For Star subscribers: One of the things that made Lydia Reis so noticeable also made her vulnerable: She regularly walked along some of the Tucson area's busiest roads.
They fixed on her colorful, vintage dresses. They smiled at the bright umbrellas she held over her head. They sometimes glimpsed her bouncy curls.
People are also reading… Three days later, Reis, 63, became another in an outrageously long string of pedestrians killed in the Tucson area. Within city limits last year, 49 pedestrians were struck and killed, up from 29 the year before. In the jurisdiction of the Pima County Sheriff's Department, places like West Ina Road where Reis was struck, 11 pedestrians were killed last year, up from three a year earlier.
'God's will be done'The roads where Reis was most noticeable, arteries like Oracle and Ina roads, are straight, wide and fast. Like most of Tucson's main roads, they weren't designed for pedestrians or cyclists. They were designed to maximize throughput of vehicles. What crossed Maslyn's mind, she said:"I would hate to be the person who hit the Umbrella Lady, because she was so iconic."
Flashy but guardedLydia Reis walked the Northwest side for decades. Unless you believe that there was a different"Lydia" who dressed similarly and walked the same streets 20-plus years ago. Some people swear that's the case. She dressed in a way that drew people's eyes to her — the colorful umbrellas and the bright dresses — and walked where thousands of people drove past, but she didn't like the attention she received and guarded her privacy closely.A couple of weeks after meeting her, Dircks said, he gave her a ride to North Fourth Avenue. On that trip, he said, he told her about his persistent headaches.
'The systems are at fault'Look through the Tucson Police Department's news releases on pedestrian deaths, and you'll find some common denominators. Fatal collisions tend to happen on main arteries, they tend to happen when it's dark out, and they often involve people crossing the street outside of crosswalks.
"She was walking on a shoulder — no protections, no lighting," said Emily Yetman, executive director of the Living Streets Alliance."It just goes to show that what we’re building, the systems we’re creating, are at fault. Not the people." Later, she was forced to leave that park, and eventually, in recent years, she moved briefly to New Mexico. In the last couple of years, Dircks said, it's unclear where she was staying.
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