It’s 103 degrees outside, and it’s hard to avoid the unrelenting heat, even on Tamara Shamrock’s shaded porch. But Tamara, 61, is only outside for a little while before she’s whisked into Tiffany Johnson’s car, where the air conditioning is blasting.
“You’re the most important person to them when they take you to a doctor’s appointment or a grocery appointment, and that is such a valuable thing,” says Tamara.
“I just try to make a little extra effort,” said Tiffany, 71. “I’m going to run out to the car and start the air conditioning.”
Tiffany is a volunteer for the Eastside Neighbors Volunteer Program, which pairs volunteer drivers with seniors for rides to the store, medical appointments and other errands.
During Southern Arizona’s months of extreme heat, seniors like Shamrock are among the most vulnerable populations.
Seniors are more likely to take medication that can make them prone to dehydration and to live on a fixed income that can make high electricity costs a burden. They’re also more likely to be socially isolated, which can make it hard to get help when they don’t have access to adequate cooling.
In 2025, 117 people in Pima County died of heat-related causes, according to the Pima County Medical Examiner’s Office. Two-thirds — 67% — were over the age of 60. Of all the deaths, 42% occurred inside a home.
In Southern Arizona, which each year has hit 100 degrees earlier and earlier into spring, a constellation of organizations — from the policy level to day-to-day support — are working with seniors to get them through the most extreme part of the year.
Arizona Luminaria looked into the work of three nonprofits on the front lines of senior support during the heat crisis: the Red Cross of Southern Arizona’s efforts with local government on heat support, a small nonprofit driving seniors to grocers and essential appointments, and a Christian nonprofit running a cooling center during the hottest part of the day.
Red Cross and local government
It’s a hot and hazy morning in July, and two local powerhouses of Southern Arizona heat policy are having a meeting that includes some crucial cooling components: air conditioning, fans and iced coffee.
The mid-summer morning meeting between Tucson’s chief resilience officer Fatima Luna and Courtney Slanaker, head of the Red Cross of Southern Arizona, is a window into a big-picture collaboration between local government and nonprofit partners in one of America’s hottest regions.
Slanaker and Luna are strategizing about the next Southern Arizona Heat Summit, a city-led conference to bring together groups and residents to talk about heat resilience in the region.
Planning the conference is one way the two are thinking about a paradox that has become key to living in Southern Arizona: that it’s both an ongoing and unfolding disaster to live in temperatures that are physically dangerous, and that it’s become a regular part of life for hundreds of thousands across the region.
“Our community in general has a really low risk perception of disaster. When you think about extreme heat, it kills more people than any other disaster combined,” Slanaker says. “The Red Cross might stage people on the ground before and after a hurricane, but it’s harder to define with heat,” she says.
“It’s one of those invisible disasters. It doesn’t have this start and end — it’s a long duration event. It’s hard to define extreme heat in a way that communicates to the public how risky it can be.”
Last year, the conference included sessions on preparing for power outages, communicating the risks of extreme heat, worker protections and a youth panel on climate action.
Seeing the uptick in attendance every year, a big part of the conversation is how to fund the conference moving ahead so it can continue to be free. There’s no federal declaration for extreme heat as a disaster, meaning the work Luna and Slanaker do is missing crucial dollars that might go to hurricanes and floods. Each of them is figuring out their own way to fund the work they do.
For Luna, addressing heat means working with the Red Cross and other local nonprofits, as well as the county and emergency providers, to identify areas at high risk for heat illness and plan outreach efforts. The city is also thinking about how to change city infrastructure to encourage people to drive less and plant trees that will minimize the amount of concrete that will hold heat.
The Red Cross focuses on the immediate support of heat outreach efforts, and effectively communicating risk strategies, says Slanaker.
The Red Cross of Southern Arizona and the city of Tucson formalized their collaboration in 2024, when the city adopted its first ever Heat Action Roadmap.
A big part of that effort has been communicating the risk of heat, a message they say people might receive differently depending on whether it comes from government or nonprofit partners.
“We can’t completely change people’s risk perception, but if we can influence that social connection, we’ll have considered some of our campaigns pretty successful,” said Slanaker. “It really is just like knocking on the door and checking on someone. I’ve been surprised at the response I’ve gotten: ‘you know, I don’t know my neighbor,’ and maybe this is the thing that pushes them to meet their neighbor.”
Eastside Neighbors Volunteer Program
Shamrock credits Eastside Neighbors Volunteer Program’s drivers with helping her get groceries and go to appointments — but also saving her life.
