One day in 1983, police in a Kansas town found a woman, dressed differently from most people, foraging through the garbage. She looked different and spoke an unfamiliar language. Police arrested her, and local authorities eventually sent the woman to a mental hospital. Nearly 20 years later, Tucson native Kathryn Ferguson learned of the woman's story. Although the story had been told in news reports and in a play, Ferguson has made the woman's life her life. The fiftysomething Ferguson is a budding filmmaker and is putting the story of Rita Quintero, the woman who "fell from the sky," on film. Quintero's unbelievable story is told on videocassettes, nearly filling a tall cabinet in Ferguson's Midtown home, which doubles as a studio where she teaches Middle Eastern dance. Ferguson, who has one documentary movie to her credit, has been working on Quintero's story for nearly four years. Ferguson has financed her project on her own with some grants. But in the past two years, the outside money has dried up. It's the lament of the majority of independent filmmakers. But they also share in a common tenacity and optimism. "Without a doubt, I will finish it," said Ferguson. "I'll do what it takes." She has been through this before. During the 1990s, Ferguson explored with a camera the Barranca del Cobre, the spectacular and forbidding Copper Canyon region in Chihuahua, Mexico. It is the home of the Tarahumara, an indigenous people whose culture and history have been eroded by urban pressures, like the water carving the canyon. Ferguson's forays into the land and lives of the Tarahumara resulted in her 56-minute 1998 video documentary. "The Unholy Tarahumara" earned her several awards in this country and Europe. It didn't, however, bring her much money. She collected several thousand dollars, less than she spent to make it. While Ferguson thought she would make a second documentary, she didn't plan on making another film dealing with the Tarahumara. That was until she saw a play in Tucson, presented by Borderlands Theater, about Quintero. A play written by Mexican playwright Victor Hugo Rascón Banda tells the story of a Tarahumara woman who lost 12 years of her life because of ignorance and indifference. Quintero could not communicate with police and doctors. Quintero knew enough Spanish to tell her inquisitors that she came from above. In Tarahumara life, people either live below on the canyon floor or above the canyon. When she told them she came from "arriba," the authorities interpreted it to mean "heaven." She was declared insane. The story and mystery fascinated Ferguson, a graduate of Tucson High School and the University of Arizona. She was lured to the tale of a Tarahumara woman who found herself alone far from home. But it is also a story of how authorities treated Quintero, incarcerating her because they did not know who she was and injecting powerful mind-altering drugs that impaired Quintero. She eventually was released and lives in Chihuahua. Quintero's story mirrors the story of people who cross the border illegally in search of food and a job but who often find a hostile life, said Ferguson, who spends some days in the desert providing water and food to illegal entrants. Quintero's plight was discovered by a Mexican-born social worker in Kansas and profiled in several newspaper accounts. Then came the play and now comes Ferguson.