News

Prairie Home Companion After reading Patricia Calhoun’s “Little Grouse on the Prairie,” I don’t know what to hope for. If the stadium vote is jeopardized because of the legislature’s greedy addition of Park Meadows and Lone Tree’s commercial area, that’s good. But if it means that we have to go…

“As with all weak people, the criticism and backbiting by reporters occurred only during office gossip. After this, they all proceeded to genuflect in print for a rich man or politician. They had no access to public funds, the most stolen article in all of crime…they constantly perpetrated the worse…

The first in a string of thirteen murders in Aurora that began Labor Day weekend barely made a ripple in Denver–six execution-style homicides the next day guaranteed that. But that first murder made headlines in Mexico and destroyed a family’s nine-year-old dream of building a life in the United States…

Have a Little Confidence In the grim, sometimes goofy race for seven seats on the Regional Transportation District’s board of directors, the key word is “confidence.” At candidate forums and fundraisers, the contenders say that the people need confidence in their elected leaders. They argue that Guide the Ride, last…

Bus driver Glenn Bowen hurt his shoulder on the job, and his workers’ compensation claim against the Hertz Corporation has dragged on unresolved for more than a year. Now that claim may be tied up in another case against the company, one brought by several of his black co-workers. Bowen’s…

While Mike Shanahan stumps for Pat Bowlen’s pro-stadium forces, who are scrambling to replace Mile High, former Bronco James “Jumpy” Geathers wishes they’d lobby for one more thing: a ring for his hand. Geathers, a 6′ 7″, 300-pound pass-rushing specialist who spent last season on injured reserve, is the lone…

An uncivil society: Can’t we all just get along? In a word, no. In two words, hell no. This was to be the year of the well-behaved campaign, the one in which special interests held on to their wallets and candidates held their tongues. It was to be a kinder,…

The public, no doubt, would have preferred clear skies and sunshine. But some 600 kids and adults came anyway on this blustery Saturday morning, to search for prairie dogs and chomp on hot dogs at “Wild Things ’98,” hosted by the Rocky Mountain Arsenal and Wildlife Refuge, ten miles northeast…

By 9 a.m. Tuesday, several residents of Lone Tree, Colorado’s brand-spanking-newest city, were already lined up at the tidy, tiny civic center, barely an Elway-armed throw from Park Meadows. They were there to do their civic duty, to vote early and avoid the crush of procrastinators who’ll still be puzzling…

Maria Garcia is a listener of such intensity that strangers at the coffee shop where she’s sitting feel her presence as a prickle on the backs of their necks. With both hands on the table, she sits, listening, making mental notes of everything. If this meeting were work-related, she would…

Faster Than a Speeding Ballot Kenny Be’s “1998 Overloaded Voter Guide,” in the October 22 issue, was a perfect summation of this campaign season. I plan to take it with me when I vote, because it’s the only thing I’ve seen that makes sense of these ballot measures. I’m only…

The town got its name from the railroad that ran through it and siphoned grain from the white elevators that rise above Colorado’s eastern plains. A steady supply of water lay underground, and so, in 1887, as the builders of the Pueblo and State Line Railroad planned their route, they…

The large hangman’s noose hanging in an engineering room at Denver Health Authority was the final straw for Don Atkinson. The African-American grounds worker says he had been subjected to more than a year of passed promotions, racially derogatory remarks and hostile co-workers when he encountered the rope. “As far…

Freddy Lipton is crusading for $16 a month. The 56-year-old Lipton suffers from colon cancer, but he hasn’t let that stop him from waging a tireless campaign on behalf of Colorado nursing-home residents. Medicaid recipients living in nursing homes receive a personal-needs allowance of $34 a month, which Lipton hopes…

House party: Kevin Marchman, the former head of the Denver Housing Authority who went on to become a public-housing wunderkind in the Clinton administration, apparently had more than family reunions on his mind when he returned to Denver last winter to spend more time with his kin. Marchman, who resigned…

It used to be so simple. Each fall, when the leaves turned and you wanted chile, real chile, the kind that made your sinuses clear and your belly warm, you’d drive past the tracks and beyond the highway to an empty lot in the country, where an old farmer wearing…

An Old-Age Problem I could not read Stuart Steers “Dying for Dollars,” in the October 15 issue, to completion because of the painful memories it brought back. After a stay in Lutheran Hospital, my mother was transferred to Cedars Health Care Center for rehabilitation in late 1996. I chose Cedars…

The two police officers met for coffee, as they often did, at the Homestead Restaurant in Idaho Springs one cold afternoon in November 1992. Gary Cunningham, who’d worked for the town’s police department for two years, had recently married his fifth wife, Michele. She worked at the Homestead, and he…

Frank and Norma Dougherty lived a modest American dream. It should not have ended in a nightmare. Frank served as a lieutenant colonel in the Army during World War II, then worked for years as a mechanical engineer at the Denver Federal Center. Norma was a homemaker who devoted herself…

Broadcast bruise: Television news is a rough business–especially if you toil for the Channel 4 morning team. Yes, beneath all that sunny bubble and squeak lies a heart of darkness. Or something. The trouble started on September 24, when affable newsbabe Katie Keifer was booked by Denver police for allegedly…