US West may take a lot of criticism, but its customer-service shortcomings are nothing compared to the way Denver’s first telephone company treated customers. In the 1880s, the Denver Telephone Dispatch Company set up shop at 15th and Larimer streets, taking up three rooms in a second-story office. The city’s…
When US West announced that it had decided to reject its first suitor, Global Crossing, and marry Qwest instead, most shareholders rejoiced at their good fortune. After all, Qwest’s bid of $69 per share was considerably more generous than Global Crossing’s offer. And no one had more reason to be…
Buying crack on East Colfax Avenue is easy. All a person has to do is walk the littered street, preferably at night, and pace the sidewalk between Logan and York streets. The thick of the strip is at Ogden Street in front of the 7-Eleven store and beneath the shadows…
Pam Adair knows how to record the moment. When she felt queasy on July 21 last year, she took a two-minute home pregnancy test and videotaped the stick as it turned blue. “I wanted this child for fourteen months,” she says. “I wanted him to be there every step of…
He’s your p-a-l: Locals don’t usually expect articles on newsy topics to show up on the cover of 5280, which describes itself as “Denver’s Mile-High Magazine”; the publication generally uses its front page to tout not-what-you’d-call-hard-hitting pieces about, for instance, the city’s top doctors. But although the sixth annual listing…
For the consumer, it’s a given–a pound equals sixteen ounces in weight, a gallon equals 64 liquid ounces, and a pint is sixteen of the same. Thanks to the watchful eyes of various government consumer agencies, the public trusts that any advertised serving measures up. But here along the beer-blessed…
In the spring of 1998, bail agent Jolene Martinez and her brother, bounty hunter Duane “Dog” Chapman, were allies in a cantankerous price war on Denver’s Bail Bond Row. Siblings united to protect the family business. What a difference a year makes. This past April, Chapman and his common-law wife,…
Paying Dividends Making money can be a dirty business. But when Deb Sanchez attended a workshop at her Wild Oats grocery store promoting “social awareness investing,” she thought it sounded like a good way to grow her small nest egg. Social investors focus their portfolios on things like environmentally friendly…
Who’s the hip pick to win the American Football Conference title this year? Why, the Jacksonville Jaguars–who else? Led by quarterback Mark Brunell, the Jags are rich in veteran talent, and barring major injuries, their time is now. On the other hand, if you live in hype-saturated New York, the…
Ben Kelley sits back on his front porch and looks out across the street at the row of new townhomes, the field of weeds, the boarded-up crack den, the ad for luxury duplexes, and fumbles for the words to describe his neighborhood. He adjusts his baseball cap, which he wears…
Columbine, Friend of Crime? I’ve written to you guys before to congratulate you on your investigative reporting and was moved to write again after reading Alan Prendergast’s “Doom Rules,” in the August 5 issue. The sympathy-and-blame-fest the rest of the media enjoyed for months after the Columbine shootings made me…
It was early last September when Raymond Gutierrez heard the helicopter circling overhead. He was washing dishes. The way Raymond lives, washing dishes takes some time, and he often lets them pile up for days. Pushing aside the cloth that covers the doorway, he walks outside his one-story stone house…
There were a lot of things Melissa Sowder didn’t like about Columbine High School. The bullies, for instance. They were football players, mostly. They shoved her friends in the halls and threw snowballs or bottles at them on the way home. Sometimes they shoved her, too. Who needed it? “Teachers…
A Sentence or a Question It was an outcome with which no one was entirely pleased. On July 30, Boulder judge Frank Dubofsky sentenced Michael Furlong to twenty years’ probation for criminally negligent homicide in the January death of his wife, Deanna (“Dead Reckoning,” July 15). As part of his…
As the condo craze hits Uptown, one of its major players, Triton Development, again finds itself wearing a bull’s-eye. Condo owners in a new 24-unit Triton project known as the Washington Condominiums, at 1747 Washington Street, are grumbling about delays that have lasted for almost a year and have come…
The right to arm bears: No, the world doesn’t need any more Beanie-esque lions, tigers or bears, but don’t tell Virginia Davis. She has sold 2,500 Columbine Remembrance Bears from her two stores, Celebrations in Aurora and Dee’s Neat Little Store in Littleton. The adorable teddies retail for $23.98 a…
A white sun burned down on more than 350,000 sweat-speckled art fans; vivid colors painted the streets. Aromas from 26 restaurants rode the hot summer breeze, pushed by the sounds of musicians in the distance; more than 200 artists sat quietly while their works were examined with critical eyes. Denver…
A Swift Kick Regarding Harrison Fletcher’s July 29 “Boot Hell”: Axis Commercial Realty says it followed a Cherry Creek property owner’s lead in booting “parking scofflaws headed for Starbucks.” What it does not mention is that the greedy little private boot bastards actually sit around watching to nail people for…
The night before her deportation hearing, Magali Brunson drank a few glasses of wine with her landlady, two of her landlady’s three daughters, the grandmother of those daughters, an old friend of the landlady’s family from back home in Nebraska, and several female friends who’d stopped by to find out…
Jan Bach used to be the queen of the trailer park. She’s lived in a mobile home for the better part of two decades, and for much of that time she’s worked as a trailer-park manager. Bach knows what it’s like to own her own home but to have to…
The middle-aged man lives in Kansas. It’s early 1997, and he recently finished parole for a sex offense he committed years ago, but he responds to a sex ad in a local publication. Within a few months, he’s trading letters with a Colorado woman named Ann. Ann is into the…
A Riddle runs through it: What a bargain! More free entertainment courtesy of Sam Riddle, the $250-an-hour man when he worked for the secretary of state’s office and the $200-per-bond man after his arrest July 16 for disobeying a lawful order and resisting police authority. Riddle’s not due in Denver…
