Bob Bettenberg’s stories–and there are a lot of them–have the tempo and anticipation of a joke building toward a punchline, the sentences clipped and the narrative always in the present tense: “Guy walks into a bar…” Except in Bettenberg’s case, that is how the stories actually begin, and they are…

With all the sympathy recently being enjoyed by VAIL as a result of the apparent torching of four of its mountain-top facilities, it is easy to forget what a 900-pound gorilla the corporate snow park really is. Already the largest ski resort on the continent, VAIL is eager to add…

The town got its name from the railroad that ran through it and siphoned grain from the white elevators that rise above Colorado’s eastern plains. A steady supply of water lay underground, and so, in 1887, as the builders of the Pueblo and State Line Railroad planned their route, they…

Think of John Elway and the rest of the Broncos’ offense trying to score without their front line. Or the Avalanche endlessly trying to kill an eternal double penalty. Now you know what it’s like to work in Secretary of State Vikki Buckley’s division of commercial recordings, which is struggling…

Two years ago, in an off-election year, Secretary of State Victoria Buckley received nearly $20,000 in campaign contributions. About $5,000 of that came directly from bingo-related businesses: bingo halls, equipment suppliers and the owners of those businesses. Although bingo was originally envisioned as a small, church-basement activity to help raise…

Even though the journalism profession suffers from a low public opinion, there are advantages to the business. Reporters, for instance, enjoy more legal rights than the average person: Thanks to so-called shield laws, they generally are not required to reveal their sources of information–even in the course of a lawsuit…

On the last day of May 1985, on an isolated nine-acre patch of land in the middle of a former wheatfield 25 miles northeast of Denver, Gary Antonoff created his own personal government. It didn’t have an army, or even any citizens to govern. But it had all a government…

A new, expensive–and largely untested –heroin detoxification technique that promises addicts relief from withdrawal symptoms “while you sleep” is getting a cool reception among state regulators and Denver’s established substance-abuse professionals. In particular, an aggressive marketing campaign promising to cure people who are already being treated in methadone clinics is…

On November 10, 1996, Denise Marshall was the graveyard supervisor at Arapahoe House’s drug and alcohol detoxification facility in Wheat Ridge. When she’d arrived at 10 p.m. the night before, the facility already housed eighteen clients in various stages of intoxication. By the time Marshall’s shift ended, at 7:30 the…

Mildred Bennett won’t get her home back, or anything close to the full market value of the two-story Victorian in the Baker neighborhood from which she was evicted eighteen months ago. But under a settlement agreement reached late on Friday, May 22, the 72-year-old blind and mentally disabled woman will…

Late last year, Hortense Ross finally moved out of her house. It was a long time coming. For the past several years it had become increasingly apparent that Ross was having trouble taking care of herself. Her family helped out for a while, and the Denver Department of Social Services…

When tobacco seller Douglas Primavera was charged two months ago with peddling drug paraphernalia out of his small shop in downtown Alamosa, more than a few eyebrows were raised. After all, if anyone should have been familiar with the state law covering the sale of bongs, it would be Primavera–who…

This week’s announcement that the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment and the U.S. Department of Defense have settled their legal fight over the cleanup of the former Lowry Bombing Range allowed both sides to save face. But sources say the split-the-difference compromise was the result of lucky timing–a…

On April 7, 1987, a hooded man was led into a chamber in the United States Capitol. Great care had been taken to conceal his identity; in addition to the hood, screens shielded him from the eight assembled U.S. representatives, their staffers and the media. The man was flanked by…

How much does one ten-hour hostage situation cost? Plenty, if you’re talking about the United States Postal Service. This past Christmas Eve day, seven postal employees at the USPS’s General Mail Facility, situated near the old Stapleton airport, were taken hostage by a former postal worker. They were released, unharmed,…

This past summer, Joe Smith, a young, up-and-coming Colorado deputy attorney general, decided to run for the top law enforcement job in the state. He has already gotten off to a rocky start. For beginners, on the day that he notified the secretary of state’s office of his intention to…

When Jannette Mayhew popped open the trunk of her car and discovered the bullet-pierced body of her son, she probably thought things couldn’t get much worse. But that was before her husband reached into a box he’d been told contained his son’s personal effects–but which actually contained the boy’s internal…

When Andy Parks was growing up, once or twice a year his family would leave their home in Parker and fly to California or Florida or New York or Germany. Parks’s father, James, a busy obstetrician and gynecologist, was flexible on these vacation destinations. Anywhere was fine with him–with one…

It’s been nearly four years since a young woman sent by Local 7 of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union to help organize grocery workers in Alamosa was sexually assaulted by her boss in a room at the Holiday Inn. Two weeks ago the woman, now 24 years old,…

Against all odds, Bob Cote finds himself in a suspended state of grace. “How else to explain why I’m here?” he wonders. “It’s been a series of miracles.” More than merely being here, though, these days Cote, the ex-alcoholic president of Step 13, a shelter for homeless men on the…

Mildred Bennett was born to royalty. She is the child of a Russian czar–the proof, she tells you, being a birthmark on her back. George Washington is her grandfather. One of her husbands was the king of Spain; she was the queen. A second husband was a king of France,…

In Colorado, property-tax bills are due April 30; if they are not paid, the landowner receives a delinquent tax notice a few months later. In Denver, which has approximately 171,000 separate pieces of taxable property, about 10,000 people–just under 6 percent–were late on their payments and received such a notice…