(upbeat music) (Tom) This week on Arizona Illustrated, a Tucson-based nurse shocks herself and the entire running world at the Boston Marathon.

(Sarah) I need to go find someone that I know and verify this is real life.

And that actually happened.

And my husband actually was jumping up and down.

(Tom) A place of refuge and a leader with experience for those coming out of the prison system.

(Danny) You know, you think, "Oh, I did my time.

I'm gonna go out and get a job."

No, man, you can't get a job.

You can't get an apartment.

Couldn't get a credit card.

Because I had a drive-by shooting, I couldn't get a license.

(Tom) And the mystery behind a backyard mural in Tucson and the labor of love to restore it.

(John) It's incredibly beautiful, and the more we learned about it, it's the largest surviving DeGrazia mural in the world.

(upbeat music) (Tom) Hello, and welcome to Arizona Illustrated.

I'm Tom McNamara, and we're joining you today from the lobby of Arizona Public Media here in the basement of the Modern Languages Building on the University of Arizona campus.

You know, Arizona Public Media was the first public television station in the state of Arizona, founded back in 1959.

Now, since the beginning and all the way to now, Arizona Public Media is committed to serving the public interest by providing content of the highest quality that enriches the marketplace of ideas, unencumbered by a commercial imperative.

We take that mission seriously, and today we bring you stories that aspire to those ideals.

Tucson-based nurse and distance runner, Sarah Sellers trains every day, but unlike the runners who dominate the big races, Sarah was not a professional, and had only run one marathon when she entered the best-known race in the world, the Boston Marathon, back in 2018.

And her results that year shocked the running world, and even Sarah herself.

♪ upbeat music (Sarah) Suffering is sometimes what leads to the greatest highs in running.

But sometimes when you're out there just hammering, pushing yourself, and in the middle of that you'll kind of just get these chills and you just feel really good.

It's only when you're kind of making yourself suffer that you get that high.

I'm Sarah Sellers.

I'm a professional runner and full time nurse anesthetist here in Tucson.

I'm from Ogden, Utah.

I grew up on the Wasatch Fronts.

So, beautiful trails, beautiful mountains in my backyard.

And I started running pretty early and my parents going on the trails behind our house in the mornings.

So, I just started joining them on the trail runs and I'm sure I slowed them down, but they were always super supportive.

I just fell in love with running, with being on the trails.

Kind of started competing in middle school and high school.

I definitely wasn't the fastest runner on the team, but by my senior year of high school I had won a few State championships and it wasn't really this realization like, oh I have all this natural talent, it was just like I knew that I loved the process of running, I loved being outside, and then the work that I put in really paid off.

My first marathon was Huntsville, Utah and that was last fall.

I hadn't done any marathon specific training for it.

It was actually held on the last day that you could qualify for Boston and I won the marathon for the women's division and I've never been so sore in my life.

(laughs) I couldn't run for like two weeks after, but kind of gave me a glimpse that I thought, if I could put in a good block of training, that a marathon could be something that I thought I could succeed at.

(foot steps) I'm running 90 to 100 miles a week.

The vast majority of my miles are on the roads or on the Tucson loop path.

I would rather run in the cold any day, (laughs) but I think running in the heat has been beneficial for me.

Being an elite distance runner does require a lot of sacrifices.

You either injured or almost injured.

I had several stress fractures.

One stress fracture that ended my collegiate career.

It could have potentially never healed.

It was one run, the 14 mile run.

I started off in shorts and it started raining.

I tripped and really scraped my knee hard and pre-hypothermic, I had no nutrition, the sleet turned to snow and I remember my legs hurt so bad.

That was probably the coldest I've ever been.

But, it taught me that I can do hard things.

The morning of the Boston Marathon, there was snow on the ground, yet it was raining.

I think I was wearing five layers on top and bottom because I didn't want to waste energy shivering.

My number one goal was a time goal.

I wanted to run faster than 237, and in those conditions I knew that would likely be impossible.

