colonial history.

That wasn’t a requirement to volunteer. He did it because he wants to learn and educate.

“I want to teach people about their past,” he says. “And I want them to see that people from all walks of life can learn the same exact thing and leave with an equal knowledge about that place. I think that’s a really cool thing.”

From his research, Alex has learned about the diverse nationalities of the early soldiers in Tucson — the inspiration for his Dutch pirate character as a play on the origins of his last name.

“To see my blood in Tucson contributing this way is probably one of the nicest things that has ever happened to me,” Sidney says, admiring his grandson’s consistent dedication.

And it’s not like Alex has time to spare.

Volunteering at the Presidio gets him up early on weekends — even though the rest of his week is packed.

He is part of Salpointe’s drama program, and either acts or does tech for plays and musicals. In January 2015, he learned to play the trombone so he could join the school’s jazz and symphonic bands. He also sings in the school choir and is involved in his youth group at St. Alban’s Episcopal Church.

Beyond playing the drum and fife for the Presidio, Alex also plays guitar and hopes to do something musical someday.

But history will always be a passion. It’s too important to let go.

“History teaches us not to make mistakes for our future ... ,” he says. “People need to know how Tucson got here.”

Alex believes that people should understand the history of the place where they live.

“Tucson’s history is so rich,” he says. “There is so much behind it. There is so much more than, ‘It was a fort.’”