Strange but True Stories From 2007

Three-year Dacono city councilwoman Sandra Tucker resigned from office after she was criticized for posting a "joke" that she'd been e-mailed to an online community forum. Being a Democrat, her post said, was worse than "being a black disabled one-armed drug-addicted Jewish queer" who has a "Mexican boyfriend." Tucker told a reporter that she thought the joke was hilarious. She also said she only resigned to spare Dacono the headache. "I'm sick and tired of all of this political correctness," Tucker declared. "I'm not going to apologize if you don't have a sense of humor."

Former Republican state representative Jim Snook quit the Colorado State Fair board in August, after "a joke that went bad," according to a quote in the Denver Post. Snook was one of six judges in a food-tasting contest at the fair. After the event, Snook felt ill, and sought out a local news cameraman to film him vomiting in a bathroom. Although the footage never aired, Snook was asked to resign.

The Law Wins

In September, people waiting at a University Boulevard bus stop were startled by a man with a Fu Manchu mustache who was wearing armor and carrying a curved sword covered in what looked like blood. When police caught up with him, they discovered that the sword was made of wood and that the man was in costume, headed to a video-game convention.

A thief stole a refrigerated Food Bank of the Rockies truck from a Pizza Hut parking lot near Federal and Mississippi, where the driver had stopped to pick up twenty donated pizzas. The truck was found four hours later, but the food inside — about 1,500 pounds' worth — had to be thrown out because the thief hadn't turned on the refrigeration system.

Brighton Collegiate High School teacher Ralph Kelly, 34, was arrested in December after an openly gay male student told police that Kelly had sexually assaulted him. Apparently the school needed more than a name change to make over its image after two other sex scandals broke. In 2006, the principal's wife, Carrie McCandless, was arrested after having intimate relations with a student during a camping trip. And former school-board president David Mundy Sr. resigned after his son, David Mundy Jr., an occasional substitute teacher, was convicted of having sexual contact with three girls.

Thomas Pilaar was arrested and accused of selling hundreds of books, tapes and DVDs that he'd borrowed from the Denver Public Library. Police said Pilaar had used different names to obtain seven library cards and then checked out 300 items with each card. The caper allegedly cost the library system $33,000, and libraries in Arapahoe and Douglas counties believe Pilaar did the same thing to them. Denver police had been tipped off to the scam by a woman who noticed library stamps on some books she'd bought on Craigslist.

Two men who'd plotted to kill the owner of the Wheat Ridge-based Amateur Poker Tour by forcing his legs into a box designed to hold rattlesnakes were arrested. Christopher Lee Steelman and Herbert Beck, both of Lakewood, were charged with trying to kill Matthew Sowash because he owed Beck $60,000.

In October, a hungry six-year-old grabbed a set of car keys, moved his booster seat to the driver's seat and tried to drive himself to Applebee's for some chicken strips. He only made it about 75 feet, in reverse, before running into a power box and knocking out the electricity in his Broomfield neighborhood. Police are still wondering how the boy, who wasn't hurt, reached the accelerator. Foodies are wondering why he focused on Applebee's.

A 27-year-old woman who accidentally ran over her ten-year-old son was charged with child abuse. According to police, Clara Rosales had let her nine- and ten-year-old sons ride on the hood of her 1994 Honda Civic while she drove down an alley. She didn't see the boys jump off and ran over her older son's leg, breaking several bones.

Vincent Margera, known to fans of the MTV show Viva La Bam as Don Vito, collapsed onto a courtroom floor, cursing, after a jury convicted him of groping three girls during an autograph session at Colorado Mills. "Just kill me now!" he yelled, before Jefferson County deputies restrained him and took him away. In December, a judge sentenced Margera to ten years of probation and ordered him to give up the Don Vito character for the same amount of time.

A clown named Giggles was arrested in Grand Junction in April and charged with using the Internet to lure a twelve-year-old girl into having sex. Antonio Lazcano, age thirty, who worked as a clown at a farmers' market, later pleaded guilty to one felony charge and was sentenced to fifteen months in prison.

Thin Air