Once the gun went off, the conditions are just crazy and you feel like you're in a car wash. Wind, I think was, 20, 25 miles an hour and direct head wind the whole way.

But I just tucked right in, kind of to the back of this group of elite women and after about a mile or two, the lead group broke off and we started breaking into smaller groups.

- [Announcer] And now, things are blowing sideways.

- [Announcer] Now, along with the rain you can see, the temperature is minus one Celsius.

- [Man] Go Sarah!

(cheering) - [Sarah] Somewhere after half way, another elite woman passed me and I went with her.

She was running a pace that I didn't think I could keep.

I was pretty tired at that point.

I didn't know how I'd feel the last three miles of the marathon but I thought I'm just gonna stick with her.

So, I stuck with her for about eight miles and then it was about three miles to go.

I just went for it.

I was kind of delirious at that point, don't remember a lot of details.

But then, the home stretch I felt like I was just in a screaming tunnel of people.

I remember thinking like, everyone is super excited I must be doing well.

But then, the first place of the men's division passed me with about 150 meters to go.

So I thought, they're cheering for him they're not cheering for me.

- [Announcer] And here is Sarah Sellers of the United States.

- I felt like I'm somewhere in the mid pack of women.

And then I cross the finish line and I ask the race volunteers, what place am I, what place am I?

One of them said I was second and I just had to have her keep repeating it Because I though there was no way I was second.

That's not possible, that doesn't happen.

And, my next thought was, I need to go find someone that I know and verify this is real life and that actually happened.

And my husband actually was jumping up and down and yelling, you're second in the freaking Boston Marathon.

That's I think when it hit me that it was real.

On that day, the opportunity that presented itself was very different.

Second place wasn't gonna go to someone who could run in good conditions.

It was gonna go to me who didn't necessarily have the right credentials to get second but my body held up under the elements.

It's given me a lot of faith in myself, 'cause there's definitely runs more often than I'd like to admit where you don't feel like running.

You don't feel good.

But, just getting out there doing it is a success.

♪ soft music ♪ soft music (Tom) More than 650,000 Americans are released from prison every year and they face an uphill climb for transitioning back to civilian life.

There are barriers to employment and housing that leave many unward, unsupported, and unable to move forward.

Danny Howe made that climb when he was released from prison and now he's helping other formerly incarcerated people to rebuild their lives too.

(somber piano music) (Danny) Growing up, I thought that my life was good at the time.

That's how families were supposed to be.

We would go to the crack house.

Parents go in the back room and kids hang out in the living room.

It was in junior high.

My mom had me go in a drain ditch and she said if you find a little glass vial, can you bring that to me?

And I was like oh yeah.

I didn't know what it was so I climbed in the drain ditch, came out and I was like oh, what's this?

And she's like oh, that's cocaine.

You use it like this.

(laughs) And then so that was my first introduction to cocaine.

I got expelled from high school when I was 17.

I was getting anything that I could that people were fronting it to me and then I'd sell it and make a profit on it.

Xanax, Vicodin, Percocet, Klonopin, Oxycontin, Oxycodone.

A friend of mine came to the restaurant that I was working at and he wanted some cocaine or whatever, wanted some drugs.

So I told him alright, wait for me.

Give me a ride home.

We're on our way home.

I was talking on my cell phone and he tells me that there's somebody kind of cutting him off.

And I always had a gun with me.

So I had my gun on my lap and we were driving.

And we go to go around the car and the car kept cutting in front of him and so he grabbed my gun.

And I was like dude, what are you doing?

So I grabbed my gun from him.

And I was like you're gonna shoot this guy?

Like just get out and get away from him.

Let's go home, you know?

And then so we went to go turn in the car, slammed on his breaks leaving us out in the intersection.

And at this point, I had the gun in my hand so I reached out and I shot twice at the car.

They arrested me for attempted murder was the original charge.

And then once they found out.

So the bullets didn't hit anybody.

