jacob taylor / 3rd place editors' choice prize in essays

Special Study: Rio Grande

Overview

Operation Status	CLOSED/ARREST
Occurred On	AUG-14-2017
Duration	3 YEARS
Approved By
Report Submitted By	JACOB TAYLOR
Org Unit	CENTRAL BIKES
Municipality	SALT LAKE CITY
County	SALT LAKE COUNTY
	District SL4C Beat 410
Special Study	RIO GRANDE
Gang Involvement	NONE/UNKNOWN
Family Violence	NO
Cargo Theft	NO

In 2015, Jon Stewart declares on the Daily Show that Utah has solved chronic homelessness. How does the state do it? Utah gives the homeless homes.

In 2005, Utah, with its senators and representatives, draft legislation in little rooms. The ten-year plan to end homelessness saves money; compassionate conservates laud this newfound revelation.

In 2015, when the state-sanctioned funding runs out, and the homeless have their homes, Utah does not renew the Housing-First initiative. Crime grows like weeds around the capitol’s homeless shelter as the homeless grow in number. Rumors spread that California, Washington, Wyoming, New York ship their homeless off to Salt Lake City, and news agencies spit out headlines. (But Utah ships off its homeless too.)

Utah declares war on drugs—and a secret war on the homeless, on you.

The state decides that it no longer wants to give the homeless homes; now, it will give the homeless citations and handcuffs and police escorts to the county jail.

The operation costs sixty-seven million dollars.

General Project Information

Phase One: Public Safety and Restoring Order Identify, Arrest and Lock up Dangerous Criminals

From the beginning, advocates and homeless outreach workers worry that Utah will go after more than just the dangerous criminals.

Offenses (Completed/Attempted)

Offense #	1 5311-0 PUB PEACE-DISORDERLY - COMPLETED 1 5399-87 PUB PEACE-TRANSIENT - COMPLETED
Location	SIDEWALK/CURB
Diversion Recommended	NO
Bias	NONE (NO BIAS)

Narrative Text

Long clouds sweep across the sky and threaten to drop water on you as you lie beneath layers of blankets you’ve collected from friends, from social workers, from motels back when you had cash. You don’t use all your blankets—not yet. You’ve collected these blankets for when the temperature drops below 32, for when the rain turns to snow, and you need to keep that snow away from flesh. But even now, in mid-November, the layers of cotton and nylon break the wind as it rolls coolly over the concrete you lie on.

An officer approaches with a single sheet of paper in his hands. “Your belongings are blocking the sidewalk,” he says, like you lost track of them. He tries to hand you his piece of paper, but you don’t want it. Paper is such a fragile thing: it disintegrates when wet, crumbles in pockets, disappears in the wind. The officer says the paper holds a city ordinance that says you can’t live where you’re living. It’s like an eviction notice. You refuse the paper; you tell him you already know what it says.

The officer leaves, but he says that he’ll be back to make sure you’re in compliance.

You start folding blankets, stuffing clothing and food in duffle bags, shoving bicycle parts up against the wooden fence. You thought you could throw more away, but with snow coming so soon, you know you’ll need everything. Once clothes get wet, they’re useless. Once a blanket gets wet, it’s useless. Wet gives you frostbite, hypothermia.

When you see Chris leaving the shelter, you ask to borrow his phone.

“What happened to yours?” Chris asks. “I thought you had a Medicaid phone.”

“It broke,” you say. The phone you got in exchange for your social security number didn’t last longer than a week before you dropped it on the concrete, and the screen crumbled from the corner, sending pixelated lines down the display. “I need to call my brother.”

Chris hands you his phone—tells you to be quick—and you call.

“I need you to help me move my stuff,” you say, after telling him it’s you.

“Right now?”

“The police say I have to.”

“You have so much.”

“I’ll freeze without it.”

He sighs. “Same place?”

“Same place.”

When the officer comes back, his eyes count your duffle bags and folded blankets, stacked against the wooden fence. He asks you to move your stuff, and you say no.

“The sidewalk needs to be open and free for all to use,” the officer says. “Your property is preventing others from using it.”

You look over at the main sidewalk, where people actually walk, and you look back to where your stuff lies, next to the bike racks. You wonder why he’s making such a big deal out of it all.

“Do you want a citation?” the officer asks.

