ANTHONY GARCIA ~
Flagstaff City Councilmember Anthony Garcia wore his father’s cowboy hat on his way into City Hall. He carried with him the legacy of three generations of Flagstaff citizens, his neck adorned with thick strings of coral and turquoise.
“Today is the tomorrow we feared yesterday,” Garcia said, walking into the council chambers while a protest against uranium mining began on the front lawn of City Hall.
His life began in Little Rock Hospital across from the Flagstaff Medical Center. He was born with cataracts — a condition that would literally and figuratively shape how he saw the world.
For the first five years of his life, Garcia said, the people around him thought he was simply developing slower than his peers.
“It wasn’t until my aunt, who watched me a lot, threw some change on the floor and told me to go pick it up, that someone saw I wasn’t even in the vicinity of where the change was,” Garcia said. “I couldn’t pick it up, because it wasn’t there. I couldn’t see it. They finally thought, ‘Hey, maybe this guy has seeing problems.’”
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Garcia was the first child in Arizona to receive a crude version of a cataract surgery. He said they removed the lenses of his eyes, and he’s lived his life without natural lenses since.
“The first thing I saw after the surgery was a helicopter landing on the roof of the hospital, from my hospital bed during recovery,” Garcia said. “I didn’t think it was weird, because since it was the first thing I saw, I thought it was normal. What I thought was very strange was when I left the hospital, went to the car, and it wasn’t a helicopter.”
When Garcia first walked into Flagstaff City Hall, he was 7 years old, on a school field trip. He said it wasn’t until he first attended a meeting in his early 20s that he realized he wanted to become a central part of his community’s politics.
Garcia was elected to the city council last November with 14,000 votes and sworn in on Dec. 17, 2024.
As a Flagstaff native, Garcia said he has seen Northern Arizona shift and change in astounding ways in his lifetime, largely as a result of NAU’s expansion.
“Back then, it was a completely different world,” Garcia said. “When a police officer saw you, they’d wave at you. They wouldn’t try to chase you down. They knew I was Anthony from over there and I was going over here to ride my four wheeler.”
Garcia did not pursue higher education when he graduated high school. He began working odd jobs, like his family had before him. He lived paycheck to paycheck for several years, sometimes living out of his car to get by.
All the while, Garcia stayed in Flagstaff. He said even when times were tough, he knew that Flagstaff was the place to be, despite the restricting financial position that often landed him in.
“It was Flagstaff,” he said. “It didn’t matter if you lived in a house or an apartment or a tent or a car, you’re in a good place, but not really excelling. Not building a bank account.”
It wasn’t until Garcia was almost 30 years old when he decided he would like to try to go to college. However, because he had never registered for the selective service in high school, he was ineligible for any grants or scholarships, and he could not financially justify a degree.
Instead, Garcia turned to the things he knew he was interested in: humanities and politics. That is what led to his regular attendance at City Hall meetings.
“The state-run institution imports students, and they’re transient by nature, and so is their system,” Garcia said. “In other words, there weren’t many professors from Flagstaff. Everything was brought in, and that led to what we as locals saw as a separation between us and them, like we were two countries bordering each other with no communication.”
Despite the divides Garcia saw between the NAU and Flagstaff communities, he said the benefits a university brings to a small town should not be understated.
Garcia said, in his role as Councilmember, he is excited by the idea of working with the administration at NAU.
“Flagstaff would not look like Flagstaff without NAU,” Garcia said. “It benefits the small businesses downtown, and when classes are in session, Flagstaff’s economy can really flourish.”
Garcia said that in today’s sociopolitical climate, breaking down the social barriers between a transient NAU population and consistent Flagstaff locals is more important than ever.
“Let’s go back to being Flagstaff people, where it didn’t really matter how weird you were,” Garcia said. “We all work hard to get to a common goal. That’s what I want to see. That’s why I’m here.”
"When I came to city hall, all the dots got connected,” Garcia said. “ I found a place where I can learn everything I need to know about humanities, I can learn how to help my community, I can learn what’s actually happening here. I thought, who knows, maybe one day I can put that to good work.”
As NAU began to kick into high gear at the start of Garcia’s life, he watched as the academic calendar became a major economic indicator in and around Flagstaff. When class was in session, the demographic and financial climate of his hometown shifted drastically.
Flagstaff City Councilmember
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