Reporter Alex Devoid's Fave Five of 2020

This year I was fortunate enough to make maps and analyze data alongside some amazing reporters at the Arizona Daily Star. And I wrote a lot about the coronavirus. I think these five pieces show what our community has been through over the past year.

Kyra Wade’s favorite color is pink. The 11-year-old likes road trips and the movie “Monsters, Inc.” She loves to watch people laugh. Her culinary preferences run to noodles and rice.

Beyond that, her parents don’t know much about her needs and wants.

Kyra is autistic and profoundly deaf. She was born premature at about 27 weeks, just a little over 2 pounds, which has impacted pretty much everything: eyesight, hearing, digestion, sleep patterns. A strong tremor in her hand makes it impossible for her to use American Sign Language. Her parents think she recognizes a couple dozen signs.

They know she’s frustrated. Kyra often smacks herself on the side of the head with her hand or bites her palm so hard she draws blood, said her mother, Ka Wade. The Wades assume she is doing it when she is in pain. Kyra is not potty trained, but she got her period recently. Ka couldn’t explain what was happening.

The Wades moved to Arizona in the summer of 2017 with the expectation that services provided by the state would help them care for Kyra. Arizona had long enjoyed a reputation as one of the best places in the country for people with developmental disabilities and their families. Thanks to a special Medicaid program created in 1988, Arizona had an innovative and generously funded system in place.

Arizona’s Division of Developmental Disabilities, or DDD, aimed to keep people with developmental disabilities at home with family, or in small group settings, rather than place them into institutions.

For many years, it worked. The division sent nurses, speech therapists and respite workers to assist families with the responsibilities of caring 24/7 for relatives with autism, cerebral palsy, epilepsy and intellectual disabilities. Care providers were well paid. There were no long waiting lists for help, as there were in other states.

But like many families in Arizona, the Wades discovered that the state’s vaunted system does not always deliver on its promises after years of budget cuts, poor management and leadership turnover. Fewer than a third of the estimated 157,000 Arizonans with developmental disabilities receive any home and community-based services, and an even smaller number actually get access to therapies, day treatment programs, job training, housing and health care — elements designed to allow a person to live as independently as possible.

Read the full story here.

Luis Ibarra started feeling less energetic in February.

He thought it was a side effect of his diabetes medication. His doctor thought it was a stomach issue and prescribed him pills.

But the pain persisted, so the 42-year-old headed to the emergency room in May. Two hours later, the handyman’s worst fear was confirmed with a CAT scan: His seminoma cancer had returned.

He prepped for his chemotherapy, worried about his wife and their four kids.

Then a week later, he was hit with new symptoms — fever, chills, body aches and no sense of smell. He returned to the hospital and received a second diagnosis: COVID-19.

It took him 2½ months to recover from the respiratory illness, delaying essential cancer treatment. By then, the tumor between his kidney and urethra had grown.

Months later, he’s nearing the end of his third round of chemotherapy, but the pain, dizziness and nausea have made it hard to play outside with his kids or drive them to get ice cream.

His doctor will decide soon whether to schedule surgery to remove the tumor or continue with a fourth round of chemotherapy.

He’s relieved he’s almost done with treatment but constantly plagued by the uncertainty.

“You think you’re going to die,” Ibarra said. “You think, what’s going to happen to your family?”

More than six months after the first case of coronavirus in Pima County, Ibarra is one of a number of residents of Tucson’s predominantly Latino neighborhoods who have been disproportionately hit by the virus.

The rate of COVID-19 cases among majority Latino neighborhoods is more than two times higher than the rate among white majority ZIP codes, according to an Arizona Daily Star analysis of the locations of local cases of the virus.

Read the full story here.

Coronavirus cases are nearly everywhere in Pima County, which has recently set another record for the number of cases in a week.

Since the start of the current spike to the second week in November, at least one person was diagnosed with the virus in 99% of the county’s census tracts, which are areas similar in size to neighborhoods.

The Arizona Daily Star mapped and analyzed the locations of COVID-19 cases in Pima County, which were provided by the county, to learn where the virus has spread the most when cases spike.

Cases have spiked three times in Pima County. The latest surge is ongoing and hasn’t peaked. But cases here have peaked twice before, once over the summer and once in September after University of Arizona students returned to Tucson for the fall semester.

Read the full story here.

Leah Cox did not intend on getting tested for the new coronavirus. That’s not why she went to see a Tucson ear, nose and throat doctor.

She had been feeling ill for several weeks and just wanted to figure out why.

She was short of breath and had been for nearly a week. That is what alerted the doctor that she might be infected.

She didn’t particularly want to get tested, but the doctor urged her to. He stuck a swab in her nose, farther back than she knew was possible.

Afterward, the doctor’s office told her the test would cost her $125. She questioned the charge. “I thought it was supposed to be free or nearly free. I don’t understand,” she said. “And they said, ‘No, it’s not.’”

She asked Valley Ear Nose and Throat to bill her insurance first, but they wouldn’t, she said. She asked if she needed to pay before she left. They said “no,” she said.

On her drive home, however, the doctor’s office called and told her the lab wouldn’t test her sample without payment upfront.

At this point, her options felt limited. She was already making plans to quarantine herself as she waited to learn if she was infected. She would send her kids to her ex-husband’s house for a couple of days.

If she was infected with the new coronavirus, at least she would know why she felt ill. She almost hoped the result would be positive, just to have answers.

She had gone to the doctor to see if her illness was an allergic reaction. But maybe this test would explain everything. “So yeah, let’s take the test so we can figure that out,” she said.

She paid for the test over the phone with her credit card.

About a day later, the results came in. Negative. She was not infected.

Read the full story here.

The Bighorn Fire, sparked by lightning June 5 near Pusch Ridge in the Catalina Mountains north of Tucson, has resulted in evacuations and is being fought by hundreds of wildfire fighters. 

Use this map, updated regularly, to see fire and evacuation boundaries.

Pan and zoom to find other wildfires and prescribed burns in the country. Fire data is updated regularly. Click the info icon to see when.

Map Source: National Interagency Fire Center