Another piece of paper for the weather to eat. You tell him that you would, and he scrawls your information on his pad. You sign under “WITHOUT ADMITTING GUILT, I PROMISE TO APPEAR AS DIRECTED HEREIN.” Then, the officer leaves.

You thought the citation would be the end of it, but the officer comes back the next day and the day after that.

Each time you hear the clicking of an old truck’s sputtering engine, you stare at the road to see if your brother has finally come to help you move your stuff. Sometimes, you stand on the curb and look for rusted blue metal.

When you tell the officer that you’re still waiting for your brother, he tells you to take your stuff to the storage lockers across the street, but you don’t trust them. You’ve heard that they might throw away your stuff, that they’ll let strangers into your locker—not just officers without search warrants: anyone who says they know you or are you. You need your belongings where you can see them, where you know they’re safe.

You’ve begun a ritual of folding blankets, of shifting your belongings from bag to bag, from pile to pile—all to appease the officer. You try not to disturb Maria, who pulled layers of blankets over herself this morning after finishing her night shift at Amazon. She started taking naps next to you after you fixed her bike in exchange for her Amazon warehouse shoes.

The officer seems different—angrier—when you see him next. “Did you sleep outside with your stuff last night?” he asks. You don’t think anything of it when you tell him you had. You don’t know where he thinks you’ve been sleeping. “You have five minutes to pack up everything and move it,” the officer says, and then he leaves. You, of course, don’t. Not because five minutes is an insane amount of time to give someone to pack up all their belongings. Not because moving all your belongings would require you to wake up Maria, who’s had a very long night and needs her rest before she goes back to work tonight. You refuse to move your belongings out of principle.

You have already been kicked out of your home, accumulating thousands of dollars of debt in legal fees that you must put on a payment plan before anyone will even consider renting to you again. When you first tried living in the shelter, someone stole your phone and your shoes and your blanket—and the staff refused to find out who did it. The only home left to you is this section of concrete next to the bike racks, and you won’t let the officer take it from you.

When he comes back, he has his paperwork filled out already. He gives the lump of blankets that is Maria a look before handing you the citation and a pen. You sign it, but you notice that he charged you with camping this time. You don’t understand how you’re camping if you don’t have a tent and realize that you should get yourself a tent if the police are going to give you citations for camping anyway.

“The shelter has available beds,” the officer says. “That’s where you need to be sleeping right now.”

“I’m never staying in the shelter,” you say.

General Project Information

Phase Two: Assessment and Treatment

Assess, Treat and Support Individuals

Utah refers some of you to treatment as a prerequisite to housing. This doesn’t happen very often (the housing). Utah sends twenty-nine of you (of the thousands of you arrested during the first six months of the operation) to a community mental health treatment center. Utah sends most of you immediately back onto the streets without support. (The jails are too full to hold you.)

The state says you cannot live on the streets, but Utah will not keep you in jail.

Offenses (Completed/Attempted)

Offense #	1 3550-0 DRUG-NARCOTIC EQUIP POSS - COMPLETED 1 4902-0 ESCAPE-WARRANTS ALL IN STATE - COMPLETED
Location	HOTEL/MOTEL
Diversion Recommended	NO
Criminal Activity	POSSESSING/CONCEALING
Bias	NONE (NO BIAS)

Narrative Text

The Gateway Inn’s red-brimmed roof hangs over your head, and you hood yourself with a crinkling emergency blanket. You don’t quite remember how you got to the inn, only that your mother tried calling you earlier, and that never goes well.

“Drop your pipe,” someone shouts, like it’s a weapon. “Sit down on the sidewalk.” Your scorched glass pipe clinks on the ground, and you sit. Your brain seems to shut off even more than it already had before as your body freezes up. The shouting man asks you a barrage of questions and seems frustrated when you can’t answer them all at once. “Are you high?” he asks, and you nod.

When the shouting man starts to touch you, tells you to lift your arms and put them back down, you don’t do what he asks—not right away. He gets upset and yanks your wrists behind your back into cold metal cuffs.

“Can I search your pockets?” the shouting man asks.

You don’t know what to say. You don’t think you’re allowed to say no, not without admitting guilt in some way. You feel like he’s waiting for you to say the wrong thing. You don’t want to go to jail.

The shouting man asks again if he can search your pockets.

“I am not sure about my rights,” you say.

“You can say yes, or no,” the shouting man says. “It’s up to you.”

“Yes, you can,” you say. “I don’t think I have anything in them.”

