Arizona Daily Star from Tucson, Arizona • Page 3

STATE EDI TUCSON, MONDAY, JUNE 27, 1983 THE ARIZONA DAILY STAR SECTION A PAGE THREE iver brims at Topock Wlarsh find new path as it tries ft I i 1 V' Continued from Page One Havasu National Wildlife Refuge filled up and flowed northward. It breached a dike that residents and emergency workers had worked through the night to reinforce. Some residents had already fled the subdivision when warned on Wednesday that the dike would not hold back the water. The others packed hastily yesterday morning when water began streaming down the subdivision's dirt streets. Al Bradshaw, who bought his home in Lake Topock Ranchos four months ago, said he gathered up "the essentials: my wife, four kids, four goats, 20 chickens, a rooster and a dog." Bradshaw said he applied for flood insurance last week.

It went into effect at midnight yesterday. His family moved to a trailer owned by inlaws several miles away, after piling their possessions on tables in their home. The water is not expected to get very deep, but the subdivision could be inaccessible for more than two months. That's how long the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation says it needs to get rid of the record snowmelt in the Colorado River's system of dams and reservoirs.

Water from the Rockies will place both its largest dams Hoover and Glen Canyon at greater-than-maximum levels for the first time in history within the next two weeks, bureau officials say. If the water from Topock Marsh continues to follow the river's old channel, it will end up re- entering the Colorado near the Interstate 40 bridge at Topock, said Deputy Sheriff Dan Bishop, command post supervisor for the Mohave County Sheriff's Department. By last night, water had reached all 32 homes in the subdivision. Those forced to evacuate were offered emergency shelter at beds set up by the Red Cross at Mohave Valley Elementary School. Bertie Hill, county Red Cross disaster chairman, said six families had called to seek shelter, but by last night, only two evacuees were at the school a 75-year-old woman and Benny Scymczak.

Scymczak sat outside the school, keeping company with his dog named "Dog." "I gave my myna bird away this morning; had it 16 years and it talked just like a human being. But I had this dog 10 years, and I ain't gonna get rid of it, and it ain't gonna get rid of me," he said. Scymczak despaired of finding another "good shack" on the $430 a month he receives in Social Security benefits. "I could take that senior citizen housing, but they don't allow dogs. "I lost my wife seven years ago.

Oh, she was my right hand. I been thinking of her all day. I don't know why. I guess because she'd have known what to do. She always did.

She'd tell me 'Don't Scymczak, like many others this week, questioned the wisdom of the bureau's schedule of releases. "I know they've got to get rid of the water now, but back around Christmas time, I could walk across that river. What in the hell were they saving it for?" Mohave Valley Fire Chief Colin J. Campbell wondered what he would do if the river rechan-neled itself. "The whole lower Mohave Valley will be an island," he said.

Campbell also complained about the slowness of state and federal emergency efforts in the valley, saying, "I guess the government is just set up to clean up after a disaster, not to avert one." Campbell said the river is running underground all through the valley, filling septic tanks and spoiling private wells. He said the silt left by the Colorado when it last flowed through the valley before the dams were built has turned to quicksand in some areas. Bishop said county and state officials are testing wells throughout the area, and are fearful that the rising water table will contaminate a good many of them. None have been identified so far, he said. Just north of Lake Topock Ranchos, the county has another trouble spot, ihe Bermuda Plantations subdivision.

About 40 houses and mobile homes, north and south of the bridge to Needles, are in water at the river's edge. Some of the homes were in water up to 5 feet deep yesterday. Those residents were evacuated earlier in the week, and sheriff's deputies are guarding the subdivision against looters. Last night, county officials asked for more National Guardsmen to help them patrol and to aid with any future trouble spots. Kim Kullsh, The Ariiora Daily Star Director Hal Needham laughs at critics of his movies 'Cannonhall Run starts its engines Feeling the heat It's summer and it's a camp, but its no summer camp for four protesters living in tents near the main gate to Davis-Monthan Air Force Base.

The four established the "peace camp" a week ago today to protest the planned deployment of cruise missiles in Europe and the training of missile crews at the base. Harry Loumeau, wearing striped shirt, and Ed Fain, standing, stopped by yesterday to offer encouragement to the protesters. They are, from left, Mary White, Brian Flagg, Rhea Miller and Karen If A zrAy 1 41 lb -I VJJL. I I 1 I i i.A, 4 Art Grasberger, The Arizona Dally star By M. Scot Skinner The Arizona Daily Star Director Hal Needham's latest project, "Cannonball Run II" has started to make its big run through Tucson.

