Mike Smith
El Rito Media
msmith@currentargus.com

Celebrating its 80th year, the Eddy County Fair will get underway Tuesday, July 22, and run through July 26 at the Eddy County Fairgrounds, 3402 S. 13th St. in Artesia.

The festivities will kick off with a 10 a.m. parade starting at the Bulldog Bowl at the corner of Grand Avenue and 16th Street and traveling east on Main Street through downtown Artesia to Roselawn Avenue.

Along with the core activities of the fair – display and judging of area youths’ livestock and horticultural exhibits and the annual 4-H/FFA junior livestock auction – the event will feature concerts, rodeo events and a carnival midway with rides, games and food.

Among the musical highlights will be a July 25 concert featuring popular country music singer Chris Young, who will take the stage at 9 p.m.

Young’s performance follows Smokin’ Hot Bull Riding, with bull riders competing for prize money and a championship belt buckle. The competition gets under way at 7 p.m.

Wednesday, July 23, is Faith and Family Night featuring performances by gospel music groups the Rhett Walker Band and Unspoken during a communitywide church service at 8 p.m.

Admission to the fair is free. Concert tickets can be purchased online. More information can be found on the fair website – eddycountyfair.com

Here is a rundown of daily activities at the fair:

July 22

10 a.m. Parade through downtown Artesia.

12 p.m. Official opening at the Exhibit Building and Eddy County Community Center.

3 p.m. Dairy heifer show-livestock show ring.

5 p.m. Carnival.

6 p.m. Breeding and market goat show, livestock barn show ring.

July 23

8 a.m. Rabbit show, livestock barn show ring.

9 a.m. Project yearling class, livestock barn show ring.

9 a.m. Flower show, Eddy County Community Center.

10 a.m. Exhibit Building and Community Center open to public.

2 p.m. 2-year-old futurity, covered arena.

5 p.m. Swine show, livestock barn show ring.

5 p.m. Carnival.

8 p.m. Faith and Family Night concert.

July 24

8 a.m. Broiler show, livestock barn show ring. Broiler poultry and ducks will be judged after broiler show.

9 a.m.-12 p.m. Horticulture entries will be taken at Community Center.

10 a.m. Exhibit Building and Community Center open to the public.

1 p.m. Flower show entries will be judged.

3 p.m. Breeding sheep show, livestock barn show ring. Market sheep show to follow.

5 p.m. Carnival.

July 25

8 a.m.-10 a.m. All sale pulls and destinations must be finalized.

10 a.m. Exhibit Building and Community Center open to the public.

Noon-1:30 p.m. Pecan contest entries accepted.

2 p.m. 4-H and FFA awards presentation, livestock barn show ring.

4 p.m. Wool lead show, livestock barn show ring.

6 p.m. Pecan contest auction, livestock barn show ring.

7 p.m. Bull riding, Artesia Horse Council Arena.

9 p.m.-11:30 p.m. Chris Young concert.

July 26

8 a.m.-12 p.m. Fire and Ice, covered arena.

8 a.m. Booster shows for swine, lamb, goat, market cattle and dairy heifers, livestock barn arena.

10 a.m. Exhibit Building and Community Center open.

10 a.m.-12 p.m. Jack Rauch anvil toss, covered arena.

10 a.m.-12 p.m. Cornhole tournament, covered arena

10 a.m.-midnight: Carnival.

Noon: Fire and Ice awards, covered arena.

4 p.m.-5:30 p.m. Buyer’s dinner, covered pavilion.

5 p.m. 4-H and FFA junior livestock auction, livestock barn show ring.

Mike Smith can be reached at 575-628-5546 extension-2361.

El Rito Media News Services

Makamy Anderson’s death is the most recent among children in the state’s care

On May 16, 17-year-old Makamy Sage Anderson took her own life at a home assigned to her by the New Mexico Children, Youth and Families Department.

Makamy, who was pregnant at the time of her death, is one of four youths to die under CYFD’s watch since April.

Makamy’s case worker had asked for help finding mental health providers in the area, according to the documents obtained by Searchlight. The documents do not say whether she received those services.

Before taking her life, she wrote “Do not save me” on her arm, the documents say.

Details about Makamy’s life are scarce at this stage. Foster and adoptive parents, counselors and relatives who knew her did not respond to requests to speak to a reporter for this story.

Case files obtained by Searchlight show that Makamy was struggling in the weeks before her death. She was upset about having to leave her home community in southeastern New Mexico for foster placements, and was specifically unhappy about being sent to stay in CYFD office buildings, where the department often sends children to sleep when case workers can’t find a suitable foster home. In late April, she was taken from a CYFD office to Springer, a 5½ hour drive from her hometown of Hobbs. She died there three weeks later.

A memorial service was held for Makamy in Hobbs in early June. She leaves behind a boyfriend and at least one sibling.

