Amarillo, Potter County | featured news

There were the children who were poisoned by their own mother so they wouldn’t be swept into the life she had.
There are young women living as scum of the streets. There was a 10-month old who was passed across the Cambodia-Thailand border and swept into the pit of sexual abuse.
These real people would be dead or trafficked had it not been for rescue organizations rooted in the hotbed of slavery in southeast Asian countries.
But many, in that far-away world, and even in the corners of the Texas Panhandle, aren’t rescued in time.

Hispanic women in the Amarillo area took advantage of a much-needed opportunity to receive free health screenings, information and vaccinations on Saturday thanks to a partnership between Telemundo, Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center — Amarillo, West Texas A&M School of Nursing, Amarillo College, Walgreens and local hospitals.
The Dia de la Salud de la Mujer (Women’s Health Day) was a day long event Saturday at the Amarillo Civic Center Complex Heritage Room and North Exhibit Hall.

A woman in a cowboy hat and an athletic, white dog zigzag through the aisles of Home Depot, practicing training techniques.
But the dog, which spent a year confined to a shelter, and the woman, a U.S. Navy veteran diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, both step cautiously. Together, they must navigate what is, for them, an overstimulating environment.
“Did you hear something? What did you hear? Come on, you’re OK,” Jeannie Smith, the handler, coos to her service dog, Zoe.

In the wake of a recent pep rally at Amarillo High School that caused a controversy on social media and in the community, Amarillo Independent School District announced Saturday that changes will be coming to the administrative regulations for future pep rallies.
Saturday’s special board meeting was called in response to a “fiesta-themed” pep rally on Sept. 22 prior to Amarillo High’s game against Caprock High School at which students donned fake mustaches, sideburns and wore plastic sombreros. Caprock is a predominantly Hispanic high school.

Michael Frazier was a soldier in the U.S. Army for four years in the early 1990s, serving in the Gulf War. When he came home to Texas, he was eligible to take up to 150 college credit hours for free at public state schools thanks to Texas’ Hazlewood Act. But instead of using them himself, he passed them to his children.
Frazier’s daughter Mercedes received 120 of those free hours, using them to attend West Texas A&M University.
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A 73-year-old grandmother walking through the Amarillo Civic Center Complex carrying a rusty machete cannot be a common sight, even during the Halloween season, but it wasn’t unexpected at Amarillo’s Community Garage Sale on Saturday.
Asceion Casas of Amarillo said she purchased the machete to sharpen wooden stakes. Zombie apocalypse? Not quite.
“They’re for the plants in the garden,” she said. “To hold them up.”
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Authorities are investigating a report of a sexual assault and alcohol violations involving minors near the West Texas A&M University campus.
On Wednesday, WT police received a third-party report of the incidents occurring in the 2500 block of fourth Avenue, according to a University Police Department news release.
The incidents reportedly occurred on Tuesday, and all involved are WT students, authorities said.
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For breast cancer survivor Yvette Olivarez, Cinco de Mayo will always represent a celebration of life.
With no history of breast cancer in her family, Olivarez had never had a mammogram before her diagnosis, and she said the discovery of the cancer on May 5, 2014, was “actually a fluke.”
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LUBBOCK — A new piece of surgical technology is making it easier to fully remove breast cancer and is helping cut down patient wait times prior to surgery, according to a Lubbock surgeon.
Dr. Beth Nickels, a surgeon with SWAT Surgical Associates, said she’s been using the SAVI SCOUT Localization and Surgical Guidance System since January, and it’s proving itself to be more efficient and precise for breast cancer surgeries than other methods.
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When the trio of John Mason, John Cure and Bryan Ledgerwood formed the partnership that took the reins of Panhandle Milling in Dawn on Jan. 7, they set out to take the business back to its roots.
“In the old days, they tell stories how the farmers would come here and play dominoes,” Mason, 50, recalled.
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