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It’s the second half of an intense game. Dozens of fans are shouting encouragement from the bleachers and sidelines to support the Thunder Mountain Falcons and the Juneau-Douglas High School Crimson Bears.
Each year, Thunder Mountain and Juneau-Douglas’ soccer teams turn one or two games into a cancer awareness fundraiser. The fundraisers started in 2012 and were inspired by Juneau-Douglas soccer player Dorothy Brent, who died from cancer last year.
This year the Falcons and Bears girls teams dedicated the fundraiser to Hunter Rathbone.
“I love my team,” Rathbone said. “It really warms my heart that they would put all that effort … all that together for me … that’s like no words, that’s the coolest thing someone’s ever done for me.”
Rathbone, 16, identifies as a boy. He sits in a wheelchair, wearing sunglasses to protect his eyes. He’s a Falcons player who was hurt in a previous game and has lost most of the feeling in his legs. Speaking after the game, Rathbone said the injury happened while trying to score a goal during a game in Ketchikan.
“There was an opponent next to me … behind me,” Rathbone said. “They accidentally kicked my feet up from underneath me, and it caused me to fall backwards onto my back and then it slammed my head to the ground.”
After the fall, he remembers his coaches helping him back to the bench.
Rathbone had a spinal and head concussion, he said.
“I knew something was off from the beginning because the turf looked white and then I had extreme sensitivity to the light,” he said. “I couldn’t keep my eyes open because it was really bright.”
His legs went numb. His thighs, calves and feet felt like “they were catching on fire.”
Rathbone was flown to a hospital in Seattle. After five days of tests and scans, doctors decided he wasn’t just concussed, he said. The doctors diagnosed him with conversion disorder.
“I could’ve lost my sense of taste, smell and eyesight. Losing your feeling in your legs is the most common,” he said.
At the end of the fundraiser game, the Bears are the clear winners on the field.
But as the Falcons’ coaches give their girls a word of encouragement and send them off for the ritual end-of-game handshake, it’s soon evident the final score isn’t the only measure of a team’s success.
Rathbone said his team played great and he’s proud of them.
His recovery is going to be hard work. He goes to school every day in his wheelchair and is in physical and occupational therapy. It’s exhausting, he said.
“They are telling me that I’m going to get some mobility back … but after standing, some basic movements, after that is basically how hard I work is how far I’m going to make my recovery,” Rathbone said.
He describes himself as an active person and said the thought of getting out of his chair is his biggest motivation.
“To be able to get back on the field, hike, bike, longboard, snowboard … all my activities that I love to do,” he said.
One day he hopes to be back in the Falcon’s huddle.
The fundraiser for Hunter Rathbone raised $1,450, a Falcons soccer coach said.
This month, 30-year-old Marcos Galindo graduated with a bachelor’s degree in social science with a concentration in political science.
Now, he’s working on a master’s of public administration and wants a Ph.D. in Chicano studies – a choice weighted by his early life on the streets and in the prisons of California.
“Especially in the gang culture of California, it’s a lot of false propaganda about what it means to be one’s brother’s keeper, what it means to be para la raza — being Mexicano and being Chicano,” Galindo said.
Feeding into that “propaganda” landed him in prison, he said.
“I want to know the historical accuracy of what it means to be my brother’s keeper, and I want to know the true meaning of what it means to be Chicano,” Galindo said.
Galindo’s story starts in California. He said he came from a broken home and like a lot of kids from broken homes, he started partying and acting wild in his teens.
He was arrested for fighting and was sent to juvenile hall where he said race determined everything.
“Since I’m Mexican, and you can see it just by looking at my features, I was accepted by the Mexicans pretty quick,” he said. “You become a product of your environment, so I lost that free love, party life, party, everybody happy; I became a cholo, I became a gangster. I got cliqued up as soon as I got out and got jumped in at 13.”
He used his new status to vent the anger he was holding in.
“I loved it. I loved the fast lifestyle; I loved people being afraid of me; I loved the fast money; I loved packing a gun; I loved all of that,” Galindo said.
But of course, that put him in prison where he ended up doing someone a favor.
“When I was doing my time there, fighting my case, I ended up getting celled up with a … they called him a ‘big homie,’” Galindo said. “Which is an individual that’s cliqued up with O.C., with organized crime, which is no longer street gangs, this is prison gangs — this is big deal stuff.”
That favor increased Galindo’s time from 18 months to five years.
He was released at 25 but ended up going back pretty quick.
“So, I got thrown up in the hole and then I seen the individuals who are running the show, right? These big time players in the O.C., of the organization I was part of and they were all heroin addicts. They were all old 60-year-old, 50-year-old heroin addicts.”
