John Cominsky wants people to know that the Tranzport Hood is easy to use. He demonstrates this by putting one on. The change in his appearance is remarkable. In seconds, Cominsky no longer resembles an inventor and enterprising businessman. Instead, he looks like a dangerous maniac. A maniac with a…
Michael C. Hill is missing one testicle. Regrettably, this fact is now common knowledge among many guards and prisoners within the Colorado Department of Corrections. According to Hill, a 48-year-old former correctional officer, “very intimate details about my genitalia” were divulged to other prison staffers and to loose-tongued female inmates…
There were a lot of things Melissa Sowder didn’t like about Columbine High School. The bullies, for instance. They were football players, mostly. They shoved her friends in the halls and threw snowballs or bottles at them on the way home. Sometimes they shoved her, too. Who needed it? “Teachers…
There was a time when Louis Colaiannia gave up playing the piano. The decision to quit came shortly after a large, drunk and clearly unhappy patron of the arts tried to heave one on top of him. This was twenty years ago, in the decade of wide lapels and Earth…
All Joel Levitt wants is a few answers. But when the questions have to do with religion and money, straight answers don’t come cheaply. Levitt’s inquiry into the financial and moral dealings of his church has cost him nearly two years of rummaging through court records and check ledgers, growing…
Jay Balano thought it was strange when a woman from the Colorado Department of Transportation walked into his Print Stop store last winter, asking for him by name. He thought it was even stranger when the woman offered to arrange a printing contract with the state worth close to $20,000,…
The night belonged to the captains of industry. They arrived in all their fin de siecle glory, disgorged from stretch limos and sleek foreign sedans, each with a freshly pressed tuxedo on his back and an elaborately coiffed spouse on one arm. They made their way to the Plaza Ballroom…
Like most of his fellow road warriors, Bill Owens has spent too much of his life stuck in traffic, usually during what passes for rush hour in the Denver metroplex. When he lived in southeast Aurora, his daily crawl on I-25 to downtown took an agonizing 30 to 45 minutes–and…
John Peters figured out long ago that the refugee relief business has more than its share of oddballs. It was 25 years ago, in fact–after the physician had joined in a series of medical relief missions that involved parachute jumps into Peru, Nicaragua, Honduras and Bangladesh in the wake of…
The last person to see Richard Rother alive was probably the young lover who stepped off the elevator around half-past midnight, heading for his girlfriend’s place. This was Monday, November 9, 1998, on the top floor of the Bank Lofts, an apartment complex in the old U.S. National Bank building…
High security and high profile have never been an easy mix at the headquarters of the North American Aerospace Defense Command, better known as NORAD–probably the most celebrated top-secret military command post in the world. Hidden deep inside Cheyenne Mountain south of Colorado Springs, heavily guarded and designed to “button…
Although he dons black robes instead of blue scrubs, there are times when Richard Matsch feels like a doctor hitting a crowded emergency room on a Friday night. Maybe not George Clooney in ER, exactly, but just as calm in the face of unrelenting crises. Resolute. Driven. “When a judge…
District Judges Six-month- Three-year- old motions old cases Lewis T. Babcock 131 34 Wiley A. Daniel 236 35 John L. Kane, Jr.* 51 16 Richard P. Matsch 36 50 Walker D. Miller 435 46 Edward W. Nottingham 390 35 Daniel B. Sparr 108 19 Zita L. Weinshienk* 55 17 *Senior…
John Duffy gives one heck of a house tour. It usually starts in his driveway, with Duffy pointing out a support column to his garage, swathed in metal bands that grip the door frames and keep them from pulling apart. He gives the column a shove, and the entire structure…
Buy Now, Pay Later You can feel the urgency in the Rock Creek Ranch sales offices of Richmond American Homes. You can see it in the eyes of the young couples who arrive there in weather foul and fair, brochures in hand and toddlers in tow, their nerves jangled from…
When two South High School journalism students attempted to cover a fight in a school parking lot last month, only to have their film seized by Denver police officers, the incident touched off a vigorous debate about the rights of student journalists. But many parents and students were less upset…
Michael Garcia must have known he would die in prison. But no one expected that his death would come so soon, in front of so many people. When he was seventeen, Garcia did something so terrible that a Denver judge gave him two life sentences without hope of parole. Although…
Dianne Tramutola-Lawson no longer slings French verbs for a living, but the former Lincoln High language instructor still has the occasional teacherly impulse. As she boards the bus in southeast Denver on a sodden, foggy November morning–her bus, mind you, chartered with a personal check for $500–she can’t resist addressing…
Have a Little Confidence In the grim, sometimes goofy race for seven seats on the Regional Transportation District’s board of directors, the key word is “confidence.” At candidate forums and fundraisers, the contenders say that the people need confidence in their elected leaders. They argue that Guide the Ride, last…
The halls of the Federal Building in downtown Denver are lined with helpful bulletins advising visitors of their right to a hassle-free workplace. Sexual harassment, discrimination on the basis of disability or race or national origin, gender-based bias in hiring or promotion–all the unspeakable, unconstitutional acts of modern society are…
When Robin Bowman gets a notion to start something, wild horses can’t stop her. In fact, for the idea she’s exploring right now, the horses could only help. They’re part of her equestrian equation, a striking symmetry that’s hard to resist. Here’s the equation: Colorado prisoners tame wild horses in…
The way he tells it, Robert Francis Sylvester became an instrument of God one day in the spring of 1988. He was sitting in a jail cell in Arapahoe County at the time, serving a sentence for check fraud and reading a brochure about a place in Vermont called Dismas…
