Printed in white block letters, the question stretched across billboards around Albuquerque last summer. And it still haunts the mother of two, Elaine Maestas, who helped pay to put them up.
“What if emergency responders came armed with compassion instead of guns?”
In 2019 when her little sister Elisha Lucero’s mental health was deteriorating, 911 seemed like the only place to turn for help. “Leash” was in counseling to manage her worsening migraines and hallucinations, Maestas said, but she was deeply afraid of being hospitalized or medicated. So as her behavior became more erratic, she resisted her family’s entreaties to seek further treatment, and they felt they had no recourse but to call law enforcement to the South Valley address where she lived.
Fishing was one of Elisha Lucero’s favorite pastimes. In April of 2016 she met up with one of her best high school friends to fish at Tingley Beach, where she caught around seven fish off corn and fireballs.