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part 1 of 2 Stan Dillard stares hard at a drop of rainwater that has worked its way through the roof to the ceiling. It hangs for a moment, then plunges to the thin carpet covering the floor of the Fraternal Club of Dining-Car Waiters and Porters. “Got a leak,”…

part 1 of 2 The little girl on the videotape pulls on her ponytail and tries to remember all the things she misses about her Daddy’s house. After all, it’s been a year since she’s been there. “My friends, and going around the neighborhood, and saying `Hi!’ to the old…

part 2 of 2 “Clare’s book is poorly named,” says Mark Everson, director of the Program on Childhood Trauma and Maltreatment at the University of North Carolina. “She calls it Children Speak for Themselves. But her approach is not to put any weight on what the child has to say.”…

part 2 of 2 The elder Cousins was the epitome of self-discipline. He’d purchased his first home in Atchison, Kansas, when he was seventeen years old and had it paid off by the time he was eighteen. Then he moved to Denver to work for the Pullman Company, selling the…

Prose and cons: Back in ’93, local Independence Institute activist David Kopel co-wrote an op-ed piece with a fellow named Theodore H. Fiddleman that accused the federal government of a “coverup” in the Branch Davidian debacle. The only “coverup” that can be proven so far is that Theodore H. Fiddleman…

This week marks a potentially momentous shift in how the poor and uninsured receive their health care in Denver–and, possibly, in the way all hospitals try to attract patients in Colorado. Fanning the winds of change is a new Colorado HMO called Community Health Plan of the Rockies and its…

One of Colorado’s most powerful law firms has gone face to face with the tiny Moffat Tunnel Commission–and the lawyers blinked. Earlier this year, the attorneys at Brownstein Hyatt Farber & Strickland sent the tunnel board a bill for $28,000 for sixteen days of work. Among other things, the law…

Pickup basketball is a physical sport, as evidenced by the playground rule “No blood, no foul.” But when the guy who gets smacked is a Denver cop, the rules change. What began as a friendly game of hoops last fall has evolved into a nine-month court battle in which a…

Beat It Regarding Robin Chotzinoff’s “Beat Cop,” in the July 19 issue: Malicious. If this wasn’t a perfect example of the type of borderline-libelous and creatively sensational writing that gives journalists a bad rap, I don’t know what is. Simply put, it was completely one-sided, vicious and damaging. If the…

part 2 of 2 Chris started informing on other inmates almost immediately after arriving back in the joint. He once allegedly turned in another inmate for smoking pot in return for a promise that he could make a few phone calls. His propensity to tattle was common knowledge among the…

part 1 of 2 Chris Rodriguez pops up from his plastic chair and begins to pace the length of the interview room at the Colorado State Penitentiary in Canon City. His voice ebbs and flows as he walks the three steps from the window to the door and back again,…

Of all the screaming, revving multitudes at the Malibu Grand Prix Race Track, only thirteen have made it into the Elite 49, a club that celebrates the 49 seconds (or less) it takes them to drive one lap of the half-mile Malibu track. Members of the Elite 49 get their…

Poll faulting: If it’s summer, it must be time for the City of Denver to go after Channel 9 again. Last year Mike Musgrave, then manager of the Denver Department of Public Works (and now one of the handful of mayoral appointees whose post-election resignations have been accepted by Wellington…

It’s not a common goal, or even a popular one these days, but to Eugene Duran it was real: He wanted to be a labor lawyer. And for seven years he was, negotiating higher wages and fighting against unfair firings for Teamsters Local 435. Last year the labor lawyer and…

A controversial black gay AIDS activist has been run out of town with a bloody nose–assaulted by an apartment manager, he says, a convicted drug dealer who worked for his former employer and arch enemy: the Urban League of Metropolitan Denver. The dispute, which took place in an apartment complex…

War Is Heck Regarding Patricia Calhoun’s “War of the Words,” in the July 19 issue: Color me confused. I’ve reread your column about Jay Ambrose twice…what are we supposed to conclude from the various passages you reprinted? There don’t seem to be misspellings or grammar goofs. I never considered the…

When schoolteachers Walter and Maureen Keller bought a dilapidated mansion in a dicey northwest Denver neighborhood two years ago and then borrowed more than half a million dollars to transform it into a posh hotel, their friends and relatives told them they were making a big mistake. They may have…

The Wildcat, the rickety roller coaster at the old Elitch Gardens, was known for turning the world upside down–and for turning a few stomachs. Now the brewing storm over what to do with the amusement park’s abandoned northwest Denver digs promises to do the same. The Denver City Council will…

When he arrived in court for sentencing, Alex Woods Jr. had a firm grip on his public image–innocent, though proven guilty. Dressed in a well-cut black suit, blond, handsome and only 24 years old, he stood calmly as Denver District Judge Doris Burd gave him “generally the sentence that is…

Undress for success: As the ludicrous trend toward “dress-down” or “casual” days catches on, the clothing industry has spun off entire lines of pricey, Friday-appropriate duds for those folks whose actual casual attire doesn’t cut the corporate mustard, and personnel directors are keeping themselves busy writing memo after memo banning…