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Mesa woman’s camera captures feathery beauties

BY SRIANTHI PERERA

Tribune Contributor

Sally Mesarosh aims her camera at a trio of feeding pelicans at the Riparian Preserve at Water Ranch in Gilbert. Their pouches seemed full of fish but the pelicans glided towards the Mesa woman, perhaps with the hope of securing more.

“It’s pretty cool when you get to see them. They are winter visitors; they are not here all the time,” Mesarosh said. “They travel together in little groups, almost synchronized when they dive for fish.”

Mesarosh has been birding in the East Valley’s nature parks for nearly a decade. The urban Riparian Preserve is her favorite spot because it contains the most birds, which she attributes to its plentiful water.

There she has photographed least bitterns, hummingbirds, vermilion flycatchers, night crowned black herons, cormorants, great blue herons, Canadian geese, Sally Mesarosh has a passion for birding in the East Valley. Here she aims her camera at a pair

of water fowl. (Srianthi Perera/Tribune Contributor) mockingbirds, black-necked stilts and many other species.

In the spring, she has seen Gila woodpeckers living inside saguaro cactus in the cactus garden. Often, she spots baby woodpeckers peeping from their tem-

porary homes. The males have a distinct red crown, which make for a contrasting photo when they perch on the ridges of the thorny green plant. Many times, she has also seen the coveted roseate spoonbill, the large pink waterbird with its broad, spoon-like bill, affectionately named Rosie by local birders. The bird is not native to Arizona, but has been found around the state. Rosie is not always visible in the Riparian’s sludgy waters, and tends to appear and disappear from time to time, thereby increasing its endearment and causing ripples in birders’ lives. Mesarosh is an early morning riser who prefers to bird at that time rather than the hours approaching twilight, which are the two optimal times for nature photography. The early morning hours are perfect to photograph the fluorescent colors of the seeBIRDING page 16

Two Mesa teens nominated as CTE Presidential Scholars

BY DANA TRUMBULL

Tribune Staff Writer

Two Red Mountain High school seniors are among the five Arizona nominees for a prestigious U.S. Presidential Scholar in Career and Technical Education recognition. As semifinalists, Lydia Pastore and Garrett Comes, both of Mesa, now are among 200 seniors nationwide awaiting a national review by the White House Commission on Presidential Scholars at the US Department of Education.

Although the U.S. Presidential Scholars Program does not award a monetary scholarship, students chosen get an expense-paid trip to Washington, DC and are presented with the Presidential Scholars Medallion at a special ceremony sponsored at the White House.

While in DC, students are able to network with national and international leaders, government officials, educators and

LYDIA PASTORE

scientists, as well as like-minded peers.

The daughter of Delphine and John Pastore, Lydia ranked first in class and carries an unweighted GPA of 3.98, and a weighted Core GPA of 5.0.

GARRETT COMES

A finalist for the lucrative Flinn Scholarship, she plans to pursue a major in neuroscience and cognitive science with an emphasis in philosophy and a minor in public health.

As a student in the Red Mountain High School Biotechnology Laboratory, Lydia participated in a research internship at the Arizona State University Laboratory of Evolutionary Medicine, working on several different projects. She recently placed first in the state and second internationally for the Biomedical Laboratory Science Competition.

Outside of school, she has embraced opportunities to shadow physicians, coauthored a pediatric radiology paper under the guidance of a medical student, and participated in the Summer and Saturday scrubs programs at the University of Arizona College of Medicine Phoenix.

After dealing with post-viral syndrome as a result of Long Haul COVID-19 during her junior year, Lydia put personal experience into action, creating the platform Chronic Connections, an international support group that has reached kids in over 12 seeSCHOLARS page 16

hummingbirds because the sunlight is on them, she explained. Hummingbirds are notoriously hard to shoot because of their endless fluttering around bushes and require a high shutter speed setting. “The birds are most active the first thing in the morning as the sun rises. If you come at sunset, you never know what you’re going to see, too,” she said.

By mid-morning or noon, there’s less action to observe as the creatures have fed themselves and are more sedentary. On the occasions that Mesarosh has come in the early evening, she has observed another uptick in activity.

Mesarosh lugs a four-pound camera ensemble: a Cannon EOS Rebel SL2 with a powerful Sigma 600 milli meter telephoto lens. Add to that weight her water bottle and backpack with other necessities.

“It’s rather heavy. I can’t go forever, but I can go a couple of miles,” she said. “It’s similar to going to the gym and working with weights.”

She describes the walk as “half-exercise, half birding.”

“If I don’t run into any exciting birds, at least I’ve got my exercise. So that makes me feel better,” she said.

How did the pastime begin?