So what they ended up getting me for is drive by and two counts of aggravated assault.

I was looking at 68 years in prison.

I had just turned 18.

The day before my trial, they gave me a plea for three to six and that they would drop all other charges.

They gave me two hours to decide if that's what I wanted to do.

And then I signed that.

And then I went to prison for three years and nine months.

For me, that's when my prison sentence started.

You know, you think oh, I did my time.

I'm gonna go out and get a job.

No, man.

You can't get a job.

You can't get an apartment.

I couldn't get a credit card.

Because I had a drive by shooting, I couldn't get a license.

(Andy) People who do not have jobs and have other barriers, there's a greater likelihood that they're gonna recidivate, to again to commit another criminal offense.

Most people who come out of prison want to do well, but you know, after a while, they become very frustrated.

And so what happens?

They go back many times to dealing in the way they dealt before.

- [Danny] Are we making anything else besides potatoes?

Do you want onions in them?

Now, it's not just me.

Right?

I can do the time.

I could do prison time.

Unfortunately, that's not a big deal, right?

But now my wife and I have two children, you know, that are banking on me.

So I think that for me was kind of my wake up call was knowing that people are banking on my support.

You know?

(Jessica) I just kind of saw him kind of chase a better life and we did hear one time in church and this has stuck with him that just because you get a no, that's just one more step before you get your yes.

Right?

It's not forever.

It's just your right now.

And so he just considers no's a step to his yes.

(Danny) The first yes I got was actually a cabinet shop.

They gave me an opportunity.

And then went to another cabinet shop.

And then when they laid me off, it gave me the confidence to change my whole career path.

I went to this mining company here in town and they gave me an opportunity.

And they even took into consideration all of my background stuff.

And she told me.

She's like I believe everybody should get a second chance.

And that got me connected with the Pima County One-Stop which is an employment and training agency.

John, how's it going?

This is Danny Howe, Pima County One-Stop.

They have barriers to employment.

If they need help with resume building.

If they need interview skills.

If they need tools, we have funding to provide that for them.

I put employment and housing opportunities.

I'm on the Second Chance Coalition with the Mayor's Office and then I'm on the Reentry Coalition with the County Administrator's Office.

(Speaker) What's new with this is that we're looking at the felony populations.

(Jonathan) Second Chance Program was something that was brought to our offices to help people coming out of prison.

The focus in Tucson has primarily been on job fairs.

(Speaker) We really needed to engage more deeply with the probation department.

(Jonathan) So they come out.

They get dropped off at the Circle K at the freeway in Congress with 50 dollars in their pocket without a home, without a job, without maybe having addressed their substance abuse issues or maybe their mental health issues, and you need the Danny Howes of the world to be out there to be there to greet them and say look, come with me.

There's another way.

(Danny) I heard you had a job?

(Guy with job) So yeah.

I started Wednesday.

I expect my first check.

I turn in 23 hours so.

- Nice.

- I can breathe better and still the same jerk, but I'm just kidding.

(Danny) But a jerk with a job.

- Yeah.

(Danny) And then I have my passion job which is my transitional houses.

So I have a house for men coming out of jail and prison or off of incarceration or homelessness as well as females.

So I house eight females and two house managers over there.

And then I house nine clients, male clients, and two house managers over there.

The Earnest House.

The reason I came up with earnest is earnest means no BS, right?

It means somebody who's serious in getting on with their life.

I wanted a house that was no BS.

I wanted people that are serious about their recovery, serious about getting back on track, and giving them that space to be able to do that.

Write a list of the things that you feel we need or the things that we typically get.

I just want everybody to realize their full potential, you know?

And I think not everybody sees that in themselves, but everybody has it.

(Andy) We as a society need to be forgiving and I think Americans as individuals are pretty much forgiving people or at least, you know, a good percentage of us I think are forgiving.

And we want to be known as a forgiving society.

And the one way we can show that is to give people a second chance.

(Audience member) How'd you feel when you first started?

