In the weeks before her adopted son died, Greeley business owner Renee Polreis told friends she had come to fear David. Where others saw a delightful two-year-old towhead, she saw a monster who was destroying her marriage and making life, in her own words, a living hell. David’s tantrums were…
Denver mayor Wellington Webb’s campaign to revitalize the South Platte River has sent currents of currency flowing to a veteran Democratic operative–and it’s reopened the floodgates in a dispute over the city’s hiring of outside law firms. Ken Salazar, who served in Governor Roy Romer’s cabinet for three and a…
Call Rick Trotter the poster boy for brand loyalty. The owner of Horizon Computers, the last remaining exclusive Atari dealer in Colorado, Trotter has stuck by his beloved computer no matter what. In the mid-Eighties, when fourteen-year-olds dumped their Atari 2600 consoles in favor of Nintendo, Trotter didn’t flinch. By…
Congress passed a Republican-sponsored bill last week that will cut down administrative costs for ski resorts and the U.S. Forest Service by untangling the complicated formula under which the resorts pay for the use of public land. The so-called Ski Fee Bill sparked opposition from Democrats on financial grounds. But…
After summer-long accusations of incompetence and mismanagement, the federal government has just completed its second audit in four years of Denver’s Weed and Seed anti-crime program. The results have improved this time around, but the audit indicates that nearly one-fifth of the program’s funds are unaccounted for, and it confirms…
Sneak attack: The Denver District Attorney’s office is in hot water over an incident involving a chief deputy DA and a Japanese-American lawyer under his command. Deputy DA Geanne Moroye has filed a complaint with the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission claiming that District Attorney Bill Ritter demoted her after…
The City of Denver’s dream of creating a string of parks along the South Platte River came true last month when it announced the purchase of most of the land for the thirty-acre Commons Park. While Denver will have a new showpiece park right downtown, some key political supporters of…
That sound you hear deep in the night is the Titanic hitting an iceberg. The passengers don’t know it yet, and the crew isn’t talking, but she’s going to the bottom. The worst-case scenario for major-league baseball is that the fans are finally so fed up with the loudmouthed martinets…
I’m OK, You’re Hokey Regarding Kenny Be’s September 19 Worst-Case Scenario, “It’s OK Not to Play Football”: Give it a rest, Kenny! Even Dan Rather was more original when he went after Newt Gingrich. Bruce V. Bracken via the Internet Homo Neurotic After reading your piece on Paul Cameron (“Fatal…
Be careful what you wish for. You may get it. On October 1, five years to the day after gambling became legal in three Colorado mining towns whose finances were as shaky as the abandoned houses that dotted their hillsides, the city council of Central City convened in its new…
Paul Cameron was about four years old, he recalls, when a young man accosted him in an apple orchard and ordered him to perform oral sex. The memory makes him chuckle. “I must have been a beautiful and charming little boy,” says Cameron. “But I didn’t like it much. He…
The road to Leyden, Colorado, isn’t much wider than a trail. A simple sign on Highway 93 a few miles north of Golden points east, directing motorists onto a narrow gravel road that twists through a break in the dun-colored rock formations of the hogback. For more than two miles,…
Colorado’s governor and lieutenant governor have waded into the fight over the proposed Animas-La Plata water project in southwestern Colorado. And some of those opposed to the project see the move as a step toward a pared-down version of the oft-delayed government endeavor. After Governor Roy Romer sat down with…
Growing up in the 1950s on the outskirts of what was then east Aurora, Robert Michael Pyle discovered a child’s paradise a short walk from his home: a wide ditch brimming with muddy water, its banks covered with thick weeds and stately cottonwoods that sheltered magpies and butterflies. As a…
As far as US West is concerned, no news is good news. The telephone monopoly is asking the Colorado Public Utilities Commission to deny public access to information on the number of delays customers are experiencing in getting new service, as well as information concerning the salaries it pays top…
That takes the cake: The sordid details continue to pile up in the sorry saga of Spicer Breeden and Peter Schmitz–the two occupants of the car that killed Rocky Mountain News reporter Greg Lopez on St. Patrick’s Day. After popping into several LoDo bars early last week, Schmitz, facing vehicular…
It’s curious how the prospect of jail can make a rich man find his wallet. What’s even more curious is how Evergreen-based homebuilder Clyde Hoeldtke lost his again. This tale of a here-today-gone-tomorrow checkbook began about four years ago, when Gail Conolly, an assistant statewide prosecutor in Florida, began pursuing…
To the immutable rules of life mandating romantic fidelity, high-quality whiskey and early knowledge of the multiplication tables, it might be wise to attach the following: The moment you turn twelve, stop seeking autographs. This comes to mind in the wake of an announcement last week that Michael Lasky, founder…
Taken for a Ride In the September 26 “A River of Money Runs Through It,” Patricia Calhoun is right on the money…our money. I voted for the 1989 bond issue. I bought the argument “Vote for Elitch’s–It’s Denver.” Now it looks like what I really bought was a break for…
Drive to Pagosa Springs, then south through the sloping ranchlands of south-central Colorado and across the Rio Blanco on Route 84, one of the few paved roads in Archuleta County. About five miles shy of the New Mexico border, you’ll see the Chromo Mercantile, where Fitzhugh Havens has been the…
The other Staabs are in the restaurant business. Twenty-nine-year-old Gary likes his critters much older–and colder. He is a paleo-reconstructionist, which means, in extremely introductory terms, that he builds big models of dinosaurs, using real bones and fossils to guide him. There are others who do this type of work,…
Twelve years of research and close to $3 million of taxpayer money have made scientist Mark Laudenslager’s monkey project a sitting duck for national animal-rights activists. Opponents of the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center researcher’s experiments on 120 macaques have picketed the medical center, written scores of letters demanding…