She used to walk around her neighborhood, but it got boring. Gradually, from viewing others’ photos on social media, she began walking in places such as Usery Mountain Regional Park in Mesa, Veterans Oasis Park in Chandler and the Riparian Preserve. At first, she wanted to see the wildlife. Then, she wanted to capture them on camera.

“The East Valley has a lot of really nice places to explore wildlife. You don’t really know that until you get into it,” she said.

Mesarosh used to support the marketing division of Mesa Community College, and had learned to shoot good pictures. She bought her own camera with new lenses and began experimenting with wildlife photography. She took a few classes for added skills.

Her early retirement in 2020 coincided with the pandemic, which gradually moved into everyone’s perspective. Now that gatherings were limited and she could go birding during the weekdays and not only on the weekend, she splurged on an expensive lens. That’s when her pictures really improved.

She doesn’t consider herself as a professional wildlife photographer. She used to

view them from afar. “I see the birders, they’re on the shore and they have their tripods. It used to be intimidating to talk to them. I can talk to them easier now. I don’t bring a tripod because a lot of the time, the birds will fly by and it’s hard if the camera is on a tripod,” she noted. To photograph the birds that are flying across the sky, she aims her lens at them and hope that one of the pictures comes out well. She also learned the techDuring one morning, hobby birder Sally Mesarosh pho- nique of talking to a birder. tographed a mockingbird, Great Blue Heron, Gila wood- “You whisper when you talk pecker, black-crowned night heron and pelicans at the to a birder,” she said. “If you Riparian Preserve at Water Ranch in Gilbert. Sally Mesarosh) (Courtesy of talk too loud, it might scare the birds away.” The spoonbill didn’t make an appearance on that day, but plenty of other birds did, including a night-crowned black heron. She enjoys getting close to nature. “There’s a natural rhythm to the birds. And if we go away from that, spending so much time inside on electronic equipment, here when you’re outside, the natural rhythm of the earth – when the sun comes up, the birds feed, they take a nap. It’s kind of nice to be tied into that,” she said. Back home after each birding trip, Mesarosh edits the pictures and posts the best ones on Instagram (smesarosh) and Facebook. Her work has also been published in local blogs and newspapers, by the Mesa Community College and Arizona Highways Friday Fotos series. She won the 2018 photography contest organized by

THE MESA TRIBUNE | FEBRUARY 6, 2022 Mesa Public Library and was a finalist in the Tempe Instagrammys photo contest in 2021.

But Mesarosh yields more than pretty pictures and plaudits from the creative process.

She’s aware that North America’s birds are disappearing. According to one of the world’s top academic journals, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the continent has lost three billion birds since the 1970s.

Just during the past decade of birding, she has noticed less birds flying about.

“It’s a motivation for me to get out and look at them and take pictures of them. In 20 years, it might be even less,” she said. “These guys might not be around forever.” ■

Sally Mesarosh recommends the following spots for birding and seeing wildlife in the East Valley and environs.

The Gilbert Riparian at Guadalupe and Greenfield roads has the most bird variety, with ducks, egrets, heron and pelicans.

Freestone Park in Gilbert at Guadalupe and Lindsay roads has a small batch of ducks, egrets and sometimes a great heron.

Veterans Oasis Park in south Chandler at Lindsay and Chandler Heights roads has coyotes, jackrabbits, Common Gallinule, crested ducks, ospreys, peach-faced lovebirds and green herons.

The Salt River off Bush Highway has horses and a few birds, in north Mesa.

Usery Park off Ellsworth in north Mesa has a little nature area with water that attracts a few small birds like woodpeckers and hummingbirds.

Scottsdale Community College and ASU Polytechnic campus in Mesa have burrows that house burrowing owls.

SCHOLARS from page 15

countries (chronicconnections.org). Followers on the site share their stories, offering mutual support and advocating for the implementation of safer public health measures in middle and high schools.

As a youth advisor for the AZ Community Engagement Alliance Against COVID-19 Disparities, Lydia has partnered with the Center for Health Equity Research at NAU and board members from the Mayo Clinic and NIH to advocate for chronically ill adolescents.

“These experiences have strengthened my desire to pursue a career in medicine alongside an education in public policy, as I hope to help continue to dismantle the stigma surrounding chronic illness in teens.” Lydia has been involved in HOSA (Future Health Professionals) for the past four years and is her school’s chapter president and state vice president.

Garrett, the son of Annemarie and Demetrius Comes, has an unweighted GPA is 3.855, and his weighted Core GPA is 4.806.

He plans to major in aerospace engineering at Embry Riddle Aeronautical University, Georgia Tech or the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, working toward a career in the field of propulsion.

He currently serves as president of both the Robotics Club and the SkillsUSA CTSO Chapter.

