At the heart of Denver’s most contentious school-board race is a weed-studded field on 37th Avenue and Zuni Street. It will be the site of northwest Denver’s newest elementary school. But the fenced-in lot has also come to symbolize years of struggle between parents in northwest Denver and the Denver…

A couple of doors down from a packed bingo hall and past the recliner store in an Arvada strip mall, a line of teenagers dressed in black braves the pouring rain while waiting to enter the Rising Phoenix. The air inside is choked with smoke from clove cigarettes. Girls strut…

It’s going to be a long, cold winter at the El Vado apartments. The complex was originally a motel, built in the 1940s on the site of a former gold and silver mill in the canyon linking Boulder and Nederland; in 1975, El Vado was converted into nine apartments. A…

Wedding bells may ring again at the Redstone Castle, thanks to a group of investors who kept the historic mansion from being sold at an August 29 auction and saved its legacy as a hotel and bed-and-breakfast. Colorado Summit Partners, a Denver company that designs and builds custom mountain homes,…

he ten-year-old girl came home from school one day and told her parents that a boy was teasing her. He was pulling her ponytail and calling her names. It was her first year at Stedman Elementary School; in fact, it was her first year at any public school. Until the…

Along Elkhorn Avenue, parents with kids in tow pour out of candy stores and T-shirt shops. They fight their way through the crowded sidewalks, quieting the little ones with caramel apples and saltwater taffy. A shiny new black Toyota Solara emerges from a parking lot and pulls out onto Estes…

John Sadwith sees a neighbor up ahead and lets his foot off the gas, bringing his gold Toyota Camry to a stop in front of a split-level house in Denver’s tony Crestmoor neighborhood. “We won!” he yells out the window. “Won what?” the woman asks. “Ambrosia Bistro,” Sadwith explains. “Oh,…

The doughy smell of pig in a blanket hangs heavy in the air. Grapes that either rolled out of their cold white fruit cups or were thrown during a food fight are squashed by a parade of feet. Puddles of milk gather in the corners of yellow lunch trays. Above…

The Reverend Joel Miller stood solemnly before his congregation. The normally jubilant Miller had moved to Colorado only a few months earlier and was already known for injecting his sermons with lively anecdotes–but this Sunday, the usual spark was missing. The congregation could tell something was wrong, and later, Miller…

For 28 years, Carol Porter lived with the knowledge that her father was dead. He had walked out one day in 1964–when Carol was two years old–and simply disappeared. Although Porter’s mother rarely spoke of him after that, in 1971 she told her daughter that he had been declared dead…

Every night before Donald goes to sleep, he says a prayer for his family. He asks God to protect his parents, his six siblings and his grandparents. And he tries to block out all the things he was told would happen to his family, all the images of hell with…

While Donald got out after only three months, Anne Schweikert was involved in the International Church of Christ for almost seven years. More than twelve years after she left the church, she’s still deeply bothered by what she experienced. Schweikert, who became a member after she graduated from college in…

Sloan Shoemaker never guessed that getting hitched would be such a headache. All he wanted was to give his fiancee the fairy-tale wedding of her dreams; he even backed his vow with a down payment–$6,700, to be exact. In January, the groom-to-be called the stately Redstone Castle, where he wanted…

At the end of a narrow lot lined with semi trailers, Bob Eason peers through a chain-link fence separating him from the one and a half acres of land he once owned. Just off Arapahoe Avenue near 63rd Street and north of a posh housing development in Boulder, the property…

They’re usually called fender benders: Cars and trucks traveling at low speeds hit each other, causing dings and dents. The worst of the physical injuries are often headaches from filling out insurance claim forms. In fact, low-speed accidents do no more damage than sneezing, coughing, riding a roller coaster or…

Calling All (Inexpensive) Social Workers Parents, teachers and authorities are struggling to understand how two kids at Columbine High School could have murdered twelve of their classmates and a teacher without anyone paying attention to the warning signs. At the same time, social workers, nurses and psychologists in the Denver…

Parents in northwest Denver say the Denver Public School District is neglecting its Hispanic students. But some people are looking out for them. Four years ago, members of the congregation at Our Lady of Guadalupe Church on West 36th Avenue started discussing how they could address some of their community’s…

Northwest of downtown Denver, a neighborhood peers out over the city’s skyscrapers and railyards. In the late 1800s, Highlands was a pristine city whose residents were proud of their elevated metropolis, separated from Denver by a valley through which a highway now runs. The Highlanders pitied the poor souls below…

The skies may be friendly, but the airline that beckons customers to fly them is just greedy, Denver officials say. A recent city audit of United Airlines showed that the company owes Denver more than $629,000, but United disagrees and has refused to pay. The dispute is over a formula…

The Denver Public School District can no longer afford to provide its current level of health and social services to students and is looking to outside agencies for help. But the possibility that DPS might contract out nursing, psychology and social services has some employees worried about losing their jobs…

It was conceived in a warm, moist place. Since its birth, it has been festering in the dank recesses of the crawl space beneath Brenda Everett’s home. As it matured, it started invading the rest of her house, its rancid odor seeping through any space that allowed. The ranch-style house…

An endangered species is one that is threatened with extinction; a threatened species is one that is likely to be endangered in the near future. When a species is protected under the federal Endangered Species Act, people are not allowed to hunt, import, export or sell the animals. People who…