That’s the spirit

The Spirit of New Mexico Awards were created by the Greater Albuquerque Chamber of Commerce and the Albuquerque Journal in 2009 to recognize individuals who have improved the lives of other New Mexicans. Honorees are selected from people featured in Journal stories.

Gov. Susana Martinez will deliver the keynote address at a September luncheon for the winners.

“It is my pleasure to speak at this year’s Spirit of New Mexico Awards,” Martinez said. “They (the winners) deserve our highest praise, because they represent the heart of New Mexico and embody the persevering, caring nature of our people.”

Other winners include a Santa Fe state employee whose program has helped thousands of kids find permanent families, a fire chief who helped keep a city calm and informed while flames licked at its borders and two women who have raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for Wounded Warriors.

The luncheon will be sponsored by PNM, among others.

“This event is one of our most popular,” said Terri Cole, president and CEO of the chamber. “We are delighted to recognize this year’s honorees for their very special contributions to making this place better.”

This year’s winners are:

•  Diane Granito founded the Heart Gallery in Santa Fe 10 years ago to use professional photos to find foster kids adoptive parents. Since then, her program has been duplicated and has helped find permanent homes for more than 5,000 children across the country.

“Once you meet these kids, you’re hooked,” she said in the article “10 Years of Placing Foster Children” by Journal North reporter Kathaleen Roberts. “These kids are my heroes and heroines.”

•  Dan Telfair organizes New Mexico’s Grace Flight, a free program that flies low-income patients to medical appointments. “Never a charge, period,” Telfair told Leslie Linthicum in her UpFront column “N.M. No. 1 for Pilots With a Purpose.” He has flown more than 400 flights.

“We try to make sure that people don’t suffer and die for lack of a ride,” he said.

• Mary Tallouzi and Terri Krueger have teamed up to raise money for Wounded Warrior project, a nonprofit serving wounded servicemen.

The two “are forces of nature,” wrote UpFront columnist Joline Gutierrez Krueger in her column “Pain Revs Up Effort To Help Wounded Warriors.”

Terri Krueger, an interior decorator described in the column as “a tiny tornado of a woman,” founded the Ooh La La Christmas Home Tour in 2009. It raised $386,000 in its first year to become the country’s largest grass-roots fundraiser for Wounded Warrior Project.

“Big-hearted and busy” Tallouzi for two years devoted her life to improving the life of her son Daniel, who suffered serious head wounds in Iraq. A few months after he died, she joined Krueger. “When she (Terri) asked for my help, I said, ‘Is tomorrow too soon?’ ”

•  Los Alamos Fire Chief Doug Tucker issued a mandatory evacuation during the Las Conchas fire in June, always mindful of the toll of his decision, from the $9 million it costs per day to shut down Los Alamos National Laboratory to the stress on family pets. He kept his cool and kept the city calm and informed. Now, he told the Journal’s Phil Parker, he’s ready to retire.

“I have not been without a radio or a phone or a pager, probably by now for about 30 years,” he said. “Walking away from that’s going to be one of those hard things to do, to set those down on the desk and leave them.”

•  Erin Villarreal graduated in May from alternative Freedom High School in Albuquerque, where students “all have the same basic story: They just lost focus,” she told Journal reporter Matt Andazola when she was selected for a Sage magazine Making a Difference Award. But Freedom High students are turning their lives around, she said, and “I think that’s something to admire.”

So Villarreal organized the first-ever sale of Freedom Wear – clothing to boost student morale – and planned an assembly on distracted driving, all while helping raise two young brothers.

In addition to the Spirit awards, the Harry E. Kinney Good Neighbor Award – named for the former Albuquerque mayor – will be presented to Albuquerque businessman Henry Aceves.

Aceves, who owns property and the Old Town Basket and Rug Shop, has been quietly footing much of the bill for the Old Town framed Christmas tree since 1993 and saved the frame when it was headed to the scrap heap a few years ago.

“It brings family and friends together,” the Rev. Dennis Garcia from San Felipe de Neri Church said in the column “Old Town Businessman Lights Up Our Lives” by Gutierrez Krueger. “It’s always neat to have them around.”
— This article appeared on page A1 of the Albuquerque Journal