The shouting man digs through your pockets as metal digs into your wrists. He doesn’t seem to find what he wants to find, but he bags up your empty straws and charred tin foil anyway. He doesn’t drive you away and lock you up like you thought he might. Instead, he unlocks his cuffs and leaves you with a piece of paper.

The weather eats that piece of paper before your brain wakes up.

The shouting man never explains to you which day you have to appear in court. The piece of paper the weather ate states, “You are hereby ordered to appear before the Salt Lake City Justice Court on the 14th calendar day from the date this citation is issued (not counting the date this citation is issued) at 8:30 a.m.. If the 14th falls on a weekend or holiday, you must appear the next business day.”

Even if you could have held onto the piece of paper, you could not have solved its puzzle. The shouting man knows this.

Next month, when the citation becomes a warrant, a different shouting man places you in handcuffs and drives you away in the back seat of his flashing car.

At the jail, they squeeze your fingers as they roll them across screens, and cameras document your identity. They do not give you a meal or coffee. They do not read you your rights, even though you are not sure of them.

They do not recommend diversion of any sort. They do not send you to drug treatment or detox or social services.

Instead, they release you because they have already arrested too many people for their jail to hold. You return to homelessness with more for employers and landlords to search for in background checks.

General Project Information

Phase One: Public Safety and Restoring Order Identify, Arrest and Lock up Dangerous Criminals

The state issues 1,442 Operation Rio Grande felonies from August 2017 to July 2019. Utah doesn’t have the space to lock you up (you, the dangerous criminals), but it also issues 2,507 warrants and 3.323 misdemeanors. (The courts are overloaded, and you can’t remember your court date.) You keep cycling through the jail system. Utah books you into jail, and then the jail releases you, and then the state books you again. (You missed your day in court.)

Where does a dangerous criminal go when even the jail evicts you?

Offenses (Completed/Attempted)

Offense #	1 1313-0 ASLT-SIMPLE ASSAULT - COMPLETED 1 4902-0 ESCAPE-WARRANTS ALL IN STATE - COMPLETED
Location	HOTEL/MOTEL
Diversion Recommended	NO
Weapon Type	PERSONAL WEAPONS / PHYSICAL
Bias	NONE (NO BIAS)

Narrative Text

What makes you a dangerous criminal? Is it the twenty-four warrants for your arrest? Is it your golf club? Is it the way you walk in the dark?

The officers don’t know why you hit that man with your golf club, the man who hit you with a stick. They never found him—only you.

The officers don’t charge you with any felonies, and they find no drugs, no paraphernalia. Maybe that’s why they release you, despite your many warrants, and send you on your way when the jail fills up.

Your arrest is attributed to Operation Rio Grande, yet the officers cannot confirm your homeless status. You refuse to identify yourself, and the officers have to pry your name and date of birth from your pockets.

The officers go through so much effort to identify and arrest the threat you’ve become, but the state doesn’t lock you up; you must not be a dangerous criminal, after all.

Nothing comes from your arrest but another warrant. Your police report is for documentation purposes only.

General Project Information

Phase Three: Dignity of Work Public/Private Partnership to Increase Employment Opportunities and Training

The state arrests you seven thousand times, but Utah employs 246 of you through the Dignity of Work program. You build work history to minimize the stain a criminal record leaves on your future job applications. You can’t save up for rent on minimum wage, working part time.

Utah says that if you just work hard enough, you’ll get out of the hole you’ve dug yourself into. You don’t need the state to give you a home. You need the state to arrest you, to slap you back into reality, as if it hasn’t already hit you. The state tells you that you can’t exist as you are—you must find your dignity in labor, not at home.

Offenses (Completed/Attempted)

Offense #	2 5707-0 PRIV-TRESSPASS - COMPLETED 2 5399-87 PUB PEACE-TRANSIENT - COMPLETED
Location	OTHER/UNKNOWN
Diversion Recommended	NO
Armed With	PHYSICAL FORCE
Bias	NONE (NO BIAS)

Narrative Text

You can’t stand the shelters, so instead you live behind buildings, down alleys, inside your REC Firefox II tent. You bought this tent yourself before you got fired, back when you still had money.

The officers keep telling you to move your tent. You’ve seen them come in with backhoes and plow lines of pitched tents over, scoop them into dump trucks. You’re afraid they’ll do that to yours, so you don’t leave it—you can’t leave it. It’s your one last possession of value. You run to the food pantry every few days, but you never abandon your tent for more than half an hour at a time.

