To save the caucus or squash it: That will be the question this November. Every two years since 1912, Democrats and Republicans have gathered in their neighbors’ living rooms or in schools and meeting halls across Colorado to set their parties’ platforms and choose candidates for the state’s primary election…

A dozen years ago, Pamela Stuart-Mills Hoch was in a very troubled marriage. Already verbally abusive, her husband finally assaulted her physically in December 1989. Hoch went to the police, and her husband was arrested and jailed overnight. Hoch had been very close to her four children, but after she…

Five-year-old Alex looks like the happiest kid in the world. His smiles, captured forever in photos proudly displayed around his mother’s cubicle, aren’t forced for the camera. But Alex’s smiles might not have been so genuine had his mom continued to cling to her mistrust of his dad. Until a…

Denver’s Parking Management Division, which is part of the Department of Public Works, has been under intense scrutiny for the past six months. Much of the controversy has focused on John Oglesby, director of the beleaguered division; two separate investigations are under way to determine his culpability in several matters…

Although Denver’s Parking Management Division has been getting a lot of negative press lately, the city’s three parking referees really have it rough. While the referees have nothing to do with issuing tickets, they’re the ones who have to deal with the angry masses on a daily basis. In fact,…

Attorney Sheila Gutterman is at the forefront of the divorce debate in Colorado, but she’s taking a different approach to how marriages should be dissolved — an approach over which lawyers themselves are split. While simplified dissolution is sweeping the state, Gutterman is advocating an even newer concept: collaborative family…

A man abuses his daughter, and somehow the authorities find out. The social services department in his county soon files a dependency-and-neglect petition, and the man’s in the system. Then his wife accuses him of abuse, so a domestic-violence case is filed. The wife subsequently files for divorce, which means…

Cyndee Struyk expected her divorce to be final in three months. Instead, it took almost ten. The divorce was also supposed to be a mannerly proceeding in which she and her husband of seventeen years would meet before a magistrate in an informal setting, where they would freely exchange information…

The sharks are biting at Colorado’s Ocean Journey. Not the sharks inside the fish tanks, but the sharks along Seventeenth Street, who are circling the aquarium even as it bleeds red ink. In March, a tearful Doug Townsend, head of the aquarium, told the public that it would close on…

Brian and Carmela Giovanetti were the first visitors to arrive at the Children’s Museum on Saturday, April 6. They had come early to prepare for their daughter’s fifth birthday party, and their prudence paid off. Because the parking lot was nearly empty, they were able to get one of the…

Friday, May 3, 7:15 p.m., 13th Avenue and Pennsylvania Street Six men and six women are gathered across the street from a coffee shop, listening to Denver police officer Stacey Goss lay the ground rules for the night. “If I have to take my gun out, get behind me,” she…

Home- and private-school students who want to take classes on the Web scored a small victory in May when the Colorado Legislature passed a bill allowing a limited number of them to enroll in online public schools. But for Pam Benigno, the victory was too small. Benigno, who directs the…

Ever since abandoned warehouses in lower downtown were transformed into livable lofts and the addition of Coors Field ushered in restaurants and bars, the area has become a fashionable neighborhood. There are the young professionals who like walking home after happy hour and the empty-nesters who’ve given up their suburban…

Before Chris Todd even started school, his mom knew there’d be trouble. The signs were all there. He was more rambunctious and aggressive than most boys his age, and he climbed on every piece of furniture in the house. In preschool, he constantly vied for his teacher’s attention by trying…

When freshman students enter West High School this fall, they won’t feel lost in the big building. They’ll take all of their classes on one floor, and instead of 35 students per class, there will be just 25. In this way, the students will get to know their teachers, the…

A state program that was intended to boost student achievement in low-performing schools by giving teachers extra money is instead creating confusion and dissension. And nowhere is that being felt more than in Denver, which is home to the highest number of struggling schools in Colorado. “It was a misguided…

Ralph Fisch, who co-founded the Child and Adolescent Psychotherapy Institute (CAAPI) with John Dicke in January 2000 and has supported Dicke’s use of adult sex toys in the treatment of children who have reportedly been sexually abused, will likely lose his teaching job because of his association with the therapist…

Dallas is sitting on the larger of two blue leather couches in Dr. John Dicke’s office, quietly eating a chocolate chip cookie. The little boy seems content and comfortable here, but there is something unfamiliar in the room this week, and its presence intrigues him. “Why are we taking pictures?”…

Just when people living near the Denver Botanic Gardens thought that relations with the institution were finally improving, the DBG has come up with a proposal that could wilt further meaningful neighborhood involvement. Last spring, the DBG’s governance committee decided that the board of trustees would be more effective if…

When former P.S.1 charter school principal Steve Myers was accused in January of making inappropriate comments to a male student at Amherst Regional High School in Massachusetts, where he has been principal since August, some of his old Denver colleagues felt vindicated, but hardly surprised. The colleagues — Annie Huggins,…

The Cartoon Network is blaring in the Sawyer home as Heather and her husband, Ron, clean up the last of the water that leaked from their washing machine the night before. Ten-month-old Ronnie starts crying as he tries to hoist himself onto the couch to get to his mom; he…

Three agencies that collect donations from private- and public-sector employees for distribution to hundreds of good causes will ring in 2002 with new business. A partnership between Community Shares of Colorado, Community Health Charities of Colorado and Caring Connection recently won a lucrative bid to manage the workplace fundraising campaigns…