In 2009, a study commissioned by the Center for the Future of Arizona found that only 12 percent of surveyed residents in the state agreed that “people in our communities care about each other.”That all changed, at least for a while, on January 8th, 2011, when 22-year-old Jared Lee Loughner stepped out of a taxi in front of a Safeway supermarket on the northwest suburban edge of the city and unloaded an estimated 32-rounds of bullets from an extended magazine clip once banned under the Violent Crime and Control Law Enforcement Act.  The story of his derangement is well known now.  His target was 41-year-old US Rep. Gabby Giffords, who he managed to shoot in the head; Loughner killed six people and injured 18 other citizens before he was wrestled to the ground and disarmed.

Along with the lost lives of an unusually diverse group of citizens, including federal Judge John Roll, congressional aide Gabe Zimmerman, nine-year-old Christina-Taylor Green, and retirees Dorothy “Dot” Morris, Phyllis Schneck and Dorwan Stoddard, Loughner also managed to shatter one of the last remnants of trust in the public commons for my hometown.The extraordinary heroism on January 8th, including the life-saving role by Giffords intern Daniel Hernandez, bolstered the city–and the nation–with a sense of resiliency and bravery in a moment of sheer disbelief.

Memorials grew at the supermarket and at the University of Arizona hospital; testimonies flowed.  Neighbors met and chatted.  Committees for civility emerged.  President Obama soon arrived in Tucson and poignantly addressed a packed arena under the banner, “together we thrive.”One year later, Rep. Giffords will miraculously join Tucsonans on this Sunday for a special candlelight memorial to the victims, as we once again grapple with the still unfinished process of healing and finding some meaning in the fallout of a tragedy.

When we wake up on Monday morning, the real challenge will be whether Tucson, Arizona–and the nation–will still to rise to meet ourselves as neighbors and effectively work to prevent the next tragedy from finding its all-too-easy expression through the barrel of the gun, or recoil back into the divided enclaves of denial and distrust that nurtured the very landscape of this tragedy.

2011 has not exactly been a year to “thrive together” in Arizona.  Nor were the Safeway victims the only casualties of derangement and hatred in our state’s borderlands of denial.

Only a month after Loughner’s assault, an Arizona jury gave anti-immigrant militia wanna-beShawna Forde the death penalty for her role in the murder of nine-year-old Brisenia Flores and her father in a botched vigilante-inspired robbery south of Tucson.  In July, a Maricopa County Superior Court justice sentenced Phoenix resident Gary Thomas Kelley to 20 years in prison for the murder of 3rd-generation Arizona Juan Varela, after an allegedly drunken Kelley objected to protests against Arizona’s controversial SB 1070 immigration law and threatened Varela to “go back to Mexico” or die.

In September, Attorney General Tom Horne stunned observers at a conference on the state’s ban on the teaching of Mexican American Studies, as he invoked one of the bloodiest episodes in ancient Roman history and demanded that Tucson’s nationally acclaimed Ethnic Studies program “be destroyed.”  Arizona state superintendent John Huppenthal followed up Horne’s harrowing pronouncement by referring to Mexican American children in Tucson as “Hitler youth.”

A week after Giffords made a dramatic return to the floor of Congress in the debt ceiling vote this summer, one of the most chilling reminders of Tucson’s denial of its open wound took place at a Tucson Unified School Board meeting in August.  A self-proclaimed Tea Party member, who had actively circulated a conspiracy video on Facebook that Giffords’ attempted murder was set up by the Department of Homeland Security, unleashed an inflammatory tirade of a coming civil war and bloodshed over Ethnic Studies in Tucson.

None of these incidents, outside of the Forde murders, garnered any national media attention or even much local discussion, as if a crisis is never a crisis until it is validated by disaster.  A prescient admonition by one of Loughner’s fellow students at Pima Community College, who noted his “seriously disruptive” and “scary” behavior in class, remains a cautionary reminder that “until he does something bad, you can’t do anything about him.”

