Cradle to Grave Thank you for running Karen Bowers’s August 22 article “Older but Bitter,” about the shocking crimes of Wanda Crawford. My heart goes out to Troy, Selina and Stephanie De La Rosa. It is such a tragedy to have a healthy, happy baby hurt–especially by a caregiver. The…
On July 1, several children in the Baker-La Alma neighborhood were playing in back of the storefront offices of Weed and Seed, a federally funded anti-crime program that pumps money into several impoverished Denver neighborhoods. Suddenly, nine-year-old Ivan Jorgensen was hit under the eye by a rake that another boy…
Colorado Springs babysitter Wanda Crawford was 66 years old in 1994 when she was found guilty of shaking a nine-month-old infant so severely that the baby was left brain-damaged and permanently disabled. So abhorrent was the crime that, despite Crawford’s age and the fact that it was her first felony…
The rising popularity of a spot of natural beauty southwest of the city of Golden has prompted a plan that strikes some Jefferson County residents as decidedly unnatural: paving a short stretch of Colorow Road that leads to the Lookout Mountain Nature Center. County officials insist they are paving with…
Of all the indignities Elizabeth Matteson says she suffered at the hands of the government, the worst came after the Environmental Protection Agency had frightened away a tenant occupying the industrial building her husband built. It was after the agency had put up a chain-link fence around the property overnight…
The baggage system from hell at Denver International Airport still isn’t working properly–but the lawsuit it spawned has turned into lawyer heaven. The case, which fills a two-foot-thick file at Denver District Court, is generating sky-high fees for some of Denver’s most powerful law firms. And it promises the potential…
Runaway train: If the primary election seemed rough, fasten your seatbelts–we’re in for a bumpy ride through November 5. But the toughest fight promises to be not the Senate race (pitting the Pillsbury Doughboy against the Democratic doughboy), not the First Congressional race (Pat Schroeder Jr. against a guy named…
The attorney for the plaintiff wore a khaki jumpsuit and leg irons. Most of the witnesses were merely disembodied voices in the air. The audience, made up chiefly of agents from the U.S. Marshal’s office, looked bored. But David Merritt pressed on anyway, trying to show that the nation’s most…
When Andre Dawson announced his retirement last week, a couple of astonished doctors pointed out that the great slugger had undergone twelve knee surgeries in his 21-year career–seven on the right knee, five on the left. Both ravaged knees, the Hawk allowed, are now creaking along “bone on bone.” That’s…
T and Sympathy Regarding the August 8 Off Limits item about Peter Boyles, Wilma Webb and Mr. T: Throughout the radio interview on KTLK-AM, Peter Boyles addressed Wilma Webb respectfully as “Mrs. Webb,” and Wilma Webb addressed Boyles condescendingly as “Peter.” To get respect, you usually have to give it…
It was a hot July morning, and the Reverend Robert Woolfolk mopped at the sweat that beaded on his dark brown face with a white handkerchief. With his other hand, he grasped the thick rope that hung from the ceiling just inside the oak doors of the church and pulled…
So far, the only organized opposition to the Public Service Company merger is coming from environmentalists, who fear that one consequence of tying Colorado’s power supply to Texas could be more air pollution in Denver. To link the two utilities, a $150 million power line will have to be built…
Stockholders are not usually a hostile crowd, especially when a company is posting record profits. At annual meetings, where the audience typically is made up of men in Brooks Brothers suits and women in pumps and pearls, the emphasis is on making money, not storming the barricades. Conservative investors complain…
It is undisputed that Karen Ann Shain’s boss used to measure her skirt lengths against those of other women in the office. He admits that he called long skirts “Karen length” skirts and used to kid her for not showing any “skin” on either her legs or her neckline. There…
Printer, investor and socialite Barry Hirschfeld has a reputation as someone who knows a good deal when he sees one. But he appears to have stumbled badly in his attempt to run in the foot-race business. Not only did Hirschfeld lose his initial investment in the Denver International Marathon, but…
It’s my party…: After Sunday’s final Reform Party vote, former governor Richard Lamm may have second thoughts about a third party. But the country’s first third party, the Libertarian Party, is still going strong, with 125,000 registered voters. And on August 15 the party marks the 25th anniversary of its…
The number of people who could not imagine missing the fiftieth-anniversary celebration of Tosh’s Hacienda restaurant is about 500. The menu is ready. The mariachis are on deck. Where everyone will park, though, is a bit of a mystery. The valet parking guys, who are somewhat out of their element…
Now that Amy Van Dyken’s gold-medal perkiness is finally subsiding and your Colorado Rockies are on a road trip to respect, let’s turn our attention for a moment to the game with the big helmets. The National Football League pre-season is two weeks old, and on September 1–the same date…
T’ed Off This letter is to express my outrage at the poor taste that Westword used in placing a picture of our First Lady, Wilma Webb, over the picture of Mr. T in the August 8 Off Limits. Peter Boyles’s comments on KTLK were crude and disrespectful; the characterizations, even…
The Insiders The Colorado Department of Corrections has spent millions of dollars in recent years to accommodate its new crop of “special needs” inmates–youthful offenders charged as adults but deemed too green to do hard time; elderly prisoners grown fragile in the joint; and the chronically mentally ill, who now…
Jim Lucero opens the small white booklet to a crude map with black boxes representing buildings, most of which no longer stand. Facing north, he points first to a gray stone structure across Iliff Avenue and then to its corresponding mark on the map. “That was the Dora Reynolds school,”…
The following account of a day in the life of a Colorado inmate housed at the Karnes County Correctional Center in Texas was written by Garry Izor, who is serving a life sentence for murder. “A day in the life of a pod begins at 6 a.m., when the overhead…