He appreciates the leadership positions, saying they provide an opportunity to develop practical skills as well as management skills that apply to the workplace.

He has also been the lead software engineer each of his four years in robotics. In his freshman year, the VEX Robotics team traveled to Kentucky for the VEX World Robotics Competition.

Garrett credits teacher Adam Middleton, his engineering and robotics mentor, who has watched him grow from “a freshman who wanted to be a part of any club with the words ‘engineering’ or ‘robotics’” to a contributing member of many of the programs.

“He taught me where to better aim my efforts, to focus on doing things the right way, building a strong foundation and letting the success come on its own,” Garrett said.

His extracurricular activities include robotics, academic decathlon, Stellar Xplorers, Engineering Club and tennis.

Outside of school, Garrett enjoys working on his own personal projects. “One of the first problems I attempted to solve was the relation between wind turbine blade angle and efficiency. My team and I developed an equation that was able to predict the turbine’s angular speed depending on specific characteristics of the turbine,” he said.

The project received a gold medal at the District Science and Engineering Fair.

“Seeing a robot that my team and I have worked on day and night finally complete its task is one of the most rewarding experiences ever,” he added.■

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Mesa, AZ — The most common method your doctor will recommend to treat your chronic pain and/or neuropathy is with prescription drugs that may temporarily reduce your symptoms. These drugs have names such as Gabapentin, Lyrica, Cymbalta, and Neurontin, and are primarily antidepressant or anti-seizure drugs. These drugs may cause you to feel uncomfortable and have a variety of harmful side effects. Chronic pain and/or peripheral neuropathy is a result of damage to the nerves often causing weakness, pain, numbness, tingling, and the most debilitating balance problems. This damage is commonly caused by a lack of blood flow to the nerves in the hands and feet which causes the nerves to begin to degenerate due to lack of nutrient flow.

As you can see in Figure 2, as the blood vessels that surround the nerves become diseased they shrivel up which causes the nerves to not get the nutrients to continue to survive. When these nerves begin to “die” they cause you to have balance problems, pain, numbness, tingling, burning, and many additional symptoms. The main problem is that your doctor has told you to just live with the problem or try the drugs which you don’t like taking because they make you feel uncomfortable. There is now a facility right here in Mesa that offers you hope without taking those endless drugs with serious side effects. (See the special neuropathy severity examination at the end of this article) In order to effectively treat your neuropathy three factors must be determined. 1) What is the underlying cause? 2) How much nerve damage has been sustained. NOTE: Once you have sustained 95% nerve loss, there is likely nothing that we can do for you. 3) How much treatment will your condition require? The treatment that is provided at Aspen Medical has three main goals. 1) Increase blood flow 2) Stimulate and increase small fiber nerves 3) Decrease brain-based pain The treatment to increase blood flow, stimulate small nerve fibers and get you back to health is our new $50,000.00 SANEXAS UNIT! In addition, we use a state-of-the-art diagnostics like the TM Flow diagnostic unit to accurately determine the increase in blood flow and a small skin biopsy to accurately determine the increase in small nerve fibers! The Sanexas electric cell signaling system delivers energy to the affected area of your body at varying wavelengths, including both low-frequency and middle-frequency signals. It also uses amplitude modulated (AM) and frequency modulated (FM) signaling. During a treatment session, the Sanexas system automatically changes to simultaneously deliver AM and FM electric cell signal energy. THE GREAT NEWS IS THAT SANEXAS IS COVERED BY MEDICARE AND MOST INSURANCE! Depending on your coverage, your treatment could be little to no cost to you! The amount of treatment needed to allow the nerves to fully recover varies from person to person and can only be determined after a detailed neurological and vascular evaluation. As long as you have not sustained at least 95% nerve damage there is hope! Aspen Medical will do a chronic pain and neuropathy severity examination to determine the extent of the nerve damage as a public service to you and/or your family and friends. This neuropathy/ pain severity examination will consist of a detailed sensory evaluation, extensive peripheral vascular testing, and a detailed analysis of the findings of your neuropathy.

Fig. 2

Aspen Medical will be offering this chronic pain and neuropathy severity examination from now until February 28, 2022. Call 480-

274-3157 to make an appointment to determine if your chronic pain and peripheral neuropathy can be successfully treated. Due to our very busy office schedule, we are limiting this FREE consultation offer to the first 15 callers. YOU DO NOT HAVE TO SUFFER ANOTHER MINUTE, CALL Call 480-274-3157 … NOW!

We are extremely busy and if your call goes to our voicemail, please leave a message and we will get back to you asap.

480-274-3157

4540 E Baseline Rd., Suite 119 Mesa Az 85206