Her neighbors think otherwise. Kids are always hanging around, and car alarms go off every night, they say. Once there was a drive-by shooting in front of the house. The neighbors think the Ekikos are a nuisance. By the next summer, in fact, several will have moved away.
Ekiko's seventeen-year-old son, Aniekan, does drive a Suzuki Samurai with a supersensitive alarm. One night a water sprinkler triggered it, and kids in the neighborhood often set it off as a joke. Aniekan has already been ticketed once and told by a judge to keep the car in the garage. But he says he took the car over to a cousin's house the night before and hasn't brought it back.
Still, around 6:30 in the morning, the Ekikos' phone rings. Nsiskak's husband, Rogers, picks it up. His neighbor from across the street, Jerry Dignan, yells at him, tells him if that car alarm bugs him once more, he'll bring the cops down.
Ekiko tells Dignan not to swear at him and hangs up.
Dignan calls the Aurora police, and Officer Mark Walters is dispatched to the Ekikos' house to check on a noise complaint involving a car alarm. On the way, he talks by radio with Officer Scott Baker, who tells Walters that the Ekiko home is a "no tolerance" house. There have been other complaints at the address, and if the officers find evidence supporting the complaint, they have no discretion: They must write a summons and let the courts handle it.
Baker meets Walters at the Ekikos' front door. They ring the bell.
By this time Rogers Ekiko, a 46-year-old property manager, is downstairs preparing coffee for himself and his wife. He plans to rouse his kids and take them to church. Nsikak, a physical therapist, is upstairs taking a shower, getting ready for work. She doesn't hear the bell ring, doesn't know police are downstairs. The kids, nineteen-year-old Imo, fifteen-year-old Nsisong and fourteen-year-old Iniobong, are asleep.
The officers ask Ekiko for his ID, but he refuses to give it to them. What happens next is a bit unclear: Either Rogers Ekiko lets them in (that's what the cops say) or the cops bust through the chain lock (that's what Ekiko says). From Mrs. Ekiko's vantage point (she's out of the shower now), her husband walks upstairs to get his license, and the officers barge up, too. The cops say they're following a fleeing Ekiko up the stairs. Either way, Mrs. Ekiko walks into her bedroom wearing nothing but a towel wrapped around her head and finds herself staring at the two officers. She yells. Her two daughters run toward her room, see the police, then back out again. Mrs. Ekiko grabs a comforter to wrap around herself.
Rogers Ekiko and the police return downstairs, where things turn even more sour. Ekiko takes them to his garage, where there's a Mercedes but no Suzuki. How can he be ticketed for a noisy car alarm, he asks loudly, when there is no car on his property equipped with an alarm?
Despite Ekiko's pleas, the cops begin to issue him the summons. Walters asks for the spelling of Ekiko's last name, but Ekiko just says, "You know my name," and refuses to produce any identification. The officers ask Ekiko if he wants to go to church that morning or to jail. He says he wants to go to church.
By this time, the children have come downstairs. The teenage kids start yelling at the officers to get out of the house; they want to know who's made the complaint. Walters steps outside and calls for backup. The cops wait until help arrives to press for Ekiko's ID, hoping by then everyone will have calmed down. When Officer John Betz arrives, Ekiko still refuses to cooperate. Betz and Walters try to get him outside, but Ekiko jerks away.
Mrs. Ekiko, watching from the stairs, sees the officers holding her husband's arms behind his back while another officer hits him in the head with his billy club. They begin to drag him to the kitchen, and she and her children beg them to leave him alone. As the two cops move Ekiko away, a third stands to block the family and tells them, "If you cross this line, I will shoot someone." Mrs. Ekiko holds on to her kids' pants to prevent them from going any farther.
The officers see things differently. When they tell Ekiko he's under arrest, he runs back in the house, Walters and Betz behind him, while Baker blocks the other family members from interceding. The men struggle, and at one point Ekiko leaps towards Betz, causing himself, Betz and Walters to fall down a long, narrow open stairway leading to the basement. As they land, Ekiko begins punching and kicking the officers. Walters pulls Ekiko off of Betz and up the stairs. Ekiko continues struggling, and in the kitchen, all three men fall again to the ground. Ekiko lands on top of Walters and bites him in the chest and shoulder. Walters tries to push Ekiko off with his left hand, and that's when it happens.
Ekiko strikes Walters in the left index finger.
"I don't think you can fault the police," says one neighbor who, though vocal about the Ekikos, refuses to give her name. Remembering the index-finger incident, however, she says the cops were "more than professional. [The Ekikos] haven't shown any regard for the neighborhood."
Aniekan Ekiko, now 21, says that even though there were frequent noise complaints, the activity at his house was generally harmless -- friends out front or in back, chitchatting, laughing on warm summer nights. "We do have a lot of friends. When you have five kids, you're going to create a lot of traffic." He says the neighbors simply assumed the worst.
Still, the Ekiko family has had its run-ins with the law. Aniekan has several traffic charges out of Boulder County, plus a third-degree-assault charge from April last year. Imo, 23, has failed to appear in court three times on a charge of driving while impaired. Etieno, 19, spent four years in a Pennsylvania prison on a gang-related charge he declines to discuss.