When you wake to shouting—“Anyone in there?”—and the shadow of a hand shaking your tent, you worry that you’re getting robbed. The social workers don’t shake tents.

After that shadow of a hand tells you he’s a police officer, you zip open the orange-grey door.

“Although it might not be ideal, the shelter is where it’s warm and safe,” the officer says. “That’s where you need to be sleeping.”

He doesn’t understand the way that you feel constantly on edge with so many people around you, the way you can’t sleep at night.

He writes two citations for you to add to your pile of waterlogged paperwork, and you sign for them. Before the officer leaves, he tells you to go to the shelter again.

You try to go back to sleep with your extended criminal record, but your tent feels less safe than before.

General Project Information

Phase One: Public Safety and Restoring Order Identify, Arrest and Lock up Dangerous Criminals

Utah declares you a threat; you are disorder. The state removes your indecency from the premises and disposes of what it does not deem evidence, and what you cannot carry, in the landfill.

Utah documents your existence in systems of zeros and ones—intangible. The bits you can touch shrivel with the snow as it melts around your tent. The ink reconstitutes and bleeds in veins across the pulping paper. It does not say what it said before.

Utah demands you confine your existence to the lines it set. You can remember where the lines were, but you cannot understand why the lines were there at all now that you live in the weather.

Offenses (Completed/Attempted)

Offense #	4 5707-0 PRIV-TRESSPASS - COMPLETED 1 4902-0 ESCAPE-WARRANTS ALL IN STATE - COMPLETED 4 5399-87 PUB PEACE-TRANSIENT - COMPLETED 1 3512 DRUG-HEROIN POSSESS - COMPLETED
Location	SIDEWALK/CURB SHELTHER - MISSION/HOMELESS HWY/ROAD/ALLEY/STREET OTHER/UNKNOWN
Diversion Recommended	NO
Criminal Activity	POSSESSING/CONCEALING
Bias	NONE (NO BIAS)

Narrative Text

When the officers find you huddled in your jumble of blankets, they swarm around you, hands on hips with disapproval. The officers surprise you when they give you the opportunity to leave before giving you a citation. The option doesn’t change anything though. Your stomach swells with your unborn child and you have too much stuff to carry. You’ve confined yourself to this corner of the world until Marcus gets back. You don’t tell the officers this because you know they won’t care. The officers just need you to disappear.

When the officers don’t go away, you stop ignoring them and start saying “fuck you” until they give you a citation. You think that’s the end of it, but then the officer, seeing the way your belly juts out of your thin body calls social services.

The two case workers who come to “start the housing process” bring clipboards with forms and collect your information in light-gray scrawls, but you see in their eyes that this is false hope. This is really about your kid. The case workers know you can’t get a home before your due date, so they’ve come to track you—to take your child away the second you give birth. You might get second chances with trespassing, but you won’t even have one with your unborn child.

Eight days later, after Marcus has carried your blankets and duffle bags of canned food to a slab of cracking asphalt behind the old Serta Mattress where he has set up the Coleman he traded for his old sleeping bag, after you both have eaten enough of that canned food to build a mound of tin cans and grocery bags outside the tent—you start your hustle again.

You stopped panhandling in July after a white man in his mid-thirties gave you a job application to the 7-Eleven—no pen, just the single sheet of paper—instead of whatever cash lay at the back of his wallet. It did not matter that you didn’t have a place to shower, a place to wash your clothes. You needed to pull yourself up by your bootstraps and learn how to fish.

Now, you trade sleeping bags for tents and sell drugs with Marcus for extra cash. Everything you find on the streets becomes a resource; you weave blankets out of plastic grocery bags.

When the officers come to kick you off the abandoned property—and they always do—they don’t give you a chance to leave. This time the officers pull your arms behind your back and click them into cuffs. First Marcus, then you. When the officer searches your pockets, he finds heroin, and when he finds your heroin, he pours a bit of it into a small testing kit, seals it, and snaps the vial of liquid, activating its chemicals. You watch as the liquid feeds off the heroin, shooting deep purple swirls through the plastic pouch. The officer gives you three new citations to add to your long list of pending charges. Marcus gets two.

