(Tom) This week on Arizona Illustrated... A very special food truck will melt your heart and your grilled cheese.

(Bill) Just the fact of working with people with special needs, they want to go to work.

They want the job.

You're coming in, everyone's got a smile on their face, everyone's ready to go.

(Tom) The benefits of growing native plants.

(Alex) Not only is it beautiful, obviously, for being a large tubular flower, but it also is a great habitat plant.

(Tom) A microscopic Guinness World Record is set in Tucson.

(Mohammed) Electromotion is everywhere around us.

It's the reason we are feeling, because the electron moves in our nervous system.

(Tom) Cowboy up, down in Sonoita.

(Faith) You can come here and put on your cowboy hat and put on your boots and walk around and feel like John Wayne.

(Tom) Empire Ranch Cowboy Festival.

(Faith) I want this to be here for generations to come.

I want them to live out their dream of being a cowboy.

(Tom) And the awe-inspiring Meteor Crater.

(Narrator) These images will not convey what I felt at first seeing the crater, nor will words.

(Tom) Hello and welcome to Arizona Illustrated.

I'm Tom McNamara.

First up, you'll meet a Tucson woman who couldn't find a job for her 16-year-old son with autism, so she created one along with her business partner.

They came up with an inclusive environment and workplace for people with special needs, and the glue of this business is grilled cheese and love.

♪ INSIGHTFUL MUSIC ♪ (Speaker 1) How many are there, like five?

...four, six...

Potentially do that tonight.

(Alex Barrentine) Yeah.

That will be good.

I have a son with autism and he had turned 16 and like 16-year-olds he wanted a job, but we couldn't find him a job, anyone that was willing to train him or work with him having autism That's when we decided to take matters into our own hands.

(Alex) Order number 39, your order's ready, 39.

Hi, my name is Alex Barrentine.

I work on this truck, this grilled cheese truck with S I started when I was 17.

(Tamara) My partner Bill, he just really wanted to come up with a concept that was easy enough for individuals with special needs to be able to make, and then also something that is a comfort food and good for food trucks as well as great tasting.

So my main goal is to teach these guys enough to go get a job somewhere else.

They come to me with very little skills to none so I teach them everything from cashiering, cleaning, prepping, shopping and cooking.

(Alex) I could do anything.

I pull out numbers, I take orders, I can cook a little bit.

Order up for a quesadilla chicke and a grilled cheese.

Quesadilla chicken and a grilled cheese, order up.

(Bill) I let them come up with the specials of the month every month.

I let them fool around and make new menu items.

They actually are the ones that came up with the quesadilla option on our truck.

(Greg) I'm very proud to work for this company.

I'm learning how to be a chef and stuff because I love to cook and...

I enjoy everyone here and stuff Everyone makes me feel good and stuff.

I've seen people come to me non-verbal to the point where they're my... they won't stop talking.

They came to me thinking they'll never have a job, quiet, hiding in the corner to outgoing and cooking on my truck.

They love it.

Every day is a new story and I love every day.

(Greg) My story is here to get the experience to work in the kitchen in the future and stuff and become a chef someday.

Because I like to go back to school and become a chef and... own my own restaurant.

Because I'm Mexican-Greek.

I want to make Mexican Greek food someday.

Order number 20!

Order 20 20?

Just the fact of working with pe they want to go to work.

They want the job.

So you're not going to work with saying, "I don't want to go to w So, you're coming in, everyone's got a smile on their face, everyone's ready to go.

And I have a disabily but it doesn't it stop me from doing things I'm very proud of my, what I am and stuff.

(Alex) I love it.

It's just pretty cool to work with other people that have the same, like, autism stuff.

(Speaker 2) Yeah, I love colorin It's so relaxing.

(Tamara) So many of our special needs population don't have friends and they don't have someone that they can talk to.

And so we really provide a family here, and you know, they do stuff outside of work, together, they call each other and it's really been so beneficial for them to have that love and support.

Actually, Special Eats is like my second family and stuff.

I'm proud to say that.

I want everyone to know and stuff.

Yeah.

And not only that, but the parents, coming in and telling me how grateful they are and how they've seen their child change.

(Greg) This job, it's teaching me how to learn how to work with different people and stuff and different needs and stuff.

And I'm very proud to do that.

(Tamara) We employ 45 individuals with special needs and then we have 20 job coaches that we also employ.

So the job coaches are their mentors.

They help them to stay on task and to learn the job.

They train them.

The individuals with special needs do all kinds of jobs.

We actually even have a garden that they're responsible for.

We have a shopping crew that does all of our shopping for our food trucks as well as our merchandise, they make all of our merchandise.

So they make shirts and aprons, hats, jewelry, earrings.

Cecil, he passed away unfortunately in January, but he was our oldest employee and he was 69.

And everyone has stories of something that they bought from Cecil because he was just the best seller and he would be so excited when someone bought something.

He would come grab me and say, "Tamara, I just sold some earrings!"

We really do give a lot of people was just displayed in the Oro Valley Library for three months.

We couldn't do this without the community and their love and support.

The dessert truck just opened in January and it's already becoming popular and people are requesting us.

So it really allows us to expand and to hire more people because I have a long waiting list of people that want to work and being a special needs mom, every time I have to put someone on the waiting list, It's... it hurts!

(John) 35, your order's ready!

(Greg) It made me a hard worker in life, It made me... it taught me how t and work as a team, and more socialized cause I'm not really a sociable but Special Eats just teaching me how to be more sociable in life and hang out with people more and stuff.

(Speaker 1) Beautiful sandwich, Greg!

(Bill) Making them smile and say thank you for telling them they did a good job makes my day worth it every day.

My personal goals are just to continue to support them and lov and show them that they're a vital part of this com and the world.

Give them a chance.

They want to work, and they will show up every day, which is really hard to find sometimes.

(Alex) There you go...

Enjoy!

(Tom) Thousands of native or drought resistant plants can be grown in the Sonoran Desert providing intriguing possibilities for your yard or landscape.

This next native plant produces striking yellow flowers almost all year round offering food for pollinators and a feast for the eyes.

(people chattering) This beautiful large shrub with and large tubular yellow flowers or Tecoma stans.

This plant is really a tropical It's found from Central America In the Sonoran Desert, we're at Down south, this can be a large 30-foot tree.

Here in nature, if you find it, mid to small-sized shrub.

In Southeast Arizona, depending and how much water you want to give it, it could be a variety of sizes.

This one here is essentially fac to the south more or less.

So it's in a microclimate that p from getting freezes during cold weather, which is the main inhibitor in t reaching its maximum size.

Because it is native, it can liv It's found right here in the Tuc living off of the amount of rain However, if you want it to be a like this one beside me, put it on irrigation and being a tropical plant, it will be happy to take up that water and convert it into vegetative growt One of the reasons that this plant is seen in landscaping all over Tucson i profusely and regularly througho You'll see this planted in publi Not only is it beautiful, obviou for being a large tubular flower but it also is a great habitat p It attracts hummingbirds, butter Bees all of which are right here behind me One downside for some gardeners is the fact that usually in early fall, late summer, many of the leaves will become skeletonized by a particular caterpillar that util as a food source.

One can opt to remove them by hand or allow the caterpillars to fulfill their life cycle and become butterflie exactly what I do in my home gar One kind of interesting factoid is the scientific name itself.

Unlike the majority of the Latin names for plants in our region, Tecoma is actuall abbreviated version of the Nahuatl word for the plant, which is "Tecoma shoshiki means "tubular flower."

I always recommend planting it on an east or south facing wall, being a tropical plant, being at the northern extent of It can suffer from freezes, however the worst that happens is it dies back to the crown, you cut it back and it grows bac When placed like this one at a south facing exposure, it's going to be evergreen.

So if you're looking for a relat plant that provides wildlife hab backyard, garden, Tecoma stans o is always a great option.

♪ Upbeat Music Playing ♪ (Tom) For many more examples of desert plants that will thrive in your backyard, head to our new website, azpm.org/desertplants The Guinness World Record for the world's fastest electron microscope now resides here at the University of Arizona.

It's so fast it's able to capture video of electrons in motion, and that's a major achievement that allows researchers to better understand the quantum physics behind subatomic particles.

(Anchor) Mohammed Hassan is an assistant professor of physics and optical sciences.

His goal is to photograph an electron in motion.

It's never been done before.

(Mohammed) I still remember the 24th of April, 2022, the first image of the electron motion.

And I think we are as a scientis work so hard for years for the glory and the sweetness of this such a moment.

It's just this moment when you see something nobody's seen before.

A lot of open questions now becomes available with the Attomicroscope and the capability of doing it, it's difficult, but since it's difficult, this is a job for us to do.

[ SHORT LAUGH ] ♪ CALM MUSIC ♪ [ RUSTLING OF CURTAINS ] So what you see in my lab, there are two directions.

The first one focusing on developing ultrafast optoelectronics and light field synthesizer.

And then when we work through the lab, you see the big laser which generates very short laser pulses and we make these balls very broad by propagating through a hollow fiber where you see the laser turn from red, yellow, and blue.

And we use this to control the electrons inside the material so it can reflect light on and off in an atom second time scale.

The atom second is one out of billion of billion of a second.

And why is this important?

Because this is a native time of the motion of electrons.

[ TRAIN RUSTLING ] So if you would like to take a picture of a faster train moving next to you, probably you will see an blurry image.

However, if I put you on a train next to this faster train and they are both moving with the same speed, you will be able to take a very good snapshot of the other of the other train.

Here the electrons are the first train and my atom microscope is the second train.

So I open for you the capability of seeing electrons in real time and space.

♪ SOFT MUSIC ♪ Electromotion is everywhere around us.

Electromotion is the reason we are feeling because the electrons move in our nervous system.

The electrons are the reason why we see, because this how is the images form in front of our eyes.

Electromotion control chemistry and control all the properties of matter.

So the capability of seeing it will allow us to control electron.

If we control electron, we can control chemistry, we can control the physics of the material, all the behavior of the material, we can advance the technology, we can make new electronics.

♪ SOFT MUSIC FADING ♪ So this is now optimized.

My next goal is to develop a quantum atom microscope to test the fundamental quantum physics questions or quantum physics principles.

We send our first balls, okay?

And we send our... Quantum physics in general talking about the probabilities of motion of photons or motion of electrons.

We may be able one day to test this in our microscope.

And we use this electron.

We'd like to discover more secrets about the electron motion in everything around us.

♪ SOFT MUSIC ♪ All of us has this dream from the beginning.

We promise each other to success So I'm so fortunate to work with this talented young scientists and work together as a family.

♪ SOFT MUSIC ♪ And I feel like this is what also of my duties, not just discovering new science, is to teach the young, talented scientists.

So we can do the experiment on this one, right?

We are not passionate just about achievement.

We are passionate by science, and science will never end.

Right, you can do this, yes.

Never, ever, lose faith in science.

Science is our way forward to advance our humanity, to advance our country, and I think it is our destiny as a scientist to not trust.

Just keep doing science.

[ FAINT CHATTER ] (Tom) Next we head to Sonoita where an annual cowboy festival celebrates Arizona's history and culture.

And you'll see how the BLM and the Empire Ranch Foundation are collaborating to preserve a beautiful historic property for future generations.

[music] ♪ GENTLE WESTERN GUITAR ♪ (Faith) The Cowboy Festival is always the first week in November.

Like this is the real thing.

You can come here and put on your cowboy hat and put on your boots and walk around and feel like John Wayne.

A lot of movies were filmed here and, you know, they want to play that part.

Here at the Cowboy Festival at the historic Empire Ranch headquarters in Sonoita, Arizona.

It is our 20th year.

The ranch was established in 1876 by Walter Vail.

My great grandparents bought it from the Vails.

My grandfather was raised here from toddlerhood.

My father was raised here until his early 20s and I was five months old when we moved off this ranch.

The foundation was formed because this house was literally falling down and falling apart.

Nobody had lived in it.

And it was community people who came together to build the foundation.

And the Bureau of Land Management has also put quite a bit of money into this house.

There is nothing like this here, in Southern Arizona, this is 45,000 acres of pristine, preserved cattle ranching.

You can hike, bike, ride.

It's yours and mine.

It's public land.

If you look up, these are timbers from the Santa Rita Mountains.

That's pretty far in those days for it to get here.

Like this place is the real thing.

This isn't a movie set.

We have inflatable stick horses and we pull kids right out of the audience.

The kids will race.

We have the Sonoita Royalty here.

To help with that, we have the Queen and the Princess.

And these are the beautiful women that you see with the pretty crowns on and the sashes and they ride their horses in the arena with the flags.

They're Mexican dancing horses and their horses dance to the music.

It really showcases how these horses can dance.

♪ MARIACHI MUSIC PLAYS AT EVENT♪ She's like, I don't know about that.

Scarlett is a Golden Eagle.

She wants to see if she can eat your fluffy thing, I think.

It is a working bird.

He takes her out and she hunts jackrabbits or whatever is not fast enough.

A lot of folks don't know what a brand even entails.

He's branding boards.

We have blacksmithing.

Reata braiding is literally braiding of cowhide.

So in the old days, that's what you had.

You didn't have nylon, you didn't have all these things that they use for ropes now.

So it was an art to everything from tanning the hide.

to cutting it in strips, to braiding it.

And the gentleman who was displaying that actually worked on this ranch as a young man.

His name is Dr. Schorr.

(Dick Schorr) Our great grandfather rode with me back from the corral way down on this, I don't know, Cienega, something down there, one time, and he explained a whole lot of stuff about the ranch.

- And you were how old?

- I was 16.

- 16 years old.

- And it was, yeah, I think he took me along because I will open the gates.

- Yes.

♪ FAST PACED WESTERN GUITAR MUSIC ♪ (Faith) The trail rides are 45-minute trail rides, and you just get taken out into the Las Cienegas, out onto the grasslands, and get to experience it from horseback.

That's the best way to see this place.

The Bureau of Land Management gathers wild horses and burros, and they have a facility up in Florence, and they work with the Department of Corrections.

(MC) These are not starter horse These are not horses for novice people.

These are horses that are for people who have some riding experience.

(Faith) They have prisoners who work with the wild animals to gentle them so that they can be adopted.

We're here with the Bureau of Land Management and our Wild Horse and Burro Program to feature some of our trained horses and burros.

We use the Department of Corrections inmates to help train the animals, to help them make the animals more adoptable.

The horses, as well as the inmates, do go through an evaluation process.

It's been realized that pairing inmates with animals has been a very therapeutic venture, has reduced recidivism rates.

(Faith) It rehabilitates the people and the horses.

It is like a win for everybody.

We do about six events a year out here.

Um, we work with The Loft Theater.

We have movie under the stars.

Several movies were filmed here in the 1950s.

And so you can come out and see one of those old westerns.

I want this to be here for generations to come.

I want them to live out their dream of being a cowboy.

Folks that come here, they're mesmerized.

They can't believe it exists.

They can't believe how beautiful it is out here.

A lot of people don't even realize this is here.

This is open land that will never be developed, ever.

Beautiful dark skies, the stars, the wildlife.

There's turkeys, there's deer.

It's right here, you know, it's not on TV.

It's not on a screen.

Come see it in real life.

♪ GUITAR MUSIC FADES ♪ [ CROWD CHATTER FADES ] (Tom) From down South, we take you up North now with producer David Fenster to explore Meteor Crater Natural Landmark, where he experiences the power of nature and the emotion of awe.

♪ UPBEAT MUSIC ♪ (Narrator) If you're traveling on I-40 between Winslow and Flagstaff, Arizona, you will pass signs for somethin called Meteor Crater.

For years I simply drove by.

I'm not sure why but it probably had something to do with a slightly touristy vibe.

Turning off I-40 onto Meteor Crater Road, a large form begins to appear on the horizon, and I have the sense that something special lies ahead.

There's an extensive visitor center, but I want to head straight to the rim of the crater.

♪ AMBIENT ELECTRONIC MUSIC ♪ These images will not convey what I felt at first seeing the crater, nor will words.

The only other time I have felt something similar was looking into the Grand Canyon, which is only about an hour away.

In both cases, it didn't matter how many photos I had seen, or how hyped each place was, the feeling was pure awe.

Someone recently suggested that I find some awe in life every da That that would be a good thing for my mental health.

How would I possibly find this feeling every day?

After thinking about it for a while, I realized this was big awe, but there are other types of awe that our language doesn't have words for.

I also realized awe is something like gratitude that you can prac So I want to start the practice of finding awe every day in big things and small things.

♪ AMBIENT ELECTRONIC MUSIC ♪ Like what you're seeing on Arizona Illustrated?

Then connect with us on social media for even more Arizona Illustrated.

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Before we go, here's a sneak peek at a story we're working on.

(Caroline) I feel like it's very easy to be like very self-conscious.

Yeah, you literally just forget that I'm here.

It seemed like a really natural fit to have me involved in the project because I have this particular kind of storytelling angle.

I think that intimate portraiture in Boudoir, when you do it right, can be really therapeutic and really ends up having this very healing effect on people's relationships with their bodies.

So I sort of feel like a photographer and a therapist at the same time.

It's just kind of relaxed a little bit.

Gorgeous.

The process started with me having an individual conversation with each of the women.

I tried to get a sense of both what they went through in their medical experience, what their relationship with their body was like before this, and how it changed throughout the experience.

(Tom) Thank you for joining us here on Arizona Illustrated.

I'm Tom McNamara.

We'll see you again next week.

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