When Etieno was living at home, he was involved in some gang activity, which led to the drive-by shooting on March 23, 1996, in which at least a half-dozen shots were fired at the house, says DeAngelo Starnes, Mrs. Ekiko's attorney.
And Mr. and Mrs. Ekiko were having troubles of their own. Their marriage had been going south since 1993, and the couple had considered getting a divorce as early as August 1996 -- around the time of the index-finger incident. "Everything was just getting worse," says Nsikak Ekiko. The assault, she says, aggravated their marriage further, though she believes that Walters hurt his finger during the fall down the stairs.
As they discussed whether to go ahead with the divorce, they argued about what to do with their house: They couldn't agree on whether Rogers would receive cash from Nsikak in exchange for his interest in it. At first Rogers wanted a divorce judge to decide, but Nsikak felt that since her family had financed the down payment, she should receive the house without giving him any cash. He eventually agreed.
Their divorce attorney, Chuck Egbune, asked Mrs. Ekiko if she was prepared to pay the mortgage by herself. She told him that if she couldn't, she would sell the house and move the family somewhere more affordable.
By September 1996, though, she had decided not to divorce her husband and to give the marriage another chance.
She began to feel differently in January and contacted Egbune about getting a divorce -- then changed her mind again. But by June her mind was made up: Rogers would deed his interest in the house to his wife, she would pick up the mortgage payments he had been making, and when they divorced, she would receive custody of the children and child support. These terms were approved in June 1997, but because Mrs. Ekiko could not afford to pay for a divorce at that time, she didn't sign the separation agreement until August 22, 1997.
But also in June 1997, Rogers Ekiko was tried by a jury and convicted of second-degree assault on Officer Mark Walters. He was released on a $5,000 bond prior to his sentencing, which was set for August 27, 1997.
Between June and August, Nsikak says, her husband was rarely around. "In fact, he returned to the house only to retrieve his clothes and other personal effects. I barely noticed his comings and goings."
On August 25, while she was at work, he came back for the rest of his things. Rogers Ekiko withdrew $15,000 from the bank account he shared with his wife and disappeared. He left a note saying he was doing the best he could to move on and that he didn't deserve what had happened to him.
"Neither I nor the children have communicated with or seen him since," Nsikak says. Aniekan wonders about his father's whereabouts but says he doesn't really care. "I've gotten along fine without him. If he truly wanted us to know where he is, he'd have told us by now."
A year after the altercation with Rogers Ekiko, Officer Mark Walters's index finger still hurt.
Walters filed a personal injury action against Ekiko, who was served with the lawsuit on August 14 -- eleven days before he vanished. Once the injury suit had been served, Ekiko wrote a letter to Walters's attorneys, trying to wiggle out of the trouble. "Unfortunately, the summons to Roger M. Ekiko was delivered to my address in error, for no person by name of Roger M. Ekiko has ever resided at 17585 E. Dickenson Places," he wrote them. "Thus, the summons is duly returned so that you can forward it to the right person. Yours Truly, Rogers M. Ekiko."
This prompted attorney Marc Colin to write back, saying, "While I will be happy to amend the Complaint by adding an 's' to the end of your first name, I do not believe that the fact that a shortened version of your name has been used affects the validity of the service upon you." Colin also couldn't help but point out that even Ekiko had omitted the "s" in his first name in his return address to the law firm.
But Rogers Ekiko was already gone. The lingering damage he left can most accurately be described as a "chronic ulnar collateral ligament strain with surrounding inflammation."
In a February 1998 affidavit, Walters explained exactly how his damaged index finger had disrupted his life. "This finger had to be immobilized for three to four weeks during which time I had to be assigned a light duty," he claimed. "The joint continues to be weak and painful, particularly when I attempt certain activities such as riding a motorcycle and shooting a gun with my left hand.
"This injury," he continues, "has greatly reduced my qualifying scores when shooting with my left hand, which may in the future jeopardize my job." He goes on to say that he no longer enjoys his favorite recreational activities, golf and waterskiing.
"I suffer pain on a daily basis from my finger, which is substantially aggravated on any occasion where I am required to use my left hand to restrain or subdue a resisting suspect, grasp or use an object with my left hand and/or engage in minimally strenuous activity involving my left hand. Obviously, given the nature of my employment, this occurs on an almost daily basis."
A year later, on October 26, 1998, with Ekiko a no-show in court, Arapahoe District Court Judge Michael Watanabe issued a default judgment in favor of Walters. He noted that Walters had been asked to serve as a bicycle officer but that the injury prevented him from riding a bike, and also wrote that his finger "cannot be reasonably treated and [that] he will chronically experience limited grip strength and significant pain." One of Walters's doctors, Kavi Sachar, determined that he had a total body disability rating of 6 percent -- meaning the finger injury cut down his total body's healthy operation to 94 percent.
"It has some impact on everything in life that involves the use of his left hand," says Steve Hall, Walters's attorney. "If he's wrestling around on the floor with his kids and he hits it the wrong way, it causes problems for him."