Then Galindo ran into his brother, who is serving life in prison for murder.
“He was like, ‘I’m never going to be able to hold my daughter again. I’m never going to be able to hold a woman again. I’m never going to be able to enjoy an In-N-Out cheeseburger,’” Galindo recalled. “‘All these things because I killed for a corner of a street that’s not mine. It’s a corner of a street that we’ve been fighting over since the ’40s and none of us own it.’”
That was it. Galindo’s mom invited him to come to Juneau; he came.
He landed two jobs and started making good money.
But someone called Galindo a racial slur and he beat the guy up and was arrested.
Authorities “threw the book” at him, he said, when his criminal history came up.
“Kudos to Juneau for that, trying to nip this stuff in the bud,” Galindo said.
He was sent to Lemon Creek Correctional Center where he joined the Flying University, a program that brought University of Alaska Southeast courses in philosophy and literature to prison inmates. UAS students on the outside also came. The plan was for the students and the inmates to learn from each other. It evolved into a prison re-entry program.
Galindo loved it.
He also learned he was a father while in prison and he rekindled his faith.
Those three things: school, faith and family, pushed him to change a second time.
“I was like, ‘This is it.’ There’s no more chance. If I ever go back to prison, it’s going to be … It must’ve been my destiny because I don’t want this lifestyle and I’m going to do everything in my power to make sure I never, ever, ever go back,” he said. “So I started school and I graduated with my bachelor’s in three years.”
Galindo is one of three Flying University alumni who graduated this month. Another former inmate, Nathan Block, earned a bachelor’s degree with an emphasis in literature and minors in philosophy and Tlingit.
Thomas Spitzfaden, a regular student who took classes in Lemon Creek with the inmates, graduated with a bachelor’s in social science.
Anthropology was his primary and he had concentrations in psychology and political science.
There are three other Flying University students taking classes at UAS, Galindo said.
He thinks education is a powerful weapon and a cure for many of society’s problems, including the high rate of former felons who go back to prison.
After a unanimous vote by the Juneau Assembly, Juneau School District could get more than $87 million to spend on students and staff this coming school year. The assembly approved the district’s budget without discussion at its Monday night meeting.
The total budget is $1.7 million more than the current school year’s budget. It includes almost $27 million from the Assembly.
It’s not guaranteed the district will get the full amount approved. The bulk of the district’s funding comes from the state and the Legislature still hasn’t passed a spending bill.
The House and Senate have to negotiate differences in their proposed operating budgets in a conference committee.
The deadline for the regular session to end is Wednesday.
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A few more than a dozen fans of Alyssa London, or Miss Alaska, are groaning in disappointment and one resilient fan screams, “We love you Alyssa!” after the last of five Miss USA contestants advance to the next round of the pageant.
Alyssa London wasn’t one of them.
Before the final five were named, anxiety and expectation were high at the Juneau watch party. Even before London made it to the top 10, her fans thought she had a good chance to win.
Yolanda Fulmer said it’s exciting.
“I think this also shows other young women, in our community as Alaska Natives or Native American women, that their dreams are important, that they should go for them, and that they can accomplish their dreams and dream big,” said Fulmer.
Fulmer said it’s disappointing that London didn’t win but she’s proud of what she accomplished.
“Just being able to make it this far and also standing for her community and representing … she has had a strong representation for her culture and her Alaskan community and I’m just very proud of her,” she said.
London graduated from Stanford University where she wrote an honors thesis on economic development in Southeast Alaska. She’s the cultural ambassador of the Sealaska Heritage Institute and she built a business that sells products influenced by Southeast Alaska Native culture.
When a Miss USA host asked London what she wanted people to know about Alaska, she singled out Native culture.
“I want them to know that we have amazing unique cultures in our state. There are 229 different tribes,” London said. “Tonight you will see me wearing a traditional Tlingit robe over my evening gown emulating our dance robes. It will have a Killer Whale crest on it and I’m very proud of my culture.”
After London’s loss, the watch party crowd recorded a video message to show her their support.
Outside of the party, Tommy Gamble said he is a friend of London’s and that this loss is not the end for her.
“The whole entire journey was the experience that she wanted and she’s going to learn from it and probably even come out on top,” Gamble said. “You can crown a winner for the contest, but because of her name and her culture and everything that she’s supported and is going to continue to support, she’ll always be one of our queens and so I’m really proud of her.”
The watch party was organized by the Central Council of the Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska.
Kàra McCullough, Miss District of Columbia, won the Miss USA crown on Sunday.
