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…

Did a math instructor at the Community College of Aurora whistleblow herself out of a job? For the past three years Katherine Mills has railed unsuccessfully against a colleague named George Bruner, whom she claimed was unqualified to teach anthropology because he doesn’t hold a degree in the field. Two…

If you walk along the quaint quarter-mile stretch of Main Street in downtown Lyons, you can find a florist, a handful of antique dealers, Germanic knickknacks, a hearty omelet at the Gateway Cafe and the prototype for a radical new internal-combustion engine. Vern Newbold invented it; engineers from around the…

John Hart is a fine writing teacher; his student evaluations are nearly unanimous on that. Last year his students nominated him as Teacher of the Year at the Community College of Aurora, where he also served as co-chair of the faculty senate. He has a graduate degree in fine arts,…

Of all the indignities Elizabeth Matteson says she suffered at the hands of the government, the worst came after the Environmental Protection Agency had frightened away a tenant occupying the industrial building her husband built. It was after the agency had put up a chain-link fence around the property overnight…

Printer, investor and socialite Barry Hirschfeld has a reputation as someone who knows a good deal when he sees one. But he appears to have stumbled badly in his attempt to run in the foot-race business. Not only did Hirschfeld lose his initial investment in the Denver International Marathon, but…

Three weeks ago an unlikely group of lawyers, representatives from the Environmental Protection Agency and a private investigator met with prosecutors from the Colorado Attorney General’s office. The purpose of the gathering was to decide whether it was worthwhile, or even possible, to bring criminal charges of polluting against a…

Managing a city can be a sneaky business. How else to explain why Denver ran up a nearly $80,000 tab with R.A. Heales & Associates? According to its advertisement in the Yellow Pages, the firm offers “complete investigative services” including, but not limited to, “insurance defense,” “background” and “undercover.” Most…

In 1993, Lisa Lane, an assistant district attorney in Grand County, prosecuted a drunk-driving case against an occasional local named Jack Irving Ainsworth. Late on July 4, 1992, Ainsworth had been riding his motorcycle in an isolated location outside of Grand Lake; on the back sat a young woman he’d…

Sexual assault?” Dave Lawrence, who manages the Park Centre Lounge, a Westminster karaoke bar, is perplexed. “I guess you could call it that. If you want to get technical…I mean, most guys in a bar would kind of like that sort of thing.” Nonetheless, that’s the charge listed on a…

Park County, which borders sprawling Jefferson and Douglas counties, is where Colorado’s genuine horse country collides with the commuters of the Front Range who dream of pastures and idyllic canters through the mountain woods and meadows. So it’s no surprise that equine matters there can escalate into turf wars. That…

When Denver Public Schools began forced busing to desegregate the city’s schools just over two decades ago, the reaction of many white parents was swift: They left. In 1974 nearly 54 percent of the Denver student body was white. By late last year, when the district was released from federal…

Billy Mullins has found faith. “The justice system of this great city has finally realized,” he begins, “that it was a bunch of fuckin’ lies conjured up about us.” Actually, he’s still a little bitter. Recently, after some deliberation, the city’s justice system concluded that Mullins did not commit several…

Last week Jet Aspen, the start-up airline that was to ferry powder-hungry passengers from Los Angeles and other cities to Aspen, Telluride and Montrose, filed for protection from its creditors under Chapter 11 federal bankruptcy laws. Despite publicity and millions of dollars it raised, the Virginia-based company never got off…

On the blue-dark evening of May 13, 1995, Craig Williams stood on the porch of the single-story ranch house he’d built twenty years ago. To the south, east and north, his wheatfields promised a bountiful year; the stalks were thigh-high already, their tips clustered tightly with beads of grain. As…

Legislators like to give the impression that they are part of a sacred mission. Working in dark-paneled chambers filled with high-minded speechifying, they create the laws that drive social policy, behavior and morality, all for the greater public good. Right. In reality, legislators can get awfully personal. So can their…

The medical establishment grits its teeth when it hears Hal Huggins’s name. Dentists, scientists and patients regard the Colorado Springs dentist as a brilliant contrarian or a charlatan, with little shading in between. And State Administrative Law Judge Nancy Connick had no problem making up her mind, either. Although Huggins…

Business and politics have been known to make uneasy bedfellows, but an obscure Boulder company is showing just how strange the marriage can be. Last month United States Voting Machine Inc. declared bankruptcy. The announcement was hardly earthshaking: USVM listed a mere $20,000 in assets. Yet the company’s union of…

Last week, as Denver Public Schools officials announced they would not permit another Nation of Islam rally to take place at George Washington High School, Alvertis Simmons was asked to comment. “Don’t lump us all together,” Simmons complained. “I’m sick and tired of people trying to pigeonhole us as one…

Last fall, as Jet Aspen, a start-up airline that plans to link several major cities to Colorado’s most noted ski resort town, prepared its flight application to the U.S. Department of Transportation, the company’s chief executive officer boