Artist and Man Tracker

Artist by Day, Man Tracker by Night

Amil Pedro Applies Ancient Skills to Modern Tasks by Pauly Heller

photographs by David Heller

The ringing telephone jangles him awake at 2 A.M. Amil Pedro leaps out of bed and throws on jeans and a tan shirt-the uniform of a man tracker with the Maricopa County Sheriff's Posse Desert Search Unit. He grabs his flashlight, Power Tracker tool and some drinking water, and drives to a command post to meet the helicopter that will fly his team to a remote search site.

A former maintenance technician by day and man tracker by night-how did this Maricopa-Quechan-Cahuilla Indian, who is a teacher at heart, acquire his Indiana Jones-like identity?

Reared on the Gila River Indian Community, Pedro often accompanied his great uncle on searches for strayed livestock, picking up tracking skills along the way. Later, he tracked his friends through the desert for fun.

His family lived in a former barracks of a World War II Japanese internment camp, where his mother reprimanded him for scribbling on his bedroom walls. So he climbed high into the ceiling rafters and drew on them and on brown paper shopping bags instead.

Pedro's persistence as an artist paid off. By age 13, he was selling his watercolors at local art shows. “Go outside and draw what you see around you,” some “big guys” at a national art show in Scottsdale told him. What Pedro sees is reflected in the meticulous detail of his artwork, which has twice won the Arizona Governor's Award for Excellence. He taught himself to flint-knap arrowheads and knives, using a hard object to chip away bits of stone to form a blade. He crafts bows, arrows, headdresses and spear-launching weapons called atlatls.

His eye for detail served him well in his 23-year volunteer service with the DSU. Not everyone can probe the pitch-black desert with a flashlight and discern the subtle clues in bruised blades of grass or tattered spiderwebs, while using the Power Tracker to measure footprints.

“As people tire, their stride gets smaller,” Pedro says. “A person carrying something heavy, like a gallon of water, leaves a deeper footprint on one side. “When [illegal immigrants] come across the border, they walk so far, then set down their water jug. People drop things-pencils, glasses, pieces of paper, even cameras. At night, they stumble over things in the dark, dislodge rocks.”

Pedro's wife, Anne Powers, remarks on her husband's ability to focus, saying, “He blocks everything else out.”

A quiet, thoughtful man, Pedro simply says, “You have to keep your eyes and ears open-just think. Look for something that doesn't belong—a thread, a cigarette butt. Where you step in the brush, it's a different color, wilted.”

Some searches are for missing hikers. “You have to think like a lost person,” Pedro says. “They run out of water. Their thinking is slow. They take off their shoes, their clothes, because they're hot.”

Other people don't want to be found. Pedro heard of a man hiding inside a hollow tree who was detected by the movement of his eyeball as he peeked through a knothole.

Is there danger out there tracking criminals? “No one ever took a shot at me,” Pedro says. “Any threat at night comes from snakes, bears and coyotes.”

These days, having retired and moved from Maricopa County in 2004, Pedro devotes his time to his true passion: preserving tribal traditions through his art. Proceeds from sales of Gila River Dreams, a blanket he designed for the Sheraton Wild Horse Pass Resort and Spa southeast of Phoenix, go toward enhancing the arts and culture for tribal youth.

On a hot July afternoon in a reservation schoolroom, the soft-spoken artist guides a dozen teenage students through the process of transforming ordinary gourds into works of art. His charges are absorbed by their tasks. With a scratchy-scratchy sound, a couple of them file away rough spots on their gourds.

Using a specially designed minidrill, Pedro cuts out a turtle shape from a gourd; then Anne scrapes away its pungent-smelling fibers and seeds. She'll take the gourd home and let Chai tea steep inside it to sweeten its scent.

Pedro demonstrates how to daub on colorful leather dyes, spray with alcohol, then polish a gourd to a crystal-clear finish. He helps a girl carve around metallic-colored stars on her gourd and discusses design possibilities with others. Their finished projects will look like ceramic pots, but will weigh just a few ounces.

Lana Chanda, director of employment and training for the Gila River Indian Community, praises Pedro. “A lot of masters guard their secrets. But that's not the Native way. Any one of these kids could be his competition.”

He demurs, saying, “I show them different things you can do: cut it, paint it, rub it, dab it... different techniques. But when you let 'em go, they have their own ideas. When I show them something, they'll turn around and do something better.”

But his wife, Anne, can't resist bragging. “He had nothing,” she declares. “There was no one who walked up and said, 'Oh, little boy, you're so talented-here's a tablet and pencil.' I'm really proud of that fact, because he just never had that opportunity, and he wants others to have it.”

Like Indiana Jones, this teacher is full of creative ways to achieve his goals. AH