It began Saturday with filming at El Jabala restaurant. Needham and his company will be filming in and about Tucson until early August. The scene filmed Saturday at El Jabala will be the opening in the big-budget comedy starring Burt Reynolds. The restaurant makes a solid backdrop for the scene, set in an Arab nation. In it, Ricardo Montal-ban, playing a king, reprimands his son the sheik, played once again by Jamie Fair, for not winning the first Cannonball Run.

Each time the king gets ready to slap the sheik, the sheik's slave, played by Doug McClure, leans over and takes the slap for his master. The atmosphere on the set is relaxed, and Needham likes it that way. "There ain't no pressure on my set," he said. "People just come in and do what they want to do. I like to think that I hire talented actors and give them pretty much a free rein.

"I think the most tension on the set is within me." "Cannonball Run II" is the sixth Hal Needham film in which Reynolds has starred. The first was the 1977 smash, "Smokey and the Bandit," which grossed almost $300 million. Their most recent was "Stroker Ace." "Burt and I have a longtime relationship, and when I approached him about he said that if I could find somebody dumb enough to put up the money, he'd star in it. "Well, I found somebody dumb enough to put up the money," Needham said with a broad grin. "The film made so much money it's no surprise that Burt and I have worked together so much since then.

After we just kept going, and things are looking good." "Cannonball Run" took the movie industry by surprise in 1981, becoming a major box-office success. It cleaned up in foreign markets as well as in America. Needham can't recall the exact overseas figures, but he said the film outgrossed "Raiders of the Lost Ark" in many countries, and broke box-office records in Spain, Germany and Japan. "We thought it was going to be a good grosser, but it grossed a hell of a lot more than we thought." Needham isn't worried that the sequel won't live up to the original. He says the screenplay is the best he has ever worked with "it's so damn funny" and he is pleased with the well-known group of actors he has assembled.

"I've got a tremendous cast," he said. And a large one. Starring with Reynolds are Shirley MacLaine, Marilu Henner, Catherine Bach, Dom DeLuise, Sammy Davis and Dean Martin. The list doesn't stop there. Other stars contracted include Susan Anton, Frank Sinatra, Marty Allen, Tim Conway, Tony Danza, Jack Elam, Arte Johnson, Richard Kiel, Don Knotts, Jim Nabors, Charles Nelson Reilly, Telly Savalas, Mel Tillis and Abe Vigoda.

Needham has not always walked away with the gold at the box office. He had high hopes for last summer's "Megaforce," which turned out to be a megaflop. Needham has strong feelings toward film critics, who, he says, regularly and sometimes harshly pan his work. "I never got a good review in my life," he says before pointing out that all of his movies have made money, except "Megaforce." "Most of them made big money," he emphasized. "But I tell you what I'd like to do.

I'd like to take half a dozen critics and let them make a film, and see what they could come up with. "They're Monday-morning quarterbacks," he said. Needham doesn't plan to rest when this "Cannonball" goes into the can. His next project will take him from Arizona to Hong Kong to film "Terry and the Pirates." "The minute I get through with this, I jump right back on another plane." Drug cases to be bounced back to feds By Ray Panzarella The Arizona Daily Star NOGALES, Ariz. The car approached the U.S.

Border Patrol checkpoint as it headed north on Interstate 19 shortly after midnight, about five miles inside Pima County. The driver slowed down, then just before stopping, hit the gas and sped off with agents in hot pursuit. When the chase ended, and Border Patrol agents approached the car, they found three men, ages 23, 24 and 25, from Nogales, and lli2 pounds of marijuana. Border Patrol Supervisor Tom Frederick recalls that due to the hour of the morning and the small quantity, the case did not generate much enthusiasm from the agencies that handle federal drug offenses, like the Drug Enforcement Agency. Frederick said his radio dispatcher contacted the agent in charge of the DEA office in Tucson, and he gave instructions to get the offenders' identifications, and to confiscate the marijuana and the vehicle, but to let the offenders go.

"No one was too interested," Frederick recalled. "So we cut the kids loose on their own recognizance." The catch in this case was a small one worth about $9,200. But whether it is liy2 pounds, or 115 pounds, with an understaffed, overburdened legal system, the outcome is increasingly the same. Following in Cochise County's footsteps, Pima County Attorney Stephen D. Neely earlier this month informed U.S.

Attorney A. Melvin McDonald that his office would refer to McDonald's office all federal drug cases "within your jurisdiction worked by federal officers, however slight their participation, that are not demonstrably local in character." The "feds," county officials say, have been "dumping" marijuana cases involving up to 400 pounds on the already overburdened county courts for prosecution. Federal agencies say they are far too understaffed to handle all drug cases. One week during late May, Santa Cruz County Attorney Dennis Fenwick pleaded down felony drug cases to misdemeanors, and once word got out, according to local customs agents, "it was open season, and everybody was bringing it across." The two-man Santa Cruz County Attorney's Office requested a second deputy county attorney, but was told by the Board of Supervisors that it could not afford a budget increase to hire a second deputy county attorney. The board suggested that Fenwick simply refuse to prosecute federal drug cases.

