Superfund was created to clean up toxic messes. Robert J. Martin’s job is to clean up Superfund’s messes. For now, though, he’s just a fly on the wall. In a meeting room in the Commerce City town hall, Martin stays to the back, leans, paces, whispers something into his investigator’s…
One night in August 1975, Colorado lieutenant governor George Brown stepped to the podium to give a speech at the National Lieutenant Governors Conference in Alabama. He almost ruined his own political career and certainly hastened its end. Brown, a Democrat, was one of the first two black lieutenant governors…
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…
Hey hey, Cripple Creek Fuhrer: Dollar signs still outnumber swastikas in Colorado’s casino-glutted mountain gambling towns, but the folks at the Cripple Creek & Victor Eagle see a connection between the two. In an editorial titled “The Coming of the Fourth Reich?” slated to appear in the April issue of…
A sexy little secret was unraveling inside the cockpit of United Airlines flight 585 when it crashed eight years ago in Colorado Springs, killing all 25 passengers and crew members aboard. The cause of the March 1991 crash remained “undetermined” by the National Transportation Safety Board until last week, when…
By acclamation, April is the coolest month. Confident that last year’s ignominy will be transfigured into this year’s triumph, baseball players and full-grown fans enter this month with the wide-eyed wonder of children, fond dreams intact and energies aloft. In Pittsburgh’s April dawn, the Pirates win the pennant going away…
Jefferson County’s first synagogue ever is a ranch house located between a nursing home and a vet’s office in Evergreen. “It was built in 1962,” says congregation president David Froman, the man who galvanized members to raise enough money to buy the building. “At this point, we could turn it…
All Vets Are Off After reading Gayle Worland’s March 25 “Doctor’s Orders,” about a distinguished physician dying in his own hospital, I’ve decided to take the necessary steps. Instead of sending my ailing body for treatment to Presbyterian/St. Luke’s, I’d investigate the possibility of a good veterinary hospital close by,…
It’s a sunny morning, with no clouds overhead–a perfect day for shooting prairie dogs. Mark Mason is dressed in Carhart coveralls and a camouflage cap emblazoned with the logo of his group, the Varmint Militia. Patches decorate his khaki jacket: One has the NRA insignia and the other, which bears…
On a golden September afternoon, Karl Shipman climbed two rungs up a ladder to trim a tree near the 150-year-old Vermont farmhouse he owned with his wife, Claire. Shipman had grown up near this maple-lined patch of countryside; from the ladder, he could see the cemetery where years ago he’d…
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…
As far as Tracey Bolton is concerned, the argument simply comes down to this: “I deserve the right not to have anyone looking at my cooch if I don’t want anyone looking at my cooch.” It’s an argument she believes a jury of her peers will agree with come July,…
High security and high profile have never been an easy mix at the headquarters of the North American Aerospace Defense Command, better known as NORAD–probably the most celebrated top-secret military command post in the world. Hidden deep inside Cheyenne Mountain south of Colorado Springs, heavily guarded and designed to “button…
The bottom of the tenth: The hottest race in the May 4 election is now smoldering in Capitol Hill, where four candidates are vying for the District 10 Denver City Council seat. For starters, while the incumbent, Ed Thomas, is a former cop and still has a brother on the…
If you didn’t know better, you might think Carnell Green is hurting, the way he sits on stage in his black suit and shiny shoes, stiff-backed and stone-faced, squeezing the life from his 73-year-old thumb. “Ladies and gentlemen,” a woman announces from the podium. “Thank you for coming.” Carnell and…
Honk If You Hate Jesus of the Week Let me second Sandra Metz’s March 18 letter as to your offensive Jesus of the Week feature. Would you do the same for the leader of any other religion? I have defended your paper due to its sometimes excellent articles, despite many…
By October 1997, Anne Liv Slemons had run out of options in Southern California. She’d never liked the warm weather anyway. So, six months pregnant and on probation for forging a $5,000 check, the 22-year-old ran. She didn’t know where she was headed until she arrived in Colorado and found…
Antonio Martinez has some last-minute Christmas shopping to do. He buzzes through Kmart, picking out a serving bowl for his grandmother, a video game for a cousin. In Denver just for the holidays, he shivers as he steps outside. He got rid of his winter clothes when he moved west…
Homeless people need good credit, too–that is, if they want some local agencies to help them get off the streets. Members of Humanity for Homeless, a homeless advocacy group, are angry about a policy that requires homeless individuals to pay $15 when they apply for transitional housing through Catholic Charities…
The loneliness of the long-distance runner: With just a day to go until the deadline for would-be candidates to file, the May 4 Denver election is looking like a major snore. Except, of course, for the usual wake-up call from former Republican Party state finance chair, onetime Littleton Rotary head…
It was March 20, 1996–three years ago this week–when 25-year-old Jeff Truax and his buddies stumbled out of the 1082 Broadway nightclub where police officers Kenny Chavez and Andrew Clarry were moonlighting. Until then, it had most likely been a relaxing evening for the cops. Pulling down $20 an hour…
The Old Ladies’ Board Adventure Team (OLBAT) will now come to order. If you are male, have always been athletic and wish to catch big air while riding faster than common sense would indicate you should, this is not your meeting. All you 26-year-olds? Who smoke cigarettes on the chairlift?…
