Off Limits

Is that a radio in your pocket? Departing congressman David Skaggs is crowing that the feds will review security at Rocky Flats, as he requested over a year ago when reports surfaced concerning inadequate security and safeguards at the decommissioned nuclear-weapons plant. When he visited the facility on Friday, departing Secretary of Energy Federico Pena endorsed Skaggs’s concept, which calls for a study by five independent security experts.

They might want to consider adding one more name to the list: that of Enrique Garcia Fuentes. He’s an employee of Denver-based Metro Networks, which provides news and traffic reports for over a thousand radio stations around the country. Garcia Fuentes specializes in news for Spanish-language stations, including KMXA and KJMN here in Denver and affiliates in Los Angeles, Dallas and Northern California. So when he heard that Pena would be returning to his old stamping ground, he decided to attend the press conference. “I wanted to talk to him about his future in politics,” Garcia Fuentes says. After all, the only Hispanic member of the cabinet–the former mayor of Denver moved from Transportation to Energy at the start of Bill Clinton’s second term–announced a few months ago that he plans to step down this month.

But when he called to secure press credentials, Garcia Fuentes was stonewalled by a Rocky Flats PR official. “It was my impression that he noticed that I had an accent,” the reporter says. (And in fact, he does.) “He said to me, ‘Are you a U.S. citizen?’ and when I said no, then he said, ‘You cannot come to cover the story.'” Garcia Fuentes, a graduate of the University of Colorado at Boulder who’s been with the Metro Network for two years, says he was “a little upset–I’ve been a reporter five years, and I’ve never encountered a situation like this.” He complained to his supervisor, who called the Rocky Flats official, who “listened to the honkies,” says one of Garcia Fuentes’s honky colleagues. It turned out Garcia Fuentes could attend–but he’d have to show his Mexican passport, and his green card, and some other ID, and probably his Safeway card, at the gate. And then he wasn’t allowed to carry any of his own equipment–a Metro Networks honky reporter had to haul his tape recorder and phone. And just in case Garcia Fuentes planned to smuggle out some plutonium in his pants, he was also assigned three guards, one of whom followed him everywhere–including the bathroom. “It was kind of uncomfortable,” Garcia Fuentes says.

Still, he managed to talk with Pena and broadcast several live reports. “I asked him three questions,” the reporter says, “about Rocky Flats and nuclear waste, and about his future.” Answering the third, Pena offered his standard line–that he wants to spend more time with his family and work in the private sector. “Personally, I thought he was kind of hiding what he wanted to do,” says Garcia Fuentes. “It’s been my experience with most people who work at public service at that level that they don’t quit, especially at this point.”

Good point in any language. Bombs away.

It’s all relative: A dozen years ago, developer Bill Walters ruled the Denver roost, as president of the Denver Chamber of Commerce and as a major player with Silverado Savings & Loan. That, of course, was before he flew the coop, leaving behind his debts for life in sunny Southern California, made even sunnier by the fact that he managed to transfer most of his assets to his new wife’s name. Perhaps in gratitude for his financial salvation, which was greatly aided by born-again mega-developer Bill Pauls, today Walters is a devout Christian.

Although Walters’s first wife, Mary Lou, lost a husband, she clearly gained a lot of knowledge from Bill. Today she goes by her maiden name, Mary Lou Paulsen, and owns two companies that specialize in acquiring properties. And while the properties tend to be smaller than those that interested Bill, they’re still high in human drama: Paulsen’s ADA Corporation recently sued Mildred Bennett, a 72-year-old blind woman whom ADA had evicted from her Denver home, for not leaving the company clear title. (Paulsen had picked up the property at a tax lien sale.) Late last month, though, ADA Corporation and Bennett’s pro bono attorneys agreed to a settlement that will pay Bennett $35,000 (“The Money Pit,” June 4). When that news hit, several people who used to share the social pages with Mary Lou Walters recognized the born-again developer. “The least she could do is set that poor woman up in an apartment,” sniffed one.