No one has probed the terrain around the Tucson shooting better than author and journalist Tom Zoellner. A 5th-generation Arizonan, a confidant of Giffords and a virtual neighbor of the troubled Loughner, Zoellner reluctantly returned to his hometown soon after the Safeway tragedy.  In his new book, “A Safeway in Arizona: What the Gabrielle Giffords Shooting Tells Us About the Grand Canyon State and Life in America,“ Zoellner set out to transcend the endless political banter over blame and explores the social contexts underscoring how Giffords’ act of democratic participation–”reaching out to strangers at the fringe of a Safeway”–could lead to one of the most disturbing assassination attempts in recent history.  In the process, Zoellner asks a lot of questions most Arizonans would prefer to ignore; for starters, given Loughner’s abundant trail of erratic and violent flare ups, including his suspension from Pima Community College for unruly behavior, would a simple gun law requiring a one-hour safety training prior to purchase have prevented his access to a semi-automatic weapon?

Zoellner notes that while the Tea Party-led legislature managed to pass a law declaring the Colt Single Action Army Revolver the state gun in the first session after the Giffords shooting, it also cut $510 million from the state health care budget, including mental health services.

“I have closely followed the debate over our debt ceiling and have been deeply disappointed at what’s going on in Washington. I strongly believe that crossing the aisle for the good of the American people is more important than party politics,” she said.

These sentiments seem especially potent from Giffords, as it was her shooting that prompted Congress members to speak out against fierce partisanship — a message Giffords realized needed refreshing in the light of budget talks.

Watch Giffords’ surprise return and warm welcome:

“Since Jan. 8, it’s been really touching to us to see how much support there is for Gabby and her recovery, and how much interest there is in how she’s doing and her story,” Kelly, who on Tuesday announced his retirement from the Navy and NASA, told The Associated Press during a recent interview from Texas.

“After thinking about it, and talking about it, we decided it was the right thing to do to put our words and our voices on paper and tell our story from our point of view.”

The 47-year-old Kelly most recently was commander of the space shuttle Endeavour’s final mission, which ended June 1. His retirement, which comes as NASA ends its space shuttle program, is effective Oct. 1.

“As life takes unexpected turns we frequently come to a crossroads. I am at this point today,” Kelly said in a statement posted Tuesday on his Facebook page. “Gabrielle is working hard every day on her mission of recovery. I want to be by her side.”

Giffords, 41, was released from a Houston hospital last week and is set to start outpatient therapy. She had been in the rehab facility since late January, a few weeks after the shooting, and is now living with Kelly at his home in League City, a town 26 miles south of Houston. She will continue outpatient therapy at TIRR Memorial Hermann, the same hospital where she underwent rehabilitation.

Kelly and Giffords are collaborating with author Jeffrey Zaslow, who worked on Randy Pausch’s million-selling “The Last Lecture” and Capt. Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger’s “Highest Duty.” Kelly praised Zaslow as a “good storyteller” and “the best writer” for the kind of book they wanted. Zaslow will interview friends, family members and colleagues of Kelly and Giffords.

“There are details of our personal lives together that I’d say I can count on one hand the people who know them. In some cases, it’s just Gabby and I (who know the details),” said Kelly, who met Giffords in 2003 and married her in 2007. Before the shooting, they had maintained independent lives, Kelly based in Houston and Giffords in Tucson.

Giffords will focus on her recovery, but Kelly said that the book will be part of that process and that Giffords will provide details of what “she remembers after Jan. 8 and her story before that.” While Kelly will be “the primary collaborator,” he said Giffords will be a “big part of this.” Giffords has been struggling to relearn how to speak and walk, and will be assisted by a 24-hour home health provider, according to the hospital.

For the book deal, Kelly and Giffords were represented by Washington attorney Robert Barnett, whose clients include President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. The memoir will be edited at Scribner by executive vice president and publisher Susan Moldow, and senior vice president and editor-in-chief Nan Graham.

“I really felt a connection with them and I knew Gabby would, too,” Kelly said. “Gabby is very pro-women and she always has been. And I knew after meeting Susan and Nan that they were definitely the right people to work with.”

Because of rules covering members of the House of Representatives, Giffords will receive no advance and the deal must be cleared by the House ethics committee. A portion of the authors’ net proceeds will be donated to charities that benefit Tucson and Arizona.

Scribner is an imprint of Simon & Schuster Inc.