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Story Ten ~ Ted T oday is a day for our cause to marshal the forces of the media. I don’t realize it at first, but it is soon to be in the forefront of my consciousness. I receive a message from the person who schedules trips advising me that a young woman in our group will be leading an ABC weekend news team on our outing into the desert. They’re doing a story on migrants and the support Christian groups are giving them. I meet a familiar face at the shed. He has already loaded the truck. The young woman shows at 7:00 a.m., apologizing for being an hour late. The ABC crew calls her cell phone and lets us know they are running late as well. Something about breakfast not being served quickly enough. The sun is now climbing higher into the sky, and I begin to get antsy. We are usually on the highway by now between the ranges that ring our patrol route, and to be sitting at the shed is disquieting. The ABC crew arrives, driving a big black SUV that looks as if the Secret Service uses it for a presidential detail. It is packed with all types of equipment for making the news. They most certainly want to make it, as does a second crew, which mysteriously appears on the scene. The second group is from the Discovery Channel, and the producer is letting the young woman know in no uncertain terms that her news team has permission and was told it was “cool” to follow us. Already I can feel the animosity between the two news groups. The ABC group feels like the Discovery Channel is poaching their story, and they are the heavy hitters. No? The woman who is producing for the Discovery Channel will not back down and begins to plead. It is quickly turning into a scene, and so I broach a compromise: we will meet the Discovery Channel people at high noon at the mercantile in Arivaca, and they can follow along at that point. By then the ABC crew will have all they need to make their story, or so I hope. We leave the shed finally about two hours later than what we should have and head out Route 86. We are to meet the ABC crew in Three Points. They have already told us they want to set up a camera inside the Samaritan truck to get shots of the young woman driving. The producer will be interviewing her during this segment. We get to Three Points, the crew sets up a camera inside our truck, and we head south. They ask me to ride in the big black SUV, which has enough airconditioning for three cars. The sound person in the rear puts on her jacket to stay warm. We pull in at a ranch road, drive down a few miles, and find fresh tracks of footprints crossing the road. We pull down a side road and move back into the bush, where the camera crew, along with the Samaritans, walk south on a trail. They film her calling out into the desert. We see no one and go back to the trucks. We load up and head farther south and go onto another ranch road. We see some tracks. We briefly consider going down a very narrow single-lane road, but the camera guy doesn’t want to. He’s worried about brush scratching his big black SUV. We see a Border Patrol truck parked on the side of the road with not a soul in it. Someone has put a note on the windshield wipers. I ask them to stop, and I check it out. The note is from the National Refuge ranger. It says that migrants were spotted crossing the road down by the windmill at 9:00 a.m. It’s now 10:15. I don’t tell the news crew what the note says. I don’t want to find any migrants on this road with a full news crew and the Border Patrol nearby. Continuing on to a lake, the crew sets up to do an interview with the young Samaritan. I remind her that we need to meet the other crew in town soon, and she lets me know that she is not interested in helping them out. I remind her what is at stake here. Whether she wants to or not, we need...

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