1. Efren Rey-Hipolito, 24, a UA journalism student, arrived three years ago from Valencia, Calif., a Los Angeles suburb. At first he missed the West Coast pace; "now when I go back home, it's almost too fast."
2. Luna Powell, 4, is a Tucson native.
3. Luna's mom, Leza Carter, 40, moved to Tucson 10 years ago from Boston to explore the desert, met her husband here, and stayed. "We love it here because we have such easy access to wilderness, and that hasn't changed" as the city grows, she says.
4. Joe Ramirez, 28, an IBM mechanical engineer originally from California, moved here five years ago from Las Cruces, N.M. He likes it but isn't sure he'll stay. He's pretty sure he won't move back to California, though — "too expensive."
5. Mimi Haggerty, 74, owns Piney Hollow, a store on North Fourth Avenue, with her husband. They moved here 34 years ago. "Our kids hated it at first — we'd come from the California and Oregon coasts and it was so dry here — and then they loved it."
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6. Lisa Grube, 33, who is in marketing and advertising, moved here a year and a half ago from Chicago when her husband took a UA position. They were tired of shoveling snow. "This morning we took a 30-mile bike ride and I said, 'It's November. It's beautiful.' You just have to rearrange your idea of what's beautiful," she says.
7. Beverly Fish, 57, is a retired school counselor. She and her husband moved to Tucson two years ago from Maryland after vacationing here for 10 years. "We've always loved the area," she says. "It's peaceful and quiet where we are."
8. Arni Sveinsson, 39, a Sunnyside Unified School District psychologist, moved here in 1992 from Iceland for UA grad school. He loves our desert but says we should be careful about "sprawling too far out from the city's core." If he leaves, it will be because Tucson is relatively low-paying.
9. Zach Winans, 15, who was born at Tucson Medical Center, is a sophomore at Sahuaro High. When he's an adult, "I think I'll probably move on," he says. "Tucson is boring."
10. Miguel Salazar, 12, a seventh-grader at Sierra Middle School, moved here 11 years ago from Guanajuato, Mexico. A soccer player, he really likes Tucson and his friends here.
11. Jorge Ramos, 13, a seventh-grader at Chaparral Middle School and another soccer buff, moved here about 10 years ago from Nogales, Sonora. He expects to stay when he's grown: "There's a lot of fun things here."
12. Alice Juan, 62, an accounting clerk for the Tucson Indian Center and a member of the Tohono O'odham Tribe, has lived here all her life, seeing growth she calls both positive and negative. "But I'm afraid for the water. It's like gold to us," she says. "I hate people wasting water."
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