Three days after Christmas 1998, there are few reminders of the holidays in Theresa Swinton’s Denver apartment. Although her faith remains strong, she doesn’t feel like celebrating. Her son Danny is sitting in a Jefferson County jail cell, awaiting trial for the gang rape and murder of a fourteen-year-old girl…
Beat the press: When the Colorado Press Association announces its contest winners at the close of the annual CPA confab Saturday, the Denver Post’s name will be among the missing. That’s because the paper resigned from the group in a snit fit two years ago, leaving the Rocky Mountain News…
In the peculiar economics of farming, this year’s Colorado apple crop was the best of times–right up until it became the worst of times. Last fall, the size and quality of the state’s harvest was the healthiest in nearly a decade. Unfortunately, growers across the country enjoyed the same luck…
Stan Bracclon’s office, on the third floor of a well-worn brick-and-concrete building at 1245 East Colfax, smells only faintly of cigarette smoke and homelessness. Bracclon is executive director of the Emergency Assistance Grant & Referral Project Inc. , an agency that provides homeless gays and lesbians with general assistance–a hundred…
After building more than 120 houses for low-income area families, Habitat for Humanity of Metro Denver is suddenly facing a tough lot: No lots. The group is being out-run, out-bid and out-maneuvered by private developers whooping it up in one of the biggest residential booms ever seen on the Front…
They’re not very tall. They’re not whippet-fast. In the eighth game of the season, their starting center crashed to the floor, shattering both wrists and putting their dreams in jeopardy. In places like Knoxville, Tennessee, Storrs, Connecticut, and the slam-dunk-crazed Carolinas, not even hardwood junkies know who they are. Just…
Out of Left Field I decided to grab a copy of the February 18 Westword since I hadn’t read one in a couple of years. The first article I read was Harrison Fletcher’s “Arrested Development.” Next, it was Julie Jargon’s “King of the Dump.” That was enough for me! Let’s…
Jim Stone has waited for this day a long time. Thirteen years, if you start counting from back when the engineer was terminated by Rockwell International in March 1986. Close to ten years, if you start from July 1989, when Stone first filed suit against his former employer, charging that…
Sue LaBella lives in a two-level home in Westminster, with white siding, a wooden fence, and two Labradors playing in the yard out back. It’s the classic picture of the suburbs. Inside the house, however, you won’t find the typical nuclear family. Six-year-old Ray, a boy with thick black hair…
A map of downtown Denver covers the entire wall behind David Owen Tryba’s desk. Squiggly lines and arrows fill in blank spaces; historic churches and commercial buildings are highlighted in red. Jumping out of his chair, Tryba paces in front of the map, sweeping his hands over the triangle of…
Only two out of eight glass-recycling bins remain standing outside the King Soopers store at Ninth Avenue and Downing Street. The mouths of the other six are turned toward the store wall–a sign, perhaps, of the chain’s decision to wean its customers of their glass-recycling habits. The air inside the…
The offal truth: Legal pleadings usually pile it on, but things get really deep in the ACLU’s February 10 filing on behalf of Broadway Brewing against David C. Reitz, director of the Liquor Enforcement Division of the Colorado Department of Revenue. In October 1995, Reitz’s department banned the brewery’s proposed…
For the past year, a local animal-rights group has been badgering scientists at Denver’s University of Colorado Health Sciences Center in hopes of getting them to publicly debate the merits of their monkey research. Despite the group’s verbal challenges, letters and even the release of the CU animal-lab director’s phone…
WASHINGTON, Feb. 8–Boy, am I pooped. Nothing like impeaching a president to take it out of a man, except maybe for that breech birth in Eads back in ’83–fourteen hours on a two-headed piglet, as I recall. Funny water they got in that town. Some of my Democratic colleagues must…
What the puck. When it was over, Sylvain Lefebvre could finally replace his lucky shoelaces. The TV producers up in the booth could take a break from the special chocolate-cake ritual they’ve been into for a month. Sandis Ozolinsh could get through a pre-game meditation without twelve or fourteen teammates…
Until the cops slapped on the cuffs and loaded her into a paddy wagon, Dellena Aguilar had only heard the stories about police rousting teens on the 16th Street Mall for nothing more than petty infractions. But after she was jailed for simply watching one of these episodes, she saw…
Hearts and Glowers Robin Chotzinoff’s “Detective Lynch Gets Her Man,” in the February 11 issue, was a wonderful valentine to love–and a real shocker to find in Westword. Since when did you decided to run heartwarming stories? Next thing you know, you’ll be running a pet column. Francie Dillon via…
District Judges Six-month- Three-year- old motions old cases Lewis T. Babcock 131 34 Wiley A. Daniel 236 35 John L. Kane, Jr.* 51 16 Richard P. Matsch 36 50 Walker D. Miller 435 46 Edward W. Nottingham 390 35 Daniel B. Sparr 108 19 Zita L. Weinshienk* 55 17 *Senior…
The woman is hunched over in her wheelchair, a pillow supporting her torso, head lolling, body clenched in on itself, feet tensely touching. Someone smooths her hair, gently tilts up her head. She grimaces, though whether from grief or pain–because of an involuntary reflex–it’s impossible to tell. Now the people…
Although he dons black robes instead of blue scrubs, there are times when Richard Matsch feels like a doctor hitting a crowded emergency room on a Friday night. Maybe not George Clooney in ER, exactly, but just as calm in the face of unrelenting crises. Resolute. Driven. “When a judge…
For decades, the Rocky Mountain Arsenal served as a playground for the production of lethal chemicals. Nearby city officials want to make part of it a playground for kids. Civic cheerleaders in Commerce City are pushing to buy more than 900 acres of arsenal property north of 56th Avenue and…
Conditions at a Denver nursing home so alarm the state health department that it recently placed the facility under continuous monitoring and began fining it $1,700 a day. Although the Colorado Department of Health and Environment has been criticized for its lax enforcement of nursing-home standards (“Dying for Dollars,” October…
