News

part 1 of 2 Cripple Creek police chief Ed Stauffer pushes back from the table at Creekers restaurant, leaving his plate of fries untouched and bringing on a lecture from the matronly waitress. He listens politely to her discourse on diet and health, then lights up a cigarette as she…

Last week’s decision by the New York rating company Standard & Poor’s to downgrade Denver International Airport bonds to “junk” status was bad news pretty much all the way around. Mayor Wellington Webb, already reeling from a steady fusillade of embarrassing headlines, suffered yet another blow to his reputation as…

part 2 of 2 The Central City Police Department sits just a half-mile from the site of Black Hawk’s police headquarters. Compared to Black Hawk’s new digs, Central City officers have a modest home. But they’re pleased nonetheless. The officers moved into their headquarters building–a defunct casino–in January, after making…

Their daily bread: The hits just keep on coming, but we’ll wager that Denver’s dailies, which dutifully logged recent national coverage of DIA (and, in the Rocky Mountain News’s case, helpfully corrected inaccuracies), ignore the latest flak. That’s because the current Newsweek takes aim at a particularly sensitive target with…

Bad things are happening to old ladies,” Batman explains. “They’re getting jumped. Their purses are being snatched. You know how it makes me feel? Ticked off.” His eyes narrow like Clint Eastwood’s. “Real ticked off. So I says, `Don’t worry, ladies, I’ll walk the streets.'” Tonight, those streets have led…

In Jefferson County School District, where outcome-based education has been denounced as too radical, you’d expect administrators to be patted on the back for reviving elements of the fondly remembered one-room schoolhouse. But the move to “multi-age” classes has some parents in the state’s largest district angry. Because multi-aging combines…

This just in: Stapleton International Airport has disappeared. That’s the official verdict of the American Automobile Association, and it’s perfectly timed for the start of the summer tourist season. The 1994 AAA map of Denver, produced by H.M. Gousha, shows only blank, white space where Stapleton should be. Denver International…

The Doctor Is In…and Out Thanks for Eric Dexheimer’s well-researched and well-written article on Dr. Medenica and Charles Stevinson’s role in promoting him, “Trick or Treatment,” in the April 27 issue. I know nothing of Medenica but feel strongly that we must allow alternative medicine to flourish or die according…

If she feels at all beleaguered, Jennifer Moulton isn’t showing it. Standing behind a podium in the auditorium of Carson Elementary School, Moulton looks decidedly calm despite the anger and the heat. It is after 8 p.m., and more than 200 east Denver homeowners are in the audience, peppering the…

The beautiful Victorian castle above Colorado Springs where blue-collar bluebloods live out their final days proves that highly skilled manual labor can produce stunning results. But as the people inside the castle can testify, even the finest craftwork doesn’t last forever. Since 1892 the Union Printers Home has been a…

Hose job: If KCNC is “Working 4 Women,” as a current mailing announces, why is the station trying to get a leg up on the competition by suggesting that pantyhose is a crucial issue to female viewers? News 4 hyped its Monday night pantyhose “expose” with a glitzy four-color brochure…

A woman on Mayor Wellington Webb’s Black Advisory Council has received more than $47,000 in no-bid city contracts over the past fifteen months–including a controversial $16,500 award to provide “outreach” to minority artists that the city is paying for with money from the 23rd Street Viaduct project. The contracts signed…

Postal worker Terry O’Neill says he thought he was doing the right thing back in 1989 when the U.S. Justice Department first asked him to provide information about allegations of discriminatory practices against other U.S. Postal Service employees. Until he got that sick feeling in the pit of his stomach…

Eve Meelan bought purple laces for her green Doc Martens to make a fashion statement. But when the fifteen-year-old freshman set boot on the campus of Smoky Hill Senior High School last week, she found her laces tied to the First Amendment. Dean of Students Cathy Brondos told the surprised…

Last year, Bert Matthews had to fight the City of Denver and the Colorado Rockies for the right to hawk The Homestand Flier, the baseball-themed scorecard and paper he publishes and sells for a dollar a copy. This year, the city and the team raised the white flag, but another…

Breaking the Spell I’d like to know what it is with this band Spell. Is somebody at Westword sleeping with somebody in the band or related to them? All you guys do is write about them and write about them, and now they’re on the May 4 cover. C’mon already–enough…

The days should be getting sunnier for anyone living downwind of Rocky Flats. The Department of Energy facility is officially out of the nuclear-weapons business. Secretary of Energy Hazel O’Leary has promised the plant’s dark secrets will be dragged into the light. And the federal government seems serious about cleaning…

part 2 of 2 In April 1990 Stephanie was dawdling along the aisles of the Wild Oats health food store when the young woman from the ashram approached and asked if she had heard the news. Revelations of the guru’s sexual demands had come out at a meeting of devotees…

part 1 of 2 Have you heard the news?” Stephanie Mines was startled by the young woman’s question. She recognized her in the aisles of the health food store as another devotee of the Swami Amar Jyoti, whose Sacred Mountain Ashram is west of Boulder, near the small mountain town…

Brawl in the family: The fact that Family Focus was here first–the nonprofit service agency was founded in Denver almost twenty years ago–hardly mattered. Once James Dobson moved his Focus on the Family organization from California to Colorado Springs a few years ago, it didn’t take long for people to…