Shirley Akheah was a Navajo nurse at the Northern Arizona Medical Center.
Biography[]
Shirley Akheah was born to an urban Navajo family in Arizona; her grandmother owned a hogan at Teec Nos Pos near Sleeping Ute Mountain, and her mother was a schoolteacher. Akheah claimed that she was 3/4 Navajo "by blood", but she did not identify with the culture; nevertheless, she was knowledgeable about the culture. She worked at the Intensive Care Unit nursing section of the Northern Arizona Medical Care Center in Flagstaff, and, in 2008, she dealt with several bubonic plague instances. One of them was Anderson Nez, and she grew suspicious of Dr. Albert Woody for not preventing his death, despite his knowledge of how to cure the illness. She cooperated with Joe Leaphorn during his investigation of Nez's death.