News

Jock Bitch Regarding Stuart Steers’s “Bowlen for Dollars,” in the December 20 issue: The Denver-Boulder turnpike began as a toll road. The taxpayers were promised that when the road had been paid for, the toll would be removed. The road was so successful that it was paid for a few…

The destruction of a historic 17th Street hotel to make way for a parking lot has many wondering if Mayor Wellington Webb’s vaunted commitment to preserving Denver’s heritage is just another blast of hot air. With Denver’s downtown real estate market heating up, the demolition of other historic buildings suddenly…

Anti-abortion crusader Ken Scott wants to save everyone else’s unborn children. He just doesn’t pay to support those he fathered personally. For years the twice-married, twice-divorced proponent of family values has been a fixture at the anti-abortion protests outside the Planned Parenthood clinic at 20th and Vine. At the same…

In honor of Congresswoman Pat Schroeder’s impending retirement next year after 24 years in the U.S. House of Representatives, her staff compiled a Harper’s-like list intended as a testimony to her accomplishments (e.g., hours spent working for constituents: 78,000) and integrity (political consultants hired: 0). Parts of it were published…

part 2 of 2 MEDIA Denver’s reporters did their best to find all the angles in breaking-news events like DIA. Post columnist Dick Kreck reported developing a mild case of frostbite during an experimental trek to the airport via light rail and RTD’s SkyRide bus that wound up being a…

Red in the Face The City of Aurora apologized after printing a community-services directory for Vietnamese immigrants whose cover featured the flag of the Communist government many of the same people had fled from in terror. I Found It! The Christian Booksellers Convention in Denver featured such items as Jesus…

Ben Nighthorse Campbell Occupation: Democratic/Republican U.S. senator People back in Washington knew you could always make a handshake deal with the craggy Coloradan–after all, he was a straight-talkin’, ponytail wearin’, Harley-ridin’, judo-choppin’ son of a gun from Out West. They also knew that any such deal would have about as…

part 1 of 2 Life wasn’t a bitch in Colorado this year; it was a bear. Denver International Airport opened in a snowstorm and Coors Field made its debut with replacement players, but it was a pair of cuddly polar bear cubs that really captivated the Mile High City. A…

Bucking the Broncos Regarding Stuart Steers’s “Bowlen for Dollars,” in the December 20 issue: According to your article, Pat Bowlen wants Denver taxpayers to agree to the continuation of the 0.01 percent sales tax, passed to help fund Coors Field, because he believes “the tax is minimal,” “an insignificant amount…

Pat Bowlen has a problem. The multi-millionaire owner of the Denver Broncos says his team needs more revenue. And the Broncos’ public relations machine is already shifting into gear, preparing a campaign to convince taxpayers they should open their wallets and chip in $180 million to build the men in…

part 1 of 2 Last week in Westword: In March 1995, Heather Smith recognized a mug shot in the newspaper as the man who had stabbed her five times outside her home near Washington Park two years earlier. The man’s name was Thomas Edward Luther. Luther, 37, had been convicted…

part 2 of 2 The distance from Lakewood to Empire is less than fifty miles. But it must have seemed like a thousand to Detective Scott Richardson on February 23, 1995, when he, another detective, Byron Powers and Powers’s attorney headed up I-70 to find Cher Elder’s grave. Thomas Luther…

The great white hope: Just when you thought it was safe to turn on local “news” again, two more polar bear babies arrive, in the nick of time for all those warm-and-fuzzy seasonal stories. (Why not simply name the cubs Nielsen and Ratings and be done with it?) But before…

To most people, having their phone service “cut off” means simply that they didn’t pay their bill. Not to Bruce Kronberg, who lives in a modest house along an isolated stretch of highway northwest of Fort Collins. A little over two weeks ago a worker for the state highway department…

Living Off the Fad of the Land Regarding your December 6 issue: The Globeville family that Robin Chotzinoff wrote about in “Globeville Warming” is living a modern version of nineteenth-century village life like that described in a George Eliot novel. It is refreshing to read about people not caught up…

In 1984, then Colorado Republican Party Chairman Bo Callaway set up a charitable corporation ostensibly to fund speech contests for Colorado high school students. The board of the tax-exempt, and therefore supposedly nonpartisan, entity was made up of state GOP heavyweights: Callaway, party vice-chair Mindy Meiklejohn, party secretary Carol Beam,…

Carrying the fear of gangs to new heights in Colorado, the Greeley Mall kicked out a 44-year-old Denver woman earlier this month for wearing a blue bandanna on her head. At the time of her ouster, during a busy Sunday shopping excursion, Theresa Seamster, a supply technician at Denver’s VA…

When the patriarchs of two of Colorado’s most powerful families joined forces over two years ago, it wasn’t for another megamillion-dollar business deal, or a shared sinecure on a corporate board, or even one of those glittering charity events. It was disease that brought Chuck Stevinson and Bill Coors together…

part 2 of 3 When the call went out at a little after 4 a.m.–female brutally raped and assaulted in Silverthorne by white male driving green or dark-colored pickup truck–police officers from across Summit County began to converge on the scene. Among them was deputy Joe Morales, who was asked…

part 3 of 3 In March 1993, Heather Smith was 27 years old and working at her father’s company. She had many girlfriends and welcomed admiring looks from men attracted to her face and a body that had once made her a nationally ranked swimmer. Her friends thought Heather led…