NewMexiKen would be remiss if I didn’t point out this article from the National section of today’s New York Times:
She is more Cinderella than Cinderella Man and no one’s Million-Dollar Baby, but Monica Lovato, a slip of a super flyweight boxer at 5-foot-5 and 115 pounds, is carrying the hopes of her drug-ravaged hometown on her narrow shoulders.
Heroes have been hard to come by in Espanola, the mile-high seat of Rio Arriba County, where drug overdoses lead the nation in taunting proximity to northern New Mexico’s moneyed enclaves of Santa Fe, Taos and Los Alamos.
Ms. Lovato, 28, who has fought her way out of a tormented family history to a 4-1 record and has been known to relax by jumping out of airplanes, is as much a champion as Espanolans have cheered in some time.
Our very own “Mo cuishle.”
The article is as much about the problems — especially drug-related — in Rio Arriba county as it is about the boxer.
Key quotation: “[W]here a Rio Arriba County commissioner once protested a [drug] crackdown saying, ‘We’re not going to declare war on our own relatives.'”