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The Colorado Supreme Court has finally laid down the law for attorneys representing children on behalf of the state. Chief Justice Anthony Vollack issued a directive that took effect this month: The lawyers, called “guardians ad litem,” must meet with their clients personally, visit their homes or placements and show…

All Alex Pappas wanted was a liquor store. All his neighbors wanted was for him to sell his booze somewhere else. Out of that fundamental disagreement, enormous consequences have sprung. After more than a year of gathering petitions and sitting through rounds of hearings, frustrated Congress Park residents are talking…

Nathan Dunlap’s brother-in-law had a plan. After accusing the Aurora police of harassing him and his wife, Darius Ashlock claimed he had a tape of a supposedly incriminating phone conversation with Deputy Chief Mike Stiers. During a subsequent private meeting with Police Chief Verne St. Vincent, however, Ashlock refused to…

Flush With Success I contend that with her February 22 column, “On a Roll,” and its important report about Western Pacific’s toilet-paper game, Patricia Calhoun finally accepts where her writing is going. Down the toilet. Joe Garcia Arvada Thank God for Patricia Calhoun! I, too, was irritated to the point…

All DPS board members should stay after school and write a hundred times on the blackboard: “Why screw up a program that works?” “We’ve gone to the school board, we’ve gone to the mayor, we’ve gone to the governor,” says Lereen Castellano. “If we have to, we’ll go to the…

Tony Carpenter sells cell-phone service, plays with his two kids, finds his wife a nice Valentine’s Day remembrance, contemplates the occasional acting job. Because he injured his shoulder six months ago, he hasn’t tried flying lately. In fact, he hasn’t even heard that the Y’s nearly seventy-year-old trapeze program was…

Tom Keuer peers into the glass-doored storage cabinet like a television teen cruising the fridge, thirsting for a swig of Sunny D. “Any of the good stuff around here?” he asks. A blue-jeaned lab worker shrugs. “It’s back in the freezer now.” Keuer pokes around among jugs of clear solutions…

Ask religious broadcasters, from the elfin Pat Robertson to the funky Reverend Ike, and they’ll tell you: Doing the Lord’s work takes plenty of cash. Precious airtime that could be spent trumpeting the Gospel gets consumed in pleas for tithes, donations, prayer offerings–“the green stuff,” as Ike used to call…

Amid the current national backlash against affirmative-action programs, Colorado is taking what could be the first step toward instituting a state procurement system that would favor female- and minority-owned businesses. The state’s Department of General Support Services has quietly submitted a request to the General Assembly’s Joint Budget Committee to…

The white stuff: For a half-dozen years the “Underwear Tree” off Chair 5 in Vail’s back bowl has been one of the ski area’s most entertaining sights (along with watching Texans fall on their butts). The tree is festooned with undergarments, including several unusually “well-proportioned” items, according to Vail’s Paul…

If there are two things the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center ought to understand, it’s death and education. The first it sees every day. The second is its reason for existing (its motto: “We practice what we teach”). The two topics have even been part of the hospital’s employee…

Surrounded by happy, if cramped, campers unrolling toilet paper over my head, I thought to myself: There has to be a better way. I had finally sunk so low as to fly out of Colorado Springs. And now I was paying the price, sheet by sheet. Not that I enjoyed…

Who’s on First? Regarding Patricia Calhoun’s column “Last Call,” in the February 7 issue: Calhoun can dish it out, but she can’t take it. When she wants to criticize a person or a business, she wraps herself in the First Amendment. When the city is critical of her paper, she…

part 2 of 2 When police and firefighters arrived at Smith’s home, they found the house clean and tidy, making Wirtzfeld all the more incongruous. He was sitting on a corner of the sofa, perched casually as if he’d fallen asleep while chatting with friends. He was leaning on his…

part 1 of 2 For three years, until his death in January 1994, Gary Smith’s life was a nightmare of medication, hospitalizations, chemotherapy and pain–pain so severe that eventually even huge doses of morphine could not extinguish the fire that coursed through his cancer-riddled body. “Smitty’s” wife, Sue, found some…

As soon as Bette Handon gets foster children in her home, she starts teaching them what she calls survival skills–no matter how young they are. “You teach them how to turn on the stove without burning the house down,” says Handon. “How to open a can. How to scramble eggs…

In any discussion of Colorado’s child-welfare system, getting even the most basic information about children in state care is nearly impossible. That’s not because of statute but because of individual county policies about what gets said to whom. State law merely instructs professionals in the system to keep the identity…

Higher and higher education: Under host Howard Higman, the University of Colorado’s Conference on World Affairs was one hell of a party. When he founded the annual event in 1948, Higman’s goal was to bring the world to Boulder, throwing international notables from all sorts of disciplines–they eventually included Cold…

If I had it to do over again, I would use dry ice,” Shaun Gothwaite says. “Louie began to turn a little purple without it.” Other than that, it was the perfect wake. No one who knew Louie Aran could imagine him filled with embalming fluid or laid out among…