In 2002, after speaking with Native vendors under the Portal, I recognized classic symptoms of carbon monoxide poisoning, like headaches, occurring with them, so I wrote a petition to the governor and the mayor asking that the north side of the plaza be blocked off so that these people wouldn’t be afflicted so badly.

Some 232 out of 244 Plaza vendors signed the petition, but the request was ignored. In response to an article in the New Mexican about this effort, former City Councilor Frank Montaño maintained that “cruising the Plaza” was part of his teenage memories and was thus a vital part of Northern New Mexico Hispanic culture.

Not long after, a drunk driver, Anthony Tometich, smashed into a woman who stepped off the corner by the Palace of the Governors. Dr. Jane Sewell was English and a professor at Johns Hopkins University, and was on vacation with her husband, Hopkins history professor Louis Galambos. She died at 42. Her husband later was quoted in the Baltimore Sun: “That still breaks me up … I had to help my daughters right away. You don’t sit around and grieve, you get busy. You have one day, maybe two days (to grieve), you have got a new life to deal with.”