“She was a couch surfer, she bounced from house to house,” said Randy Pettigrew, a Republican state representative from Lea County who has had access to CYFD documentation on Makany’s case. “She had a multitude of office stays. She was listed as a runaway multiple times” while dealing with significant mental health challenges, he said. At least one of the foster homes she was assigned to was not properly licensed by CYFD, Pettigrew said.

Makamy’s case worker had asked for help finding mental health providers in the area, according to the documents obtained by Searchlight. The documents do not say whether she received those services.

Before taking her life, she wrote “Do not save me” on her arm, the documents say.

CYFD declined to comment on Makamy’s death, saying in an email that because the case “is still under active investigation, it would be premature for CYFD to respond at this time.”

‘A vicious cycle’ harming foster youth

The tragedy comes as CYFD faces scathing criticism from state legislators, who say the agency has failed to protect New Mexico’s most vulnerable children. In the most recent session, lawmakers passed several significant bills aimed at increasing oversight and transparency at the agency.

Much of the criticism centers on the agency’s lack of progress in fulfilling promises it made under the 2020 settlement of the Kevin S. lawsuit, a class action suit which claimed the state’s child welfare system was “locking New Mexico’s foster children into a vicious cycle of declining physical, mental and behavioral health.”

As part of that settlement, CYFD agreed to stop housing its foster youth in group settings and to provide them with adequate mental health care. But the department has failed year after year to meet its commitments to those promises, according to independent monitors— failures that were highlighted yet again in an arbitration hearing last week.

Instead, CYFD has continued to house children with serious mental and behavioral health needs in youth homeless shelters and its office buildings, where they have been sexually assaulted, injured by armed guards and exposed to fentanyl and other drugs.

Those placements have been particularly harmful for teenagers like Makamy. A 2022 investigation by Searchlight and ProPublica found that many teens in foster care — a group that CYFD has an especially hard time placing in stable homes — spend their teenage years shuffling between shelters and offices without receiving adequate mental health services. These teenagers experience drastic declines in their mental health amid such instability, often culminating in violent outbursts, suicide attempts and other crises.

In two episodes now, which happened barely a month apart, teenagers who had been repeatedly shuffled through offices and shelters have died by suicide. In April, Jaydun Garcia, a 16-year-old who was beloved by his peers in foster care, took his life at a makeshift home in Albuquerque for youth who lack foster placements. Two other children involved with CYFD, both of them infants, have died since June.

“I’m profoundly sad, we should all be profoundly sad, that we’ve seen two children in state custody take their own lives because they felt so hopeless and so alone,” said Maralyn Beck, executive director of New Mexico Child First Network, a foster care advocacy organization. “I don’t think there’s any problem facing New Mexico that’s more serious, with life-altering consequences, than the crisis that is our child protective services.”

Garcia’s death prompted intense outcry among advocates, attorneys and legislators — as well as an investigation by New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez. A spokesperson for the New Mexico Department of Justice, the agency overseen by Torrez, said that investigators are currently examining Makamy Anderson’s death as well.

“We are aware of the recent tragic incident involving a young individual in Springer, New Mexico,” Lauren Rodriguez, chief of staff at the department, said in an email to Searchlight. “Our office is actively reviewing the circumstances surrounding this case. We urge anyone with information about the individual’s history or events leading up to their death to contact the New Mexico Department of Justice.”

Dave Tomlin
For the Ruidoso News

Kaitlyn Carpenter was on the riverside balcony at Downshift Brewing Co. June 8 watching the roiling Ruidoso River surge past when she suddenly saw a house surfing along in the flood.

While everybody around her was shouting “Oh, my god,” Carpenter grabbed her phone and a long moment of Internet fame.

Her video, scarcely a minute long, became the worldwide poster footage for the massive flash flooding that tore through Midtown last week. The clip scored millions of online views and appeared on multiple news networks.

Coincidentally, Carpenter is in the news business. She is an advertising account executive with The Ruidoso News.

She is the mother of a 17-year old , Jaden, captain of the Mescalero basketball team, a painter, and a painting instructor.

“I had no idea it would get so much attention,” Carpenter said Monday at the end of the “silver fitness” exercise class she leads at the Ruidoso Athletic Club.

Apparently thinking the roomful of senior citizens still needed to get their heart rates up a little higher, she offered to screen her real-life disaster movie right then and there.

Everyone in the room had already seen it, probably more than once, but nobody left as Carpenter cued it up on a giant flat panel usually reserved for inspiring spinning classes or women’s aerobics.

One reason Carpenter was startled into action with her iPhone so quickly at Downshift is that she knew the home’s owner and recognized the dwelling, even as it heaved, rotated and plunged in the fast-moving muddy water. Nobody was inside at the time.

She told her exercise class that the house hadn’t traveled far when she spotted it. Its address was 125 Fern Trail, just a few hundred yards or so upstream from where it entered the frame of Carpenter’s phone camera.

Fern Trail, which runs from just east of Mechem Drive and the bridge at N. Eagle Drive, used to be a lovely neighborhood of shaded and secluded riverside cottages running parallel to Sudderth Drive.