When they take you both to jail and roll your fingers over bright biometric cameras, they don’t recommend diversion—no detox or substance use treatment, no housing intervention. They send you away without a meal, without coffee, without the reading of your rights. They assign Marcus a cell—and you’re not quite sure why. You have more charges building up on your record: camping and trespassing and possessing and assaulting and camping and trespassing and breaking curfew and camping and trespassing and possessing.

But Marcus sold or arranged the sale or distributed a controlled substance (and he got caught)—and that makes him a dangerous criminal, a threat they must contain, while you remain pregnant and alone.

Fourteen days later, after the police have taken the Coleman and blankets and canned food, you’ve managed to gather a new set of blankets, duffle bags, and even a sleeping bag. You stack your duffle bags around yourself to create walls that block the harsh winter wind and lay a blanket you wove from plastic grocery bags on top to keep off the rain you know is coming that night.

The officer who has been following you all week approaches you, and you don’t want to hear whatever he has to say. Three days ago, you were blocking the sidewalk, so you moved. Two days ago, you were blocking the sidewalk, so you moved. Yesterday, you were blocking the sidewalk, so you moved. Each day, you find a new unpossessed corner of the concrete to make your home: tucked beside the shelter’s ramp, next to the Portland Loo. You don’t understand how you can block the sidewalk when the Portland Loo isn’t—but still, you move your stuff.

Today, the officer asks you if you slept outside next to the Loo. When you tell him that you had, he tells you that you have five minutes to move your belongings, that your wall of duffle bags is a “structure” in violation of the city’s camping ordinance.

You see the officer hand out citations like candy to everyone outside the shelter before he comes back to give you yours. In your allotted five minutes, you tear down your wall of duffle bags, roll up your sleeping bag, and fold your blankets. That isn’t good enough for the officer. He gives you your fourth—or is it your fifth? (you’ve lost count)—citation for camping.

Before the officer leaves, he tells you to stay at the shelter. You are tired of hearing officers demand you sleep in a building that feels like a jail. You tell him that you refuse to stay in the shelter, but you know he doesn’t care. He doesn’t understand.

Conclusion

You, the dangerous criminal, are stalked by the record Rio Grande gave you. The fines, the jail time, the arrest records.

Maybe the state helps you find treatment or work—but that’s statistically unlikely. Instead, you feel a spike of adrenaline every time a car with too-bright LED headlights drives by. Instead, you hold onto your state-issued ID card like your life depends on it (because you know it might). Instead, you keep folded stacks of paper applications you’ve found and filled out by yourself in wrinkled, tearing Ziploc bags because your progress is oh so very fragile.

Works Consulted

Dorn, Sara. “NYC secretly exports homeless to Hawaii and other states without telling receiving pols.” New York Post. 28 Oct. 2019. nypost.com/2019/10/26/nyc-homeless-initiative-sends-people-across-us-without-telling-receiving-cities/.

Groth, Jason M. and Hannah Jackovich. “Displaced and Dispersed: The Aftermath of Operation Rio Grande.” ACLU, Utah. 14 Sept. 2022. acluutah.org/en/publications/displaced-and-dispersed-aftermath-operation-rio-grande.

“The Homeless Homed.” The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, season 20, Comedy Central, 2015. cc.com/video/lntv3q/the-daily-show-with-jon-stewart-the-homeless-homed.

“Housing First.” National Alliance to End Homelessness. 20 March 2022. endhomelessness.org/resource/housing-first/.

J99. Salt Lake Police Department. 4902-0 Escape-Warrants All in State. Salt Lake City: SL4C, 25 July 2017. Print.

J99. Salt Lake Police Department. 5707-0 Priv-Trespass. Salt Lake City: SL4C, 25 July 2017. Print.

N71. Salt Lake Police Department. 5311-0 Pub Peace-Disorderly Conduct. Salt Lake City: SL4C, 14 Nov. 2017. Print.

N71. Salt Lake Police Department. 5399-87 Pub Peace-Transient. Salt Lake City: SL4C, 16 Nov. 2017. Print.

N71. Salt Lake Police Department. 5399-87 Pub Peace-Transient. Salt Lake City: SL4C, 16 Nov. 2017. Print.

O14. Salt Lake Police Department. 5707-0 Priv-Trespass. Salt Lake City: SL4C, 27 July 2017. Print.

O25. Salt Lake Police Department. 3512-0 Drug-Heroin Possess. Salt Lake City: SL4C, 4 Nov. 2017. Print.

O25. Salt Lake Police Department. 4902-0 Escape-Warrants All in State. Salt Lake City: SL4C, 2 Nov. 2017. Print.

