by John Stapleton
On most days, the Thunderbird Farms area outside of
Maricopa is a quiet farming community. Except to the
occasional visit to Raceway Bar and Grill, most residents
of Maricopa don’t travel that far out. There isn’t much to
see, and that is what the Thunderbird Farms residents like
about it—the peace and quiet, and everyone with enough
space to stretch their arms out. Because of the privacy, it
has also become known as an area suspected as a pathway for drug running and where undocumented migrant
workers can camp out in the abandoned structures or in
the more hidden parts of the community. The other side
of life in Thunderbirds Farms never became as apparent as it did on June 22 when residents, Mike and Tina
Careccia were reported missing—their car found in close
proximity to home, dirtied up. Most close to the situation
murmured, “foul play” and off the record, talked of drug
activity. Something happened though. They didn’t just
walk away from their family, but there was no explanation
how two people could just up and disappear...
For the next week and a half, an intense search and
rescue operation lead by local volunteers, first, set-up at
Raceway Bar and Grill as a communications hub, then
later on, relatives of the Careccia family set up
operation at a local community center. It was a story that
was followed by everyone locally, and it quickly became
national headlines.
Like everyone else, Elsa Valenzuela followed every update of
the missing couple that came across her newsfeed. She had
grown up in the Thunderbird Farms area, with her parents,
her sister, and her brother, Jose. On July 1, everything Elsa
had ever known about her brother, about life, was upended,
along with the lives of Jose’s 4 children. To her horror, the
house she had grown in was on every television station,
blockaded by the Pinal County Sheriff ’s Office with a backhoe digging in the backyard. Going into the next day, July
2, the brother she had grown up with, loved, and cherished
would be all over the news, charged with the murders of
Mike of Tina Careccia.
Since that night of July 1, only one side of the hardship has
been told. While a community mourned for the loss of Mike
and Tina, felt heartache for their children—the Valenzuela
family has also been destroyed and there is no closure in
sight. The Valenzuelas describe themselves as quiet, faithful
Catholics. The patriarch of the family is retired and has
14
health concerns.
The matriarch, wishes nothing but to take
the place of her son who she never knew was involved in
drugs—in fact, drugs are so foreign to the family, they never
knew what signs to look for…
Jose was a stepfather, raising three children of Tohono
O’odham descent while the mother of the children continues to deal with her alcoholic tendencies. At the center of
Jose’s world was his 8-year old son.
In a brief conversation with Jose in July, Jose said his son
was everything to him—always at his hip. Jose expressed
remorse and an unbearable pain that he would never smell
his son again, that he would take him to his first day of
school again. He still couldn’t believe it was him that had
committed the act, and he was desperate to reach out to the
Careccia family to apologize. It appears his main goal is to
avoid the death penalty, and not so much to evade