Walters's payout from workers' comp came to approximately $4,400. Watanabe awarded damages to Walters that broke down as follows: $4,478.39 for economic losses for medical bills, wages and permanent impairment (which could be claimed by the City of Aurora to reimburse its workers' comp payout); $30,000 in compensatory damages for pain and suffering, loss of enjoyment of life, limitation of life activities and consequences to his job; and $30,000 for punitive damages, plus interest.
In July 1998, however, Officer Walters was promoted to detective. In light of that, attorney Starnes finds the damages awarded "extraordinary."
"Damages are supposedly based on the effect this has had on his career," he argues. "He gets $4,000 and some change for the actual injury, then gets $30,000 for compensatory damages. One of the things compensatory damages measures is not just pain and suffering, but how your life has been affected for the worse. He's a detective now, and that's $30,000 worth of damage? It's bogus. This was a legal shakedown."
Walters has no comment for Westword. But when he's asked if the injury had an adverse affect on his career -- considering the fact that he's now a detective -- he says, "What if you had a big toe cut off? You could still work as a newscaster. But you still lost something."
Hall says his client likes being a detective but is still not happy he was hurt. And Hall adds that Rogers Ekiko has only himself to blame for the large judgment, since he never bothered to defend himself in court. "Mr. Ekiko was personally served. He had every opportunity to make a case. He defaulted, a clear indication he didn't have a case. He was found by jury to be guilty."
But it's the former Mrs. Ekiko who may end up paying. After all, Rogers Ekiko has split town. His family members say they do not know where he is. And he had no assets -- except for half of his house.
But he transferred that to his wife. So in 1998, Walters filed a second suit against Rogers Ekiko, this time naming Nsikak Ekiko as co-defendant, arguing that Rogers transferred the deed to his house fraudulently, as a way to get out of paying Walters the damages owed him. Walters points to the fact that the deed to transfer the interest was filed after the Ekikos received notice of the suit. Starnes counters that the decision to make the transfer was made in June, two months earlier (and backs it up with an affidavit by Mrs. Ekiko).
According to the Colorado Uniform Fraudulent Transfer Act, a transfer is fraudulent if the debtor (in this case, Rogers Ekiko) made the transfer without receiving a "reasonably equivalent value in exchange" or became insolvent as a result of the transfer -- meaning you can't give something for nothing. Walters claims Ekiko did just that, executing the quit-claim deed for his interest in the house for a whopping $100. (As of January 1, 1997, the value of the house was $142,200.)
Starnes says Ekiko surrendered the house but also gave up making the mortgage payments, equal to about $26,000. In July 1988, Arapahoe County Divorce Court found the terms of the separation agreement, including the transfer of the house, "fair and not unconscionable." Ekiko was also ordered to pay $702 a month in child support to his ex-wife, but thus far, he has not paid one dime.
Clearly, Rogers Ekiko -- even if he didn't attack Aurora cops -- bears responsibility for the current lawsuit. "I don't know why he made the decisions he made. I'm not sure he knows the ramifications of what his actions are," says Starnes. "If the brother had just gone ahead and stuck around and fought the lawsuit, I can't say he'd have beat it, but I don't think Walters would have got what he got. That's why they're trying to get a significant judgment against her."
But should the remaining Ekikos lose their house over a torn ligament in a left index finger? "I don't really know how to respond to that question," says Hall. "He's entitled to collect on a judgment using the available means. It was an injury he was awarded damages on. It was a permanent injury."
The case goes to trial on June 19.
Things have been calm at the Ekiko house for a few years now, says neighbor Angela Gertschitz. The Ekikos don't cause anyone any trouble, she says. Though she moved in after August of 1996, others agree.
After the fight, Aniekan says, "no one wanted to talk to the neighbors" -- and that's why the family doesn't cause any trouble. He says his father's absence has nothing to do with the relative peace in the neighborhood; rather, it's because the kids are gone. "There's no one in the house anymore. Just one of my younger sisters. That's it. We're all busy with school and work. They have nothing to complain about."
According to the Aurora Police Department, there have been 21 calls for service to the Ekikos' house since the drive-by shooting in March 1996. Of those, twelve have been purged off the department's computer system. Since the fight in August 1996, however, there have been seven calls for service, and most of them have been from the Ekikos themselves, reporting that one of their cars was broken into, reporting a juvenile runaway, reporting a stolen vehicle and stolen checks.
The neighbor who requested anonymity concedes that the Ekikos have "been pretty quiet. They've kept to themselves." But still, the neighbor says, if they lose their house, "I'd be like, 'Hallelujah.'"
Nsikak Ekiko points to one neighbor -- whom she won't name -- as the only one in the neighborhood who comes over and talks to the kids. A few others may wave hello, but that's it. The rest she describes as "looking, talking, gossiping," and she tries to ignore them.
She says she tries to be a role model for her kids and declines to speak about her ex-husband.
"I've tried to absorb it within myself," she says. "I tried to do some prayer. I don't much like talking to people. I try to leave that behind."
