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A moving body is a healthy body with a clear mind leading to a healthy mind both emotionally and physically

Debbie Jaramillo might have done more for Santa Fe than it's ever done for her.

As if to prove it, Santa Fe's first and only woman mayor arrives to a morning-long conversation at the Red Enchilada restaurant on a recent Saturday with a still-glossy State of the City review from 1996: "You can keep it," she says. "I have several copies."

Over the course of the next two hours, though, it becomes apparent that her case for service to the city she loved, were she to make it in a more formal fashion, is made up of more than aspirational mayoral rhetoric. Her term from 1994 to 1998 was peppered with the kind of warnings that had a populist ring to them, but she was an active mayor who pushed an aggressive agenda of fair housing, community services and higher wages.

Tierra Contenta, the Railyard, the Santa Fe Business Incubator, El Museo Cultural, the city's inclusionary zoning rules for affordable housing—all have roots in her administration.

The city's growing divide, whether it's classified by income or ethnicity, was something she warned against. The housing market, which had reached its peak during her term only to crash and rebound a short time later, today too easily excludes the kinds of people who were raised here but can no longer afford to live in Santa Fe.

Those conditions also apply to the newcomers who work in the city's service industry, or as teachers or nurses or government workers; the people who didn't grow up here, but love it nonetheless.

Jaramillo's lone term was marked not only by her vision, but by her personality. She doesn't suffer fools, yet, to some, appeared to go out of her way to find them. She won a plurality of votes in 1994 by appealing to Anglos as well as Hispanics, but her opponents wondered openly if she would rather the white folks find somewhere else to live. The electorate seemed to abide her choice of her brother as city manager because he'd been hired by the previous mayor, Sam Pick. But when she chose her brother-in-law as police chief, it dealt a serious blow to her reelection hopes.

Then, there was her mouth.

Of Peso Chavez, her main opponent in the 1994 contest: "He said, 'I've had white people say they're gonna leave if she gets elected.' I said, 'Oh, bite me. Shut up.'"

Of developers who opposed an affordable-home requirement: "Jesus, you want to build 40 houses and we're only asking for two [to be affordable]? Give me a fu***ng break."

The years haven't tempered her a whole lot, nor have they softened the feelings of some toward Jaramillo. Her portrait has been missing at City Hall's wall of mayors for years. There's not even a space where it used to be. It's as if Santa Fe would prefer to forget.

This year has been especially hard for her. In May, she lost her husband of 43 years, Mike, to a sudden illness. Her megawatt smile doesn't flash as readily as in those old newspaper photos. Her astounding mane of dark hair is no longer as primped. She's been taking care of her son's twin 8-year-olds and it's getting her through what's been a tough summer. Talking about Mike's death three months earlier brings tears.

But she's still "Debs," as Mike called her, and once she launches into an idea that Santa Fe should try or a program of hers that the city abandoned, the fire returns. She has plenty to say about how Santa Fe has weathered two decades since her term, but she's done with politics.

"I still vote. I don't know why," she says. "I try not to keep up with things."

In fact, Debbie Jaramillo—champion of old Santa Fe, of tradition, of returning the city to the people—doesn't particularly want to live here anymore.

The city she was once so proud to lead has missed too many opportunities to unite itself, she says, or to keep it an affordable place to live and a decent place to make a living and raise generations of future Santafesinos. While unsuccessful, Ron Trujillo's run for mayor had echoes of Jaramillo's campaign. And you can hear her priorities in the wait-a-minute interjections of Renee Villarreal or the what-about-the-Southside reminders of Roman Abeyta and Chris Rivera at City Council meetings.

The city's only female mayor signed her State of the City letter in 1996 with "Adelante unidos"—forward together. But two years later, after a contentious term, voters chose to move on without her.

Now, as Santa Fe wrestles with many of the same questions it asked 25 years ago when it elected a mayor, it has to consider an uncomfortable answer: Debbie Jaramillo might have been right.