Lower Mohave County downwinders still left out of federal compensation

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“It just feels like Mohave County has been forgotten,” said Kim Pattillo of Kingman, which is south of the Colorado River in Mohave County. “We were victimized by the government, purposely or accidentally, it doesn’t really matter.”

Her father, Eddie Pattillo, was born in Kingman in 1939 and remembers being in grade school when the testing began.

“Everybody just thought those (mushroom) clouds were neat in the sky,” said Pattillo, who received his first cancer diagnosis in 1997 and his second, for colon cancer, in 2014.

Kim Pattillo said she, her mother and her brother have thyroid issues, and an aunt died of breast cancer. The family attributes their illnesses to the Cold War testing in Nevada.

“The compensation is acknowledgement,” said Kim Patillo, who is principal of Black Mountain Elementary School and Middle School. “I am an educator, and history will repeat itself unless we stand up and say, ‘This is what happened.’”

(Video by Raven Payne/Cronkite News)

In addition to being left out of RECA, some downwinders struggle with establishing their eligibility for compensation, Arizona lawyer George Daranyi said.

“The timeline issue has been the most difficult for many of those folks,” said Daranyi, who has been working with downwinders since 1998.

Daranyi said ranchers and people who had vacation homes in other parts of Arizona would be in downwind areas for only a portion of the year, which might make it more difficult to establish a claim. Another challenge is establishing evidence of a qualified cancer diagnosis because many hospitals don’t maintain patients’ records long enough.

With RECA set to sunset this year, Daranyi thought retirement was in his future, but if new legislation is passed, he said, he’s going to keep helping downwinders.

“For the first time in five years, I actually have some optimistic view about that,” Daranyi said. “I didn’t think that Congress was going to do anything.”

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