St. Anthony Hospitals, part of the Centura Health network, is emphatic about its mission — so much so that the hospital lists its “core values” on the back of every employee’s name tag and outlines its commitment to them on its Web site. Centura Health is a nonprofit, faith-based health…
For Vince Phason, his 1987 GMC school bus was much more than just a set of wheels. Phason used the bus to travel all over town. To transport the kids he coached in football to games and practice. To get to Metro State, where he was studying social work. To…
They say people get the government they deserve. As state legislators vote to cut off medical care to children, that may not say much for the people of Colorado. But, taken as a group, the people who want to run Denver are a good reflection of the city they call…
Cable-fortune heir Kim Magness lived and died very publicly. But the show must go on — posthumously — since a Denver judge ruled that the trial involving him, his brother, Gary, and the Mardi Gras Casino will go forward this fall despite his death. The brothers — two of Colorado’s…
The Oborsh family doesn’t fit the Medicaid-recipient stereotype. The family lives on a comfortable suburban street not far from the Southwest Plaza mall. Their home is nestled next to a creekside park; large pine trees and a wooden fence give it a bucolic air. Inside, Paula Oborsh watches over her…
While students around the world were walking out of classes on March 5 to protest for peace, Erin Durban stayed in school. But she’s no war hawk. The nineteen-year-old political-science student at Metropolitan State College is one of the leaders of Anti-War Auraria, a coalition that has attracted hundreds of…
The eight major candidates for mayor each have a strategy to break out of the pack in the May 6 election and make it into the anticipated June runoff. Of course, there’s often a difference between what they’ll publicly claim is their strategy and what’s going on behind the scenes…
Let’s say you’re the proprietor of a popular LoDo brewpub, or a onetime Cherry Creek gallery owner, or the former chief of police. You decide the time has come to do something really big and really different with your life. You dream of making the city you live in a…
Promoters of Mile High Telecom are in trouble with the law — again. On Monday February 10, U.S. District Court Judge William Zloch of Florida issued a temporary restraining order, at the request of the Securities and Exchange Commission, against Marc David Shiner, Leon Swichcow and Tim Wetherald, prohibiting them…
The Baker neighborhood is one of the most diverse in the city, sprawling from West Sixth Avenue to Mississippi and from Broadway to the South Platte River. It encompasses hundreds of nineteenth-century houses, a thriving retail strip along Broadway and large industrial tracts along the river. When a group of…
Travis Credle was intrigued. The man sitting across the table from him was outlining the problems with local telephone service 1,800 miles away, in Denver. He was telling Credle about the entrenched provider, Qwest, and its dismal customer-service record. About how the Colorado Public Utilities Commission had ordered the Baby…
“Gimme a W! Gimme an A!” yelled a Stapleton Wal-Mart manager to then-associate Joe Walker. “Gimme an L!” Reaching the hyphen, he belted out, “Gimme a squiggly!” squatted down, shook his hips and expected Walker to do the same. Walker had just been initiated into the Wal-Mart cheer, a scene…
Franklin Azar’s office doesn’t look much like the headquarters of a holy jihad. His law firm occupies nearly two floors of a surprisingly low-key, boxy Aurora office building that is hidden in an anonymous office park tucked between equally anonymous subdivisions. Inside, the rooms are comfortable but hardly flashy. The…
TV pitchman Tom Bodett may promise to “leave the light on” for would-be guests of Motel 6, but the City of Denver is about to bring out the klieg lights for the proposed city-owned hotel next to the Colorado Convention Center. The city may soon issue $347 million in bonds…
For much of the past decade, Columbus Day has been tense in Denver. Parading Italian-Americans have been confronted by Native American protesters and their allies, hundreds of people have been arrested, and animosity between the two groups has grown. This year promises more of the same. The Columbus Day parade…
John Losasso still recalls the dark mornings when his father would rouse him from bed at 3 a.m. The sleepy schoolboy was just ten, but his dad needed help making deliveries, so he was pressed into service. The elder Losasso was a produce peddler who drove a horse-drawn wagon through…
It’s a bright spring afternoon, and dozens of people are gathered in the courtroom of the Denver Drug Court. One by one, they are called to a podium at the front, where the judge gives each participant a diploma and a handshake, as well as an opportunity to make a…
Meredith Behm is a drug addict. When it’s time to get high, she disappears from her job, says goodbye to her mother, kisses her daughter as she drops her off at school, and vanishes for days. She winds up wherever the drugs are. During most of the past two years,…
John is a 36-year-old homeless man who has lived on and off the streets for years. Like many of Denver’s homeless people, he knows that one of the biggest daily battles is simply proving that he exists. Yet the most-accepted means of validation — a Colorado driver’s license or state…
Denver’s parks range from tiny pockets of greenery to acres of open space. Every resident has a favorite among the more than 300 parks in the system; here are snapshots of four of them. Bluff LakeWhen Stapleton Airport closed, parks officials were shocked to discover a ribbon of wildland running…
Denver pioneered the idea of buying parkland in the mountains long before Boulder or Jefferson counties launched their vaunted open-space systems. The city owns 14,000 acres, most of it in Jefferson County. Denver’s relationship to its mountain park system is much more complicated than its suburban counterparts, however. Since the…
From an old brick building overlooking the South Platte, Susan Baird is quietly redesigning Denver. Peering over maps and diagrams of pipelines, she traces the routes of long-forgotten creeks and gulches and imagines a lush trail running through a battered industrial zone. Under her steady gaze, downtown streets disappear underground,…
