On a lovely evening last May, Dennis Powell and the other teachers and administrators at Denver’s Machebeuf Catholic High School attended an assembly celebrating the achievements of another academic year. Machebeuf’s principal, Dr. Elizabeth Mantelli, addressed the students and staffers gathered before her, and when speaking about the impressive number…
The big shill: A certain Denver-based talk-radio host may be all the rage nationally (after duking it out on Ricki Lake, the Black Avenger next takes on Montel Williams), but Ken Hamblin wasn’t the fellow who raised the ire of Chicago Tribune writer Jon Margolis. In his January 25 column…
You can’t tell the players without an atlas. Or a body count. Since the 1988 Olympic Games, Germany has reunified and the Soviet Union has broken into fifteen pieces. Two Yemens have become one, while Czechoslovakia has split itself into Czechs and Slovaks. The city of Sarajevo, once famous for…
Tempest in a Tepee Regarding Steve Jackson’s “Civil Wars” in the February 9 issue: It’s pathetic that these Native American “leaders” should spend all their time arguing with each other instead of working to make life better for their people–whatever color they may be. Michelle Randolph Denver I find it…
For the second year in a row, Westword has taken home the Colorado Press Association’s Award for Editorial Excellence in its class of large weeklies. The sweepstakes award is based on total points accumulated in the CPA contest’s twelve editorial award categories. Among Westword’s wins: Managing editor Andy Van De…
Kiowa County residents, deciding that they’ve had it up to here with New York City’s sewage sludge, are telling the company that brings it in to either leave nicely or be forced out. And the company realizes that when you’ve got to go, you’ve got to go. Since April 1992,…
Former Cherry Hills Village developer Bill Wall has never lacked for chutzpah. Last year the unflappable socialite convinced a federal judge that taxpayers should pay two private attorneys to defend him on bank fraud charges–even though he continued to live in a Cherry Hills mansion and tool around town in…
For years, former residents of the neighborhood wiped out by Denver’s Auraria campus in the 1970s have claimed that authorities stiffed them out of money after forcing them from their homes. Now they’ve turned to the Colorado legislature for help–and have come up empty-handed. The residents, who call themselves “displaced…
Glenn Morris, the outspoken co-director of the Colorado chapter of the American Indian Movement, reaches into a worn briefcase and pulls out a black binder. Bits of yellowed newspaper clippings and photographs poke out from behind the pages; a postcard of an Indian man wearing a feathered headdress clings to…
Heinie headquarters is located in an unpretentious industrial park in the city of Sheridan, overshadowed by a drive-in movie screen and obscured from view by highway ramps and road construction. It is from this unlikely setting that Lee Spieker, the Colorado-based brains behind the Buns of Steel fitness video phenomenon,…
Read it and sweep: For a guy who didn’t get much attention when he started committing his crimes (Denver police even denied that a rapist was methodically working the Washington Park area), Theodor Castillo–along with his newfound friends and alter egos “big-p Paco” and “little-p Paco”–was certainly all over the…
Throughout the colorful history of tennis–a game almost as old as war–only two men have won the Grand Slam. In 1938, the year Hitler decided he owned Austria, American Don Budge swept the Australian, French, British and U.S. Open tournaments–a feat as daunting as a pro golfer winning all four…
Straighten Up and Fly Write Regarding Patricia Calhoun’s “Last Writes” in the January 26 issue: I, for one, will certainly miss David Chandler’s excellent work. He has been the only reporter smart enough (and experienced enough, I realized after reading Calhoun’s obituary for him) to tell us the real story…
For nearly a year now, Cliff and Karen Fischer have glimpsed the future of health care. They are not thrilled with the view. In recent months, the Clinton administration and Governor Roy Romer have unveiled plans to correct health-insurance woes. Although different in some respects, both strategies rely on a…
Wouldn’t you know the day Mildred Hedrick got the good news was the one day in her 73-year history on which she was physically incapable of talking? “Yep, I had the flu,” Mildred confirms, “lost my voice entirely and all I could do was shake my hands at everyone and…
Boulder’s Penny Lane coffeehouse has always drawn a widely varied clientele–from expensively clad businessmen to grungy teenagers with ragged clothing and pierced nostrils. But over the past several months, a new breed has been added to the mix: real estate agents. “They’re coming in here all the time, showing people…
Few flatlanders who zip through mountainous Park County pull off the road to stop at the Shawnee Trading Post, about an hour west of Denver on U.S. 285. But for those locals with something on their minds, proprietors Roy and Leona Nelson have pulled chairs around the wood stove, and…
DISBARRED AND IMPRISONED, NICK AVILA CAN’T STOP BEING A LAWYER.SPLIT VERDICT IF ATTORNEY NICK AVILA WAS SUCH A GREAT GUY, WHY IS HE IN JAIL? How the drugs ended up in Avila’s hands is undisputed. According to federal investigators, Phil Guerrero was driving in Louisiana on August 21, 1987, when…
part 1 of 2 Nick Avila’s graduation from the University of Colorado’s law school in 1976 and subsequent career, no matter how short-lived, were nothing short of a miracle. A product of the city’s lower-class Globeville neighborhood, he seemed that rare person: someone who had stuggled to make good–and then…
How the drugs ended up in Avila’s hands is undisputed. According to federal investigators, Phil Guerrero was driving in Louisiana on August 21, 1987, when he was pulled over by state troopers who observed him making an illegal lane change. The troopers noted that Guerrero was acting nervous, and asked…
Clearing the air: Denver’s weekly mayor/council meeting tackled a particularly tricky issue at the January 25 session: what to do with Paradies, the DIA concessionaire whose owner had just been found guilty of bribing Atlanta officials for deals at their airport. While councilmembers moved into executive session to discuss Paradies’s…
Michael Jordan has already tried to play major-league baseball. And failed. You can look it up. Back in 1890, The Baseball Encyclopedia informs us, one Michael Henry Jordan, the pride of Lawrence, Massachusetts, appeared in 37 games for the Pittsburgh Pirates. In 125 at-bats, the 27-year-old outfielder managed to get…