After last year’s flash floods fueled by runoff down the Upper, Perk and Brady canyons from the South Fork burn scar, and more of the same this month, the enclave is a muddy ruin.

Owners of the properties along the river’s banks, now one fewer, are chafing over the time it’s taking authorities to determine its future. But the future will have to wait for the end of the present. Flood watches continue almost daily.

Todd Fuqua
Current-Argus
tfuqua@elritomedia.com

RUIDOSO – One week after the most destructive flood in Ruidoso’s history, the area continues to brace for further flooding from rains on the South Fork burn scar on Monday, as warnings were issued by the National Weather Service.

While more rain fell on the South Fork fire burn scar and high waters were reported along Cedar Creek, Brady Canyon and in the Upper Canyon area, the water did not overflow the Ruidoso River’s banks, according to Kerry Gladden, media relations director for the Village of Ruidoso.

A flood warning was also issued for the Tularosa Canyon area, near the Mescalero Tribal offices.

These warnings came just days after New Mexico’s U.S. Sens. Martin Heinrich and Ben Ray Lujan were given a tour of the worst-affected areas, from the Upper Canyon to Ruidoso Downs Racetrack.

The driving tour on July 11 included Ruidoso Mayor Lynn Crawford, village councilors Rafael Salas, Joseph Eby, Susan Lutterman, Darren Hooker, Village Emergency Manager Eric Quellar, Village Manager Ron Sena, Lincoln County Commission Chair Mark Fischer and Lincoln County Manager Jason Burns.

Heinrich and Lujan expressed their commitment to seeing the area receive all the funding and planning it needs to recover from the July 8 flooding – and prevent such disasters in the future.

“When you see the videos that were posted, that alone was incredible, but you don’t get a sense of depth across the watershed and across the community,” Heinrich said. “To be here on the ground and see the scale of what needs to be rebuilt gives you a sense that we’re going to be in this for the long term.”

The flooding left three dead, 7-year-old Sebastian Trotter and his 4-year-old sister Charlotte Trotter, as well as an adult male identified as Benjamin Timothy Feagin. All were swept into the water from the Riverview RV Park at 640 Sudderth Drive.

The deceased children’s parents, Sebastian and Stephanie Trotter, were injured and treated in an El Paso hospital. Stephanie was released as of Monday, while Sebastian, a soldier stationed at Fort Bliss, is being transferred to a rehabilitation facility.

The latest estimates from Emergency Management indicate as many as 200 homes were damaged or destroyed by Tuesday’s flooding, with that number likely to rise as officials continue surveying the area.

Mayor Lynn Crawford told reporters at a news briefing at the Village Emergency Operations Center on July 9 that several other people were hurt badly enough that they had to be hospitalized at Lincoln County Medical Center. He said all were in stable condition Wednesday morning.

New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham on Thursday requested and was granted a partial federal disaster declaration, mobilizing resources through the Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA) for life-saving measures and immediate recovery.

Additional requests made by the governor for relief funds to pay for rebuilding homes and other properties in Ruidoso, along with temporary housing, supplies and debris removal are still under review.

According to Gladden, officials in Ruidoso are still on the phone daily with federal officials and the governor’s office, working every angle they can to get full federal disaster recognition to open up maximum FEMA funding.

During their visits, neither Heinrich nor Lujan stated specifically what steps they plan to take to address the flooding issues.

The damage seen during the driving tour was stark. In the Upper Canyon, where spires of chimneys remain as the only remnants of homes that once stood among clear-cut hills, mud and debris had cut through the remaining structures along the river and road crews toiled to fix bridges and clear roads torn up by the violence of the deluge.

Officials also saw the devastation at Ruidoso Downs Racetrack, where floodwaters crested at 20 feet and flooded the entire infield, track and barn area, forcing the track to close and move the remainder of its race meet to Albuquerque Downs.

Sen. Lujan said the flooding is a reminder that fires and floods go hand in hand, and that the two should be viewed as a single event.

“Looking at how FEMA has looked at these situations, it’s clear to see that we need to amend a chapter in the FEMA charter that combines fire and flood,” Lujan said. “It’s also a matter of years, not just one year. When the fire and flood first happens, you might get some waivers and support that first period. But then next year there’s another flood and there’s a whole other study and they treat it like it’s a different event, but this is one event, and that’s how it should be treated.”

Tuesday’s flood was the result of rains that fell on the burn scar from the 2024 South Fork fire, with the ground unable to absorb the rushing water. The flooding surpassed even last year’s devastating floods that followed the South Fork and Salt fires.

“As someone who is a former engineer,” Heinrich said, “I can see that we need laws in place to build to where we are now, not just rebuild what was there before. This watershed has changed, the climate has changed, and we need to build something that can survive the floods we’re seeing.”

Todd Fuqua is Assistant Editor for the Alamogordo News and can be reached on Instagram at @toadfox1.