A volunteer who had picked Shamrock up about 15 times mentioned one day that she didn’t seem to be doing well. She wasn’t walking straight, and was banging into walls. “I thought: I just don’t feel good,” Shamrock said. “I’m fine, I think I’ve just got the flu.”
But the volunteer said Shamrock wasn’t speaking correctly, and wanted to take her to the emergency room. She refused to go but after he left, thinking about his insistence, Shamrock called 911. It turned out she was having a stroke.
“He knew that there was something wrong, and that was pretty awesome,” she said.
Eastside Neighbors Volunteer Program offers rides — but it also offers some of the social connection that experts say is key to helping people avoid the high stakes of heat.
Becky Noel, executive director of the program, said the effort is about helping seniors remain independent in their own homes. The organization serves an area from Houghton and Swan to Tanque Verde and Grant and Irvington.
Johnson, who took Shamrock to her appointment, isn’t a snow bird — she’s in Tucson all year round unless she’s on a trip — and she sees first hand how hard it can be to find a driver to fit the need in the summer.
“We’ve got to tell people no,” she said. “That’s tough if we can’t come up with a driver in time.”
Johnson also knows the stakes: “Sometimes it’s the only time people get out, so there’s sort of a big social role.”
When Johnson does drive, along with making sure there is always a cool car ready for the people she is helping, she also tries to connect them to other services for seniors. Johnson is particularly excited to send people toward Senior Planet, a series of free digital skills classes led by AARP, the largest senior nonprofit nationally.
“I drop that information off to almost all my rides,” she says. “I wish more seniors would get involved.”
Shamrock learned about the program’s work when a friend who often helped her with groceries was going on a long trip. Shamrock was born in Tucson in 1964, and considered herself well adapted to the heat.
But in her 50s, working as a teacher at a Tucson Unified School District, she began to notice that if a classroom didn’t have air conditioning, she struggled to teach.
These days, she has a small air conditioning unit in a window at her house, but doesn’t always turn it on because of the cost. “That runs up the electric bill pretty quickly,” Shamrock says.
St. Francis Community Services and Ward 3
The cool blow of air produces a steady hum and the brick walls soften the light of the cooling center that offers a welcome respite from the heated concrete and sharp blue light of Tucson’s midday heat. Cots line the walls, and sandwiches and cold drinks are available.
Ross McKay has been homeless since 2012, but this is his first time at the cooling center run as a collaboration between local nonprofit St. Francis Community Services and the Ward 3 council office near Grant Road and Campbell Avenue.
McKay, 60, says he would usually stay cool during the summer by visiting splash pads and staying out of direct sun. On a Tuesday in mid-July, he’s there because a friend wanted to get out of the heat with his two small dogs, and McKay came along.
What he was most surprised by at the cooling center wasn’t that it got him out of the heat, but that it helped solve one of the other persistent issues he had as an unhoused person: how to keep his stuff with him and charge his phone all at once.
Since the Grants Pass court ruling, which allows cities to punish people for sleeping outside, unhoused people in Tucson have reported mounting difficulty finding public space that isn’t off-limits.
Many businesses and cafes limit space to paying customers, making it difficult for people who need a cool place to stay but might not have the money that day for a coffee or sandwich. They say they are regularly asked to move from public benches or shaded awnings when spending time downtown.
At the same time, the city has passed a series of trespassing ordinances that have made it illegal to camp in washes and city parks, areas that are used regularly by the public but also remain some of the most out-of-the-way and shaded spaces amid the heat of summer.
A new pilot program run by the Tucson Police Department will create a list of the 50 people most often convicted of trespassing and loitering, two charges that relate directly to people spending time in a place they are not allowed. The pilot will offer them additional services, but if they refuse or reoffend, it could mean harsher criminal penalties.
McKay says that even when he is just carrying a backpack he worries that he will be harassed by local police and given a ticket for loitering.
He’s also seen law enforcement clearing an encampment and tossing people’s belongings. “They gave us three days to get out of there, but they were there in two days to scrape everything, scoop it up and just toss it.”
Now he hides his bag before he goes into a store or goes to charge his phone.
Rafael Herring, also at the cooling center that July morning, said he came every day in part because he was able to relax in the space. There was the food and the cots, but also the ability to access some parts of modern technology and just be.
“I need the free Wi-Fi,” he said. “Charging your phone is the biggest problem. I spend half the time trying to find chargers.”
“When someone sees you standing there charging your phone, and you’ve got a backpack, their whole attitude changes and they say you’re loitering,” says Herring. “It’s challenging to find places to be.”
This article was reported through a fellowship supported by the Lilly Endowment and administered by the Chronicle of Philanthropy to expand coverage of philanthropy and nonprofits. Arizona Luminaria is solely responsible for the content of this article.
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