part 2 of 2 Back at police headquarters, Komesu was singing like a canary. He admitted that he was a morphine addict, Kuretich says, and he admitted forging prescriptions. “He said he’d taken a large amount of morphine so he could start slowly decreasing his use,” Kuretich says. “And he…
part 1 of 2 Fort Morgan hospital pharmacist Andrew Komesu was already in jail facing charges of forging prescriptions and plundering drugs when local police and federal agents discovered his stash. The haul, made in May 1994, was one of the largest in ten years for a DEA anti-drug task…
The small house Ida May Noe shares with John, her husband of 52 years, is one fence line away from the hundred-year-old Noe Farm, run by John’s brother James. Both places sit just back from Noe Road, which cuts a two-mile dirt track through the southern half of Douglas County…
Standing Pat: Talk-show host Mike Rosen isn’t the only conservative taking swings at Representative Pat Schroeder. In the current issue of the Republican National Committee’s Rising Tide magazine, Colorado state treasurer Bill Owens ranks a “Doer’s Profile” that includes several enlightening answers to the profile’s standard questions. To wit: “Latest…
Peter McNeeley is the heavyweight champion of certain parts of Massachusetts and a couple of saloons in eastern Connecticut. He’s beaten such luminaries as Jesus Rohena, Ron Drinkwater and Howard Kelly. Two years ago he knocked out Miguel Rosa in Revere, Massachusetts, in the second round, and he won a…
Hold on to your TV remote: TeleCommunications Inc., the world’s largest cable company, is ready to grant you absolution. Recently, the Englewood-based cable giant–which has 11.5 million subscribers across the country–has been running late-night television commercials announcing that August is “amnesty month” for cable pirates and warning that in September…
It’s a sunny July day at Denver’s Washington Park and, over by the picnic pavilion, 150 shorts-clad revelers are eating, drinking, playing games and frolicking to the extent permitted by the 90-plus degree heat. So what’s wrong with this picture? The picnickers are employees of Denver’s Department of Social Services…
When Irish Guys Are Smiling Regarding the ethnic contretemps in Evergreen (Eric Dexheimer’s “War of the Words,” August 9), one is tempted to ask what the reaction of the Jeffco DA and the pecksniffs in the media would have been had the situation been reversed, with the Aronsons spouting off…
cartoon…
Seldom is the legal rule of innocent until proven guilty so ignored by the public as in cases of ethnic and racial hate crimes. The charges are toxic enough to begin corroding the accused immediately, and for a crime that is enormously difficult to prove–was he a black victim, or…
Lord of the manner: Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich apparently likes rules–and lots of ’em. When the House recently hired a “protocol adviser,” Congresswoman Pat Schroeder joined a dozen other Democrats in protesting the “wasteful and embarrassing use of funds” and then, predictably, took it a step further. “Now…
1. How ’bout that mixed-doubles badminton final? Don’t let this get around, but while most of us were rotating the tires on the car last week, or repainting the parakeet’s cage, something called the U.S. Olympic Festival snuck into our fair state. This series of athletic exhibitions proved so popular…
Al Pallone bought his 1975 Pontiac Grand Ville four years ago. Pallone, who had just made the change from industrial sales rep to middle school physical-education teacher, felt the car might make a nice change from the “sedate metallic four-door” his former company had provided as a perk. “I bought…
In October 1991, Coors Field was still just a blueprint, and the talk of the town was about the lease of the unborn diamond to the Rockies ballclub. The hoopla went something like this: After taxpayers were cajoled into shouldering a $161.3 million share of the $216 million ballpark, the…
Snitch, Snitch, Snitch After reading Karen Bowers’s article “Say Anything,” in the July 26 issue, I had to ask myself why my tax dollars are being wasted keeping two pieces of shit like the Rodriguez brothers alive. Steven Lee Hart Denver Women and Children Last Regarding Patricia Calhoun’s “Girl Crazy,”…
part 1 of 2 Stan Dillard stares hard at a drop of rainwater that has worked its way through the roof to the ceiling. It hangs for a moment, then plunges to the thin carpet covering the floor of the Fraternal Club of Dining-Car Waiters and Porters. “Got a leak,”…
part 1 of 2 The little girl on the videotape pulls on her ponytail and tries to remember all the things she misses about her Daddy’s house. After all, it’s been a year since she’s been there. “My friends, and going around the neighborhood, and saying `Hi!’ to the old…
part 2 of 2 “Clare’s book is poorly named,” says Mark Everson, director of the Program on Childhood Trauma and Maltreatment at the University of North Carolina. “She calls it Children Speak for Themselves. But her approach is not to put any weight on what the child has to say.”…
part 2 of 2 The elder Cousins was the epitome of self-discipline. He’d purchased his first home in Atchison, Kansas, when he was seventeen years old and had it paid off by the time he was eighteen. Then he moved to Denver to work for the Pullman Company, selling the…
Prose and cons: Back in ’93, local Independence Institute activist David Kopel co-wrote an op-ed piece with a fellow named Theodore H. Fiddleman that accused the federal government of a “coverup” in the Branch Davidian debacle. The only “coverup” that can be proven so far is that Theodore H. Fiddleman…
This week marks a potentially momentous shift in how the poor and uninsured receive their health care in Denver–and, possibly, in the way all hospitals try to attract patients in Colorado. Fanning the winds of change is a new Colorado HMO called Community Health Plan of the Rockies and its…
One of Colorado’s most powerful law firms has gone face to face with the tiny Moffat Tunnel Commission–and the lawyers blinked. Earlier this year, the attorneys at Brownstein Hyatt Farber & Strickland sent the tunnel board a bill for $28,000 for sixteen days of work. Among other things, the law…