Like you know, when you opened up the halfway houses?

Like what was the biggest struggles you had when you had to open them?

(Danny) For my houses and my clients, it's direction, not perfection, right?

That's my religion.

That's how I feel just in my faith in life, right?

We're gonna fall of track.

We're gonna go this way and go that way but as long as you have a good direction and you get back to it.

Know your goal.

Know where you're going to and you're gonna get there.

You know what I mean?

I think one of the things that comes up to me all the time you speak really well or you self-advocate really well.

What about those people that don't have that skill?

Well, I didn't have that skill 'til I learned that skill.

You know?

So I tell people you have that skill.

You just need to find it in yourself and be proud of who you are.

You're gonna be smart enough.

You're gonna figure it out.

You're gonna make it right, but it's not easy.

(Jessica) He doesn't get paid to do these things.

He takes time off work.

He goes because he wants to make a difference.

(Danny) But don't take it as face value.

You know what I mean?

(Jessica) You know, he didn't have anything and so now to see him giving presentations, and traveling, and going to talk to legislatures at the capital.

He's doing good things.

I'm proud of him.

(Danny) I'm in shock every day.

People ask me.

They're like you're not used to that yet?

No, I'm not used to that.

Like the other day, I was having lunch with three different mayors.

That's weird.

(laughs) You know what I mean?

And they're listening to what I'm saying and I get to have a voice in the conversation.

I'm glad I went through what I went through, you know?

So I can speak for those people that aren't getting out or that don't have the voice that I do.

(somber piano music) (Tom) This next story is about a mysterious mural in a Tucson backyard.

It turned out to be the largest Ted DeGrazia mural still in existence.

Originally painted back in 1948 or 49, it gives us insight into DeGrazia's mind before his fame and fortune.

Roughly 70 years later, that mural had begun to succumb to the elements until fine art conservator Charlie Burton was brought in to restore it.

[music] (Narrator) Ted DeGrazia was born in the small mining town of Morenci three years before Arizona became a state.

The son of Italian immigrants would rise from these humble beginnings to become the most reproduced artist in the world.

(Lance) He works in the mine for a little while and decides that's not what he wants.

There's other things in life.

He had a real vision of himself from an early age.

(Narrator) The physical manifestation of that vision can be seen and experienced at DeGrazia Gallery in the Sun.

This National Historic District in the Catalina Foothills is as close to a complete artist statement as you will find anywhere.

It looks as though it were dreamed into existence and is unmistakably DeGrazia.

The gallery, like any building, needs maintenance and so do the 15,000 or so original pieces of artwork inside it.

(Charlie) I've been working with the DeGrazia Foundation since 2005.

(Lance) Charlie has been working to clean and restore all of our collection for a long time.

(Charlie) So I'm eventually going through the whole collection, which I said is like a lifetime of work.

[music] (Lance) Even the most beautiful and the most famous artworks need conservation from time to time.

(Narrator) Charlie Burton is a fine art conservator an often overlooked and critically important job.

Like DeGrazia, she gravitated towards art at a young age.

(Charlie) I moved to England to go to art school, then eventually started working for some Dutch galleries in London.

And some people said, "Did you ever think about being a conservator?"

And I said, "What is a conservator?"

I fell in love with it.

I specialized in 16th and 17th century Dutch paintings.

I never thought I'd be back in America living.

I thought I'd just stay in England.

(Narrator) Life brought Burton to Tucson.

She started working on more contemporary artists like DeGrazia.

That brings her to this backyard in midtown Tucson to see a mysterious mural.

I actually never knew it existed until the family itself called me up last February and said that they had a DeGrazia mural.

(John) I was six, so my comprehension of what that actually meant was very low.

It's like, "Ooh, pretty picture.

Here let me go play in the back yard now.

(Narrator) The mural was indeed a DeGrazia It was there when John McNiece's parents bought this house in 1974.

Slowly, over time, it started to succumb to the elements.

