“My grandmother started a camp in the 1970s off of Sandario Road, which I took over in the 1980s,” she said.

At the time, Tucker worked as a nutritionist at San Xavier Mission school and would be off during the summer, which allowed her the time to harvest saguaro fruit in June and July.

In a plentiful season, Tucker and volunteers would produce gallons of syrup and jam, which Tucker would sell from her home in Tucson, and to tribal elders who were not able to harvest anymore.

The group picked the fruit from the saguaro using a saguaro-ribbed tool called a KuipaD to knock the fruit to the ground, often from more than 30 feet up in the air.

The tool is made of two dried saguaro ribs lashed together. At one end of the ribs, a greasewood stick juts from either side, forming a cross.

Tucker passed her knowledge on at the harvesting camps to students, scientists, artists and family. She worked to teach the interrelationship between the O’odham, the saguaro and the Sonoran Desert. Tucker also taught many workshops at the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, said Eisele.