'Hotter than it's ever been': How this 93-year-old copes with Phoenix's 100-degree heat

It was almost 4 p.m. on a Monday in late July, and the temperature was near 110 degrees. But the scorching heat didn’t seem to bother Geraldine King.

The 93-year-old woman was sitting in the shade in front of the Westward Ho near downtown Phoenix. For a chair she used her walker. Her long gray hair streamed down the sides of her face from a black cowboy hat. In one hand she clutched a can of Coke Zero.

King has lived in a one-bedroom apartment on the ninth floor of the former luxury hotel for 22 years. The 16-story building is now a federally subsidized apartment complex for elderly people living in poverty.

Every so often someone entered or exited the building and a blast of cold air poured out.

King said the air conditioning inside the building works fine. The power went out the evening before during a storm, but it was back on within minutes.

Then what was she doing outside in the heat?

At least three times a day King said she leaves her apartment and sits outside on her walker for about an hour. No matter how hot it got. It was important, she said, to stay acclimated.

“This heat is unprecedented,” she said. “It’s hotter than it’s ever been.”

It also beat sitting alone in her apartment isolated all day, she said.  

“I come out here to see about things,” King said. “I look at everything that goes on.”

Keeping watch, then a birthday lunch

There is a lot to see. The Westward Ho is located on the corner of Central Avenue and Fillmore Street. Residents come and go at all hours.

A week earlier, King walked out of the building around 7 in the morning and nearly stepped on a man sleeping on the ground outside the front doors. King didn’t pay much attention. People experiencing homelessness often hang out near the entrance to get some relief from the heat when the glass doors open and cold air from inside pours out, King said.

The man turned out to be dead, an apparent victim of the heat, King said, and had been there since 2 a.m.. Staff from the Maricopa County Medical Examiner’s Office soon arrived and took the body away.

Late the following morning, King walked out of the Westward Ho using her walker. Her son, Dan Hitt, 50, was parked out front in a Toyota Prius waiting to take King out to lunch for her 93rd birthday. The temperature read 102 degrees.

Hitt packed King’s walker into the trunk and drove off. The air conditioner in his car was on high. But the air blowing out of the vents didn’t feel cold.

Hitt pulled into a parking lot near Seventh Avenue and McDowell moments later. He helped King get out of the Prius and pulled the walker out of the trunk, then walked with her along the hot sidewalk into a Chipotle restaurant.

In comparison to the 102-degree heat outside, the air inside the restaurant felt cold.

Over burrito bowls, Hitt says his mother grew up on a Mormon ranch in Boulder, a small town in southern Utah. That is why at 93 she insists on maintaining her independence, Hitt says.

King said she can’t afford to take taxis. Instead she buys a reduced-fare bus pass, which costs $32 a month. She lives on monthly $900 Social Security payments. About $229 of that goes to pay rent.

Hitt lives in the Coronado neighborhood less than two miles from the Westward Ho, but says his mother refuses to accept any help from him getting around.

She takes the bus to pick up prescriptions for a thyroid condition at the CVS on McDowell Avenue and Central, about a mile from the Westward Ho. She walks one block to the Circle K on First Avenue to buy coffee in the morning. And she walks to the U.S. Post Office across the street to pick up postal checks to pay her Cox cable bill. King dog sits for one of the Westward Ho residents, a former Royal Air Force pilot from England. In exchange, he brings her groceries.

A health scare, then back to her perch

On a day in April, King had an appointment to see a heart doctor. She had scarlet fever when she was 10 and it damaged her heart. It was over 100 degrees that day. She walked to the stop across the street from the Westward Ho and got on a bus up Central Avenue to Earll Drive, then walked the last three or four blocks to the doctor’s office.

By the time she arrived, King’s heart was racing. She staggered into the lobby dizzy and overheated and nearly collapsed. The incident exposed an irregular heartbeat. A few days later, King had surgery. The same heart doctor implanted a pacemaker, Hitt said.

Even so, King still insists on venturing out in the Phoenix heat on her own, although “I try to go when it’s not blazing hot.”

Hitt said he worries about his mother all the time. But he said there is not much he can do.

“I’ve had to make peace with it, because she’s obstinate about it, but I do think about it a lot,” Hitt said.

By the time King and Hitt finished lunch at Chipotle, it was after noon. The temperature outside had climbed to 105 degrees as King used her walker to get to the parking lot, where Hitt helped her get in the Prius. Back at the Westward Ho, Hitt gave his mother a blue sack with her birthday present inside, and then drove away. King used her walker to go back inside the Westward Ho.

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On Thursday morning, King was back sitting on her walker in front of the Westward Ho. She wore an orange hat that matched the pattern of her long dress.

It was 89 degrees. The 55% percent humidity made it feel warmer, more like 91. King said she had been sitting there since about 6:15 a.m., waiting to walk over to the Circle K a block away to buy a cup of coffee.

Using the walker for balance, it took her about 10 minutes to cover the distance, and then another 10 minutes to get back to the Westward Ho.

By the time she got back, King decided it was time to head back to her apartment on the ninth floor to make breakfast.

The air inside the apartment felt muggy and hot. A reading on a thermometer measured 84.5 degrees. King checked the thermostat. It was set at 79 degrees. King said she likes to keep her apartment warm. That way, she said, when she goes outside in the 100 degree heat, it doesn’t feel so hot.

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