FOOD & DRINK

part 3 of 5 Best Pie Made by a CIA Graduate Granny Scott’s Pie Shop 3333 S. Wadsworth Blvd. You won’t find any granny here. Instead, behind the counter is Scott Meyerson, Culinary Institute of America graduate and pie-maker extraordinaire. Realizing that the art of pie-making was getting lost in…

EMPTY NEST SYNDROME

On game day at Coors Field, the canned accordion music blaring overhead barely registers with the fans streaming in through the main gates. But Doug Gilbert is fascinated. He stops in his tracks to inspect the speakers. “Certainly, just as I thought,” he says to himself. “Any of the speakers…

AN INCOMPLETE SENTENCE

part 1 of 2 Although he met him only once, nearly two decades ago, T.W. Norman reserves a special place in his memory for James Christensen. In 1976 the then-assistant district attorney for Jefferson County prosecuted Christensen on charges of sexually molesting his own children. When the file passed across…

AN INCOMPLETE SENTENCE

part 2 of 2 Surrounded by an expanse of rich corn and soybean farmland in northeast Iowa, Eagle Grove is 370 miles from Chicago and an hour-and-a-half drive from Des Moines. Its proximity to the cities makes it an ideal location for truck-transfer stations; at one time, fully one fourth…

OFF LIMITS

The year of living dangerously: Longtime public servant Bob Crider took a real gamble when he ran for mayor–not only did he give up his slot as city auditor, but he may have abandoned any chance of collecting the full pension he’d be eligible for…if he worked for the city…

AN ASTERISK IS BORN

Except for a dozen wronged bartenders and a handful of die-hard Brooklyn Dodgers fans, the whole world’s happy this week that Mickey Mantle continues to recover from liver transplant surgery. We Americans like our heroic myths to go on forever, even in defiance of logic, and the Mick still supports…

TAKEN FOR A RIDE

In retrospect, Terry Casper’s midnight bike ride through Cheesman Park wasn’t the quickest route for him to get to work. It proved instead to be a shortcut to jail, where the 28-year-old Denver man was booked, fingerprinted, photographed and forced to cough up a $100 bond for violating a park…

STRANGE BREW

Coors Brewing Company recently became one of the country’s most progressive corporations. It happened quietly on May 11, when the board of one of Colorado’s top ten employers voted unanimously to expand the company’s generous benefit package (everything from health insurance to adoption assistance) to include “domestic partners”: unmarried adults…

MAKING BRAIN WAVES

At the time it was announced, it seemed the perfect example of picayune government rules stifling entrepreneurship. A year and a half ago, the federal Food and Drug Administration fined Boulder’s Lexicor Medical Technology Inc. for violating agency rules. The amount of the FDA’s proposed fine, $1.6 million, was approximately…

LETTERS

Preach Out and Touch Somebody I’m a retired Presbyterian minister working as a volunteer chaplain, and I read Steve Jackson’s article about Doug Overall (“The Quiet Man,” June 14). I wrote Overall a letter commending him for his work–what a great man and a wonderful outreach. It was great reading…

THE QUIET MAN

part 2 of 2 Doug entered the Washington Hospital Center program for pastoral care in September 1987. For his field training he was sent across the street to the National Rehabilitation Hospital. He got off to a rocky start, though, when he was told to put together a Sunday service…

THE QUIET MAN

part 1 of 2 The motorcade wound slowly through the snowy streets of the city, following the hearse that carried the body of Denver police officer Shawn Leinen. Leinen, 28 years old and a three-year veteran of the force, had been shot and killed a few nights earlier by a…

HOT PROPERTY

Marj Rust enjoys the view from her home on a ridge west of Rocky Flats. She can take in a rolling expanse of rangeland running east from the hogback to Standley Lake, a vista interrupted only by the jumble of buildings at the U.S. Department of Energy facility. But these…

OFF LIMITS

United we strand: Sure, the debut flight of United’s $120 million Boeing 777 out of Denver International Airport last Wednesday morning was a soaring success, with a sendoff that included costumed well-wishers and the flash of many cameras. But the fate of the first flight in caught United officials, airport…

THE GAME’S BIGGEST JERK

At thirty, Barry Bonds is still the finest baseball player in the world. The San Francisco Giants’ left-fielder has a sweet swing, hits with awesome power and guns down runners with an arm the chairman of the NRA would envy. He’s won five Gold Gloves for his defensive play and…

A FUND TRIP TO DENVER

Ten days ago South Dakota senator Larry Pressler blew into Denver for a short overnight trip. When he left he was $25,000 richer, thanks to a fundraiser held in his honor by Tele-Communications, Inc. The Denver cable giant’s timing couldn’t have been better. Exactly a week later, the biggest telecommunications…

CALLER IDEA

When Richard McSpadden wanted to put in some new pay phones at Union Station, he didn’t have to look far. “In the past several months I’d say I’ve gotten about eight calls from companies wanting to either put in new phones or rip out our phones and put in their…

LETTERS

California Steaming I was disappointed to see the first category on your Best of Denver Readers’ Poll: “The best way to discourage Californians from coming to Colorado.” A Colorado native, I have lived in North and South Carolina, Georgia and back in Colorado, and I was then relocated to California…

LET US SPRAY

Escalating tensions along Colorado’s Front Range have resulted in an outbreak of chemical warfare, forcing the government to step in and mediate. “It’s neighbor against neighbor,” says Angela Medbery, co-founder of the Colorado Pesticide Network and an eyewitness to the grassroots campaigns, which she describes as “mini-wars.” The fighting surrounds…

HOW TO CODDLE A CRIP

part 2 of 2 Orlando could have gone to Denver’s Emily Griffith Opportunity School to get his GED, Will says. But, she says, he was reluctant to do so. “At that time he was voicing a desire to stay away from gang influence,” says Will. “He said gang members went…