Ever since his son was diagnosed with schizophrenia at the age of 16, H. Clarke Romans has made it his life’s mission to break down the stigma surrounding mental illness.

And Romans, director of the National Alliance on Mental Illness of Southern Arizona, was furious when the state cut funds this year for seriously mentally ill people, limiting many of the services available to them.

The budget cuts passed July 1 have meant that seriously mentally ill people who do not meet state Title XIX requirements for reimbursable services started losing funding.

The cuts meant that anyone who does not qualify for Medicaid also does not qualify for aid. Now, these people are state-sanctioned only for generic medication and some crisis services.

Previously, seriously mentally ill patients were provided name-brand medication, therapeutic services and in extreme cases, housing.

Ask Teresa Leal what she thinks of herself, and she’ll say she’s hyperactive and disciplined.

The Sonora native who lives on the Mexican side of Nogales will also say she’s a warrior.

And the 60-year-old curator and educator at the Pimeria Alta Historical Society in Nogales, Ariz., adds that she has no plans to slow down.

“I’m busy and hopefully productive, but the times are serious enough for all of us to try anything,” she says.

Leal is an active member of her community on environment and health issues, and she’s now planning her next project, in which she will work with the Binational Health Councils to examine community health issues on both sides of the border.

No doubt she’ll pull it off. There’s a certain warrior fierceness about the petite woman with a tightly cropped pixie cut who moves from a hearty chuckle to a down-to-business attitude with ease.

“Unsymmetrical dimethylhydrazine” is a toxic compound used in making rocket fuel. Bob Darcangelo is no rocket scientist, but he can recite the name of the compound without a stutter.

Darcangelo, a 71-year-old who lives in Green Valley, has spent more than 1,700 hours volunteering at the Titan Missile Museum in Sahuarita. He was a crew commander at this site when it was still active in the 1960s. He said he has a master’s degree in history, so working at the museum “…fits my vein of history.”

As a crew commander, he was constantly training crews and monitoring equipment. “We didn’t do anything from memory,” he said. “We had to do it right.”

The museum, also known as Titan II ICBM Site 571-7, was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1994 and is kept as an artifact of 20th century technology. The single silo was operational in 1963 and decommissioned in 1982, when other Titan II missiles in the United States were decommissioned after a change in policy under President Ronald Reagan.

Dr. Kai Haber opened a drawer in his desk at the University Medical Center Radiology Department to reveal a rare piece of medical history.

After carefully removing its wrapping, Haber held up a 60-year-old glass plate, a remnant of a bygone era in radiography.

A silver-chloride film emulsion covering the plate depicts the elbow of a small child – proof of just how far medical imaging has come since the X-rays of the 1940s.

“Not many people have seen this,” Haber said. “There are not many left. Most are in museums.”

Carefully returning the plate to its packaging, he added, “Things have changed dramatically in our field.”

Haber, director of teleradiology at the University of Arizona, knows what he’s talking about. Thanks to advancements in digital technology, he and his team spend their days interpreting radiological images sent over the Arizona Telemedicine Network.

The program gives remote hospitals, such as those on the Hopi, Navajo and Apache reservations, access to specialists who diagnose cases in a matter of minutes.

“Necesito dos hot dogs, pero sin mayonesa,” Marisela Romero said as she ordered another hot dog in the yellow bus turned eatery.

Inside the Chuyito’s Hot Dogs bus in Rio Rico, about 10 miles north of the U.S.-Mexico border in a Chevron parking lot, employee Romero tapped on the window that separates the seating area from the kitchen to get chef Martin Lopez’s attention.

She formed a “v” with her left hand and pressed it against the window.

“Con chilies?” Lopez asked in his soft-spoken tone.

“Si,” Romero responded as she pulled her arms to her side to squeeze by a customer in the cramped bus-gone-canteen that specializes in the Sonoran hot dog.

The blue, red and yellow bus, which looks like it may have transported schoolchildren in its previous life, is gutted and has room for a small kitchen and four seating booths.

If the inside seats fill up, there are a few tables and chairs set up in front of the bus, too.

All of the workers in Chuyito’s speak Spanish only.