Some say the matter may require special congressional action. In an effort to see if some sort of compromise or solution can be reached, the Santa Cruz Better Government Association is sponsoring an open forum addressing the issue at 7:15 p.m. Wednesday at the El Dorado Motor Hotel, 1001 Grand Ave. The forum, "Prosecution of Federal Drug Cases," will examine the questions of who should prosecute federal drug cases, and what failure to do so means for this border county. Guest speakers include McDonald; Fenwick; Jim Howard, chief deputy, Pima County Attorney's Office; Dennis Hazelton, district director, U.S.

Customs; Robert Eyman, special agent, DEA; Albert Kramer, Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors; James Clark, superintendent of No-gales Public School District and Monsignor John Oliver, Sacred Heart Church. Tortilla with face of Jesus remains enshrined while family struggles R.H. rjfv1 Ring Commentary The Rubios still live in a 40-year-old house they bought for $2,000. They are still paying on the aluminum siding. Sometimes the payments must be late.

The door is left unlocked when they go out for the day, so pilgrims from Mexico and around the country will not be shut out. Fewer are coming as time passes. Holidays are still favorites six or seven families might show up on Christmas. There are still calls from media types, and "Real People" is supposed to visit next week. Maria never expected to be this famous.

Every morning and evening she goes into the shrine to offer her prayers. Fridays and Sundays, after services at the church across the street, she is joined by others in the congregation. Maria is still making tortillas, often three times a day, and beans for her family. Meat is harder to come by. Somehow, she would like to build a permanent brick chapel in her yard.

This is her dream. Eduardo, still in the fields, holds onto his belief in the image, though he has taken up drinking again. Roman Catholic Church. One of Maria's own children, a daughter living away from home, refused to accept it. But Maria and many others did not waver.

"Whoever believes, believes," Maria would say. When she refused to profit from the event, turning down offers of payment from TV, friends thought Maria was stupid. Maria let them film for free. She says the image of Jesus is not a thing to make money from: "My treasury is my heart." Donations from the faithful, with Maria's contributions, paid for candles, the flowers, the photos of the tortilla that are given away or mailed on request. Any money left over became alms for Maria's needy neighbors, for clothes, food, shoes.

Despite their belief in God's show of interest, life is no easier for the Rubios, bom to poor farming families in Mexico. Maria's father, who believed fervently in the image, died a few years after it appeared. His heart gave up while he chopped cotton at age 74. Twenty-five years earlier, he had brought his family to this country in search of better work. Maria scraped off the beans and summoned her daughter for a second opinion.

With no prompting the girl said she, too, saw the image of Jesus. Eduardo also saw it, and put down the bottle then and there. Word of the event spread. After a neighbor called the local paper, the Rubios and their tortilla hit the front page. Big papers and TV jumped in the story was odd enough.

Wonderers began to arrive to see for themselves. The Rubios walled off part of their living room to house the tortilla, really half a tortilla after Maria ripped away the portion that had been soaked by the beans. The faithful donated the display case and its handmade table, and flowers, house-plants, small amounts of cash or milagros tokens shaped like hands or feet, symbolizing recent healings of those parts. In a few months, 5,000 people had traveled to the shrine. Some kneeled or stood silently, hats in hand.

There were those who did not see Jesus or who wanted another explanation. They said Maria had drawn the image herself. The miracle was officially debunked by the It has been 5 years since Maria Rubio saw the face of Jesus Christ appear on a tortilla. Not much has changed in Maria's life. Eleven thousand believers from as far away as California and New York have signed the guest register in her New Mexico home.

Many more made the pilgrimage but did not leave their names. Enshrined in a glass and wood case at the end of so many journeys: "The Image on the Tortilla," as Maria calls it respectfully in Spanish. Maria makes sure a candle always burns by the tortilla. She has arranged, on the walls and in vases, displays of plastic flowers. The image appeared at 6:20 a.m.

on Oct. 5, 1977, in Lake Arthur, a dusty one-store, three-church town in the state's remote southeastern corner. Maria was preparing burritos for her husband, Eduardo, to eat in the fields at lunchtime. She had mixed the white flour, water, baking powder, salt and rolled out three tortillas, then fried them on a small iron grill atop her gas stove. She had wrapped two of the tortillas around the beans, and the third was in her hand.

As she spooned on the beans she saw Jesus, the face outlined by the scorches. Maria had been praying for a sign from God, for a way to curtail her husband's drinking. Eduardo, laboring 12 hours a day over cotton, chilies and alfalfa, had grown vicious with his drink. He would lash out angrily at Maria and the three children still at home. But the tortilla could not be ignored..