(John) My father passed away a few months ago, and we're very fortunate in having enough resources to restore it.

And we kind of felt it was a moral obligation for us to do so.

(Narrator) So they called Burton, and she began the daunting restoration process.

The first step was to find out as much as possible about the mural's origin.

(Charlie) I came back and talked with our director here about it, and they said, "Yes, we've looked at it seven or eight years ago, and we have records about that mural, but we don't know the story behind it."

(John) He did not sign it when he originally painted it.

The owners at that time asked him to come back.

Supposedly, he was quite drunk, misspelled the word "original."

We're lucky enough that he had some photographers shooting him, painting it, at least certain aspects of it, and it made it into an article from Arizona Highways 1949, talking about him.

We have original color photographs of him, which Charlie is using to match the colors up more exactly.

(Narrator) The mural appears to have been painted in 1948 or 1949.

Robert and Mildred Fish owned the home at that time.

(Charlie) The family that owned that house were benefactors of the artists of the day.

(Lance) DeGrazia had been looking for a place to do a large mural.

(Charlie) And the family said, "Use these walls," so he was happy to go there and create a story.

Arizona Highways came and photographed him.

It turned out to be a very big article for him, and I guess at that time he really was quite poor.

(Narrator) It's hard to imagine DeGrazia as a struggling artist, but at that time he was.

His style, reflected on these walls, was still colorful, but much more somber than the work he later became known for.

(Lance) He had gone to Mexico to study with Diego Rivera and Jose Orozco.

When he came back to the United States, it didn't translate into anything at all.

(Charlie) But he still had his own style, was definitely there.

When you look at his women, his faces, he had quite the style already.

(John) It's incredibly beautiful, and the more we learned about it, it's the largest surviving DeGrazia mural in the world.

(Charlie) I've restored some of his other murals on walls in private homes, but they've mostly been little sketchies, a little ocotillo or something like that, not as finely detailed as this mural is.

(Narrator) Burton's job is demanding physically and mentally.

Almost 70 years after it was painted, this mural needs a lot of work.

(Charlie) What I'm trying to do is bring the mural back, not try to restore it per se, but try to conserve it, save as much of the original paint as I can.

(Narrator) She works on areas smaller than an inch, but can never lose sight of the full picture.

(Charlie) I really try to concentrate on what I'm doing.

You just kind of go into your own little world, and you just don't even realize that time's passing so fast.

What colors was he using in his palette?

Because I've been trying to look at his palettes, and we have tons of his palettes.

I was looking at the ones that were in the magazine to see what unique colors that he might have put in there.

I wanted all in the end to blend and look very similar to what it looked like at the time.

(Narrator) Burton worked on the mural three days a week for six months and logged nearly 240 hours, restoring it from this to this.

The detail and precision are astounding.

It looks as though DeGrazia just finished it.

(John) The level of detail and care required in getting this restored is amazing, amazingly deep and intricate.

(Narrator) Less than ten years after this mural was originally painted, UNICEF put Los Ninos on a greeting card.

That card sold millions worldwide and skyrocketed him to international fame.

DeGrazia cashed in, making accessible work that was consumed by the masses.

Despite his wide reproduction, original DeGrazia murals are exceedingly rare.

(Lance) There was a mural up in Phoenix about six months ago that was destroyed.

A building was bought and torn down with a very large mural inside.

So they're disappearing.

(Narrator) This labor-intensive restoration gives us a glimpse into DeGrazia's mind when he was just another struggling artist, trying to find his way in the world.

(Lance) It's a beautiful mural.

It's giant, and it tells an interesting story.

(Charlie) It's not going to be one of these things I can just walk away from and say, "It's done now, and it's going to be fine.

We're going to have to come back and keep checking on it and making sure the preservation stays there for the future.

There's so much significance to having this wonderful mural left for us.

(Tom) Thank you for joining us for Arizona Illustrated from here at our Arizona Public Media offices.

I'm Tom McNamara.

We'll see you again next week.