A dollar won’t go far these days. But five dollars is a different story — especially in Arapahoe County. County public defender Hollynd Hoskins knows just how far five bucks can stretch: across five months, several law-enforcement departments and two counties. Last July, Hoskins tried to give $5 for bus…
Last year more than 40,000 Coloradans faced delays in getting new telephone service, and frustration with US West became front-page news all over the state. Adding fuel to the fire were revelations that US West routinely lied about installation dates — a policy dubbed “customer not educated” — and ranked…
Prison nationLast week, while most state lawmakers were wrestling with 57 varieties of gun legislation, Dorothy Rupert and Penfield Tate tried to focus public attention on the lawbreakers (armed or not) already getting their room and board at state expense. Their press conference to push Senate Bill 104, which would…
I’ve been calling Ask-A-Nurse (at 303-777-NURS) almost since the moment the service was hooked up in 1987. These days the program is known as Centura Health Advisor, and registered nurses man the phones from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. But in the early days, you could call in the middle…
Last September 15, listeners to the Alice morning team of Jamie White, Frosty Stillwell and Frank Kramer discovered, to their great displeasure, that the squad had been reduced by two-thirds: Stillwell and Kramer were absent and unaccounted for, and White was in the company of Danny Bonaduce, of Partridge Family…
At the age of 27, Stevie “Li’l But Bad” Johnston has the aspect of an old warrior. The angry clots of scar tissue decorating his eyebrows frame a gaze as piercing as a jaguar’s. He speaks so quietly that you can sometimes barely hear him. But bring up the subject…
Class DismissedRegarding Patricia Calhoun’s “Life’s Little Lessons,” in the January 27 issue: After seeing Calhoun and Tom Tancredo on Channel 12 for lo, those many years, I am absolutely dumbfounded that he could grow and become a human! It has encouraged me to be less judgmental and kinder. Columbine was…
It’s ten minutes after nine. Room 205 comes alive. The children file in to the murmur of the Pledge of Allegiance, recited in English and Spanish over the public address system. They pull their chairs from the tabletops, where they’ve been stacked overnight, and sit down quietly — quietly for…
He doesn’t need to wear dark sunglasses and a hat. He doesn’t have to resort to a fake name or unlisted phone number in order to avoid the spotlight. And when people do recognize his face, they don’t always know his name — even in Gunnison, where he’s lived for…
Five years ago, vocal hemp supporters Kathleen Chippi and David Almquist put their money where their mouths were by opening the Boulder Hemp Company. The pair’s activism by way of commerce has since produced a line of cookies, snacks and baking mixes made with hemp flour, which they grind from…
Last fall, city representatives argued that building large terraces on the south side of Red Rocks Amphitheater was an absolutely vital part of a proposal intended to raise the venerable venue’s standards to the level demanded by today’s persnickety consumers and, not coincidentally, to prevent the entire place from winding…
Paint it orangeThe cultural connoisseurs at the Metro Football Stadium District have issued their “Call for Artists” in preparation for dressing up the Denver Broncos’ new home. Anyone who is interested — and who works in an “appropriate” art medium — can submit a proposal to the district’s Public Art…
Okay. So maybe Sean McGuire is a lawyer with too much time on his hands. Or maybe he’s really a man of convictions, fighting his own criminal conviction. But then again, maybe this is just a story about a man and his dog. “Come on, Roscoe,” McGuire says. “Now, stay…
Bill Dallman, the Fox 31 news director recently featured in this space (“Twenty-First Century Fox,” January 13), had better work overtime to keep his first hire, chest-pounding radio troubleshooter Tom Martino, fat and happy. Because if Martino’s 1999 departure from Channel 4 is any indication, he’s not a guy to…
Tea and SympathyRegarding Justin Berton’s “The Glendale T&A Party,” in the January 20 issue: An important part of the story was missed in the focus on T&A and the Raptors: the open-democracy effort that the Tea Party rode in on. Lots of decent, independent people who cared about good government…
Veggo Larsen, the city manager of Glendale, keeps one pressed suit, one clean golf shirt and a set of clubs packed in the backseat of his Chevy Blazer. After all, at the end of any city council meeting, held on the first and third Tuesday evenings of each month, Larsen…
Giving up her daughter to the state was the hardest thing Ellen Laurence has ever done. Four years ago, Laurence and her husband decided they could no longer cope with Annie, now eighteen. Born autistic, Annie suffers periodic seizures and often becomes highly aggressive. As a young teenager, she had…
The girl behind the glass is wearing a form-fitting white cotton shirt, beige cargo pants and sparkling silver high-heeled shoes that lift her three inches off the ground. As people walk by the glass, she strikes a heaven-help-me pose. Her tiny arms thrust toward the sky, her straw-thin legs stand…
What a tangled Web we weaveLast Tuesday, the legal naysayers piled on attorney Ellis Rubin, who said that his client, one Michael Ian Campbell, was suffering from Internet intoxication when, on December 15, he had the following exchange (as Soup81, a play on his last name and the year of…
Downtown Golden’s Foss Drug began the new year in a shambles — the Patty Cake Break Cake display jammed into a crevice next to the Ride the Champion coin-operated horse, the magazine racks rumpled and picked over, the basement full of Y2K water no one ever bought. And while the…
The people in charge of the news conference held at Denver police headquarters on January 11 were, in pissing order, Mayor Wellington Webb and Chief of Police Tom Sanchez, followed by Assistant District Attorney Chuck Lepley, divisions chief Armedia Gordon and Sergeant Jon Priest. Or at least that would have…
If you live in Colorado and follow basketball at all, you certainly know about Chauncey Billups, homegrown sporting legend, one of our finest success stories. You can survey his accomplishments on the official home page of the Denver Nuggets, the corporate division for which Billups currently works. He was a…
