News

A Fur Piece Regarding Eric Dexheimer’s coverage of the three knuckle-dragging, Cro-Magnon trappers (“Fur Fight,” March 7): When these gentlemen have shot, clubbed, hacked and skinned the last fur-bearing mammals they can snare in their steel-jaw leghold traps, they may want to consider migrating west to Humboldt County for a…

Ronnie Bay is no sissy. Ten years ago, when he took over the Micky Manor on North Federal Boulevard, he had to fight inch by inch, night by night, to turn the bar back into the neighborhood landmark it had been when it opened in 1930. Life in the Marines…

It’s a busy Sunday evening at Denver International Airport. Dozens of flights have arrived within the past hour, and now those passengers are trying to make their way home. A row of red brake lights on the western horizon signals a line at the toll plaza, and hundreds of drivers…

On a warm winter morning, Spencer Bridges looks out across a wide stretch of the Arkansas River churning through the grasslands outside Rocky Ford, and memories float up. “I grew up out here on this land,” he says. “Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn didn’t have nothing on us. I’d be…

After eighteen months of cops, courts and attorneys, Sue Smith is back at square one. And she’s damn glad to be there. A new trial has been ordered for Smith, who was found guilty last August of criminally negligent homicide and drug distribution in connection with the death of Bruce…

When is a hospital not a hospital? That’s the heart of a little-known tax battle in Jefferson County that could have multimillion-dollar consequences for Colorado’s taxpayers. Two years ago Lutheran Medical Center purchased three office buildings adjacent to its sprawling Wheat Ridge hospital complex. Although Lutheran is one of the…

A bird in hand: The news that Tele-Communications Inc. plans to hike its cable rates an average of 20 percent has plenty of Coloradans fuming, angry enough to give cable magnate John Malone the finger. Well, they can stand in line. David Lockton has already done it. In fact, the…

The people believe that employees should have a voice,” says Jerry Beers. As area director for the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), he’s pretty much expected to say that. But his words may be more than mere union posturing. Denver city workers and representatives of a…

Speaking calmly, as a humble martyr should, Archbishop Steven Thomas, whose “university” once granted a degree in Christian counseling to a Denver newscaster’s dog, insists that he’s a victim of religious persecution spearheaded by the attorney general’s office. In the latest twist to a long-running battle between Thomas and Colorado…

The Flight Stuff After reading Andy Van De Voorde’s February 29 story about DIA travel expenses, “The Out of Towners,” I have one comment: We’re probably paying double what we should for all those flights, since the price of airline tickets went through the roof at DIA. Just another reason…

From inside the Terminal Bar–a classic dive immortalized on Tom Waits’s Nighthawks in the Diner–you cannot see the garish peanut-butter-and-electric-blue paint job that has earned the place such enmity. You cannot see the bricked-over windows along the Wazee Street side of the building, so very non-1888, the year the structure…

The pen moved across the page as though guided by someone else’s hand, leaving fragmented thoughts and raw emotions. Sometimes it seemed that writing was the only thing that kept her sane. Rhonda Edwards had filled several notebooks with such bits and pieces since her daughter, Cher Elder, had disappeared…

Passenger traffic was down by two million people last year at Denver International Airport. But a squadron of jet-setting city officials did their best to make up the difference. Travel expense forms show that in the past fourteen months, the airport paid for a city councilwoman to attend a “Beach…

After Byron Powers’s slip, the court wasn’t going to chance Debrah Snider making the same mistake when the prosecution called her to the stand. Debrah had met Luther in 1990 when she was a nurse working at the state hospital in Pueblo and he was a prison inmate. She’d worked…

X marks the spat: Jamal X, the Los Angeles import who came to Denver to head the local Nation of Islam (and stand guard at Wilma Webb’s recent press conference on the State Capitol steps when she announced she wouldn’t run for Congress), says his after-school gathering at East High…

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…