Steamboat official dies in wreck
Deborah Cayedito
Deborah Cayedito
Steamboat, Ariz. lost one of its commissioners in a car crash Friday, Commission Manager Flora Nez confirmed Monday.
Deborah Cayedito, 59, was the president of the Navajo Nation Government Development Commission and a member of the Diné Community Advocates Alliance as well as a commissioner for Steamboat community.
She was an outspoken proponent of the Healthy Diné Nation Act, which would levy a tax on junk food to be put toward diabetes prevention.
Nez said she did not have the details on the crash and preferred not to say too much without the approval of Cayedito’s family, who plan to hold a meeting this evening (Monday) at the LDS Church in Steamboat. Nez described Cayedito as “happy.”
Cayedito was raised off the reservation and graduated from Roosevelt High School in Yonkers, N.Y., according to her Facebook page.
The day before her demise, she had posted on Facebook a thank-you to Council Delegate Jonathan Nez for supporting the Healthy Diné Nation Act and a quote from Ferdinand Foch, the supreme commander of the Allied Forces during World War I: “The most powerful weapon on earth is the human soul on fire.”
“Yup, my soul is on fire,” she had written above it.
Highway 264,
I-40, WB @ Winslow