O31. Salt Lake Police Department. 5707-0 Priv-Trespass. Salt Lake City: SL4C, 16 Aug. 2017. Print.

O34. Salt Lake Police Department. 4902-0 Escape-Warrants All in State. Salt Lake City: SL2P, 1 Oct. 2017. Print.

O59. Salt Lake Police Department. 5707-0 Priv-Trespass. Salt Lake City: SL4C, 21 Oct. 2017. Print.

Outside in America team. “Bussed out: How America moves its homeless.” The Guardian. 20 Dec. 2017. theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2017/dec/20/bussed-out-america-moves-homeless-people-country-study.

“Operation Rio Grande: Phase 1 Tracking.” State of Utah. 13 Aug. 2019. web.archive.org/web/20220127090121/https://operationriogrande.utah.gov/ORG_phase1.pdf. Archived from operationriogrande.utah.gov on 27 Jan. 2022 by Wayback Machine: Internet Archive. 

“Operation Rio Grande: Phase 2 Tracking.” State of Utah. 13 Aug. 2019. web.archive.org/web/20220127090130/https://operationriogrande.utah.gov/ORG_phase2.pdf. Archived from operationriogrande.utah.gov on 27 Jan. 2022 by Wayback Machine: Internet Archive. 

“Operation Rio Grande: Phase 3 Tracking.” State of Utah. 13 Aug. 2019. web.archive.org/web/20220127090121/https://operationriogrande.utah.gov/ORG_phase3.pdf. Archived from operationriogrande.utah.gov on 27 Jan. 2022 by Wayback Machine: Internet Archive. 

Q23. Salt Lake Police Department. 3550-0 Drug-Narcotic Equipment Poss. Salt Lake City: SL2P, 19 Sept. 2017. Print.

Q63. Salt Lake Police Department. 1313-0 Aslt-Simple Assault. Salt Lake City: SL4C, 18 Jan. 2018. Print.

Q74. Salt Lake Police Department. 5707-0 Priv-Trespass. Salt Lake City: SL4C, 21 Sept. 2017. Print.

Salt Lake City, Utah, Municipal Code § 77-12. 11.12.080: Camping on Public Grounds, Streets, Parks and Playgrounds. American Legal Publishing. 2012. codelibrary.amlegal.com/codes/saltlakecityut/latest/saltlakecity_ut/0-0-0-51652.

Salt Lake City, Utah, Municipal Code § 88-86 § 62. 14.20.010: Sidewalk Obstructions Prohibited. American Legal Publishing. 1986. codelibrary.amlegal.com/codes/saltlakecityut/latest/saltlakecity_ut/0-0-0-54528.

Scruggs, Gregory. “Once a National Model, Utah Struggles with Homelessness.” Reuters. 10 Jan. 2019. reuters.com/article/us-usa-homelessness-housing/once-a-national-model-utah-struggles-with-homelessness-idUSKCN1P41EQ. 

“State of Utah Annual Report on Homelessness 2017.” Department of Workforce Services: Housing and Community Development. jobs.utah.gov/housing/scso/documents/homelessness2017.pdf. 

“State of Utah Annual Report on Homelessness 2018.” Department of Workforce Services: Housing and Community Development. jobs.utah.gov/housing/scso/documents/homelessness2018.pdf. 

“State of Utah Annual Report on Homelessness 2019.” Department of Workforce Services: Housing and Community Development. jobs.utah.gov/housing/scso/documents/homelessness2019.pdf. 

Stevenson, Jason and Jason M. Groth. “Calculating the Real Cost of Operation Rio Grande.” ACLU, Utah. 8 Nov. 2018. acluutah.org/en/publications/calculating-real-cost-operation-rjailio-grande. 

Unified Police of Greater Salt Lake. “Rio Grande SLCo Confirm.” Smartsheet. app.smartsheet.com/b/publish?EQBCT=62d8119de22c4dfdb104ef62f1613bb9. Accessed 15 Jan. 2024.

Acknowledgement

Utah State University’s Center for Intersectional Gender Studies & Research funded a series of public record requests that made it possible to write this essay.

---

Jacob Taylor grew up in Utah and is currently completing a PhD in creative writing at Illinois State University. You can find their work published and forthcoming in Sugar Suites, Press Pause Press, Turning Leaf Journal, Sink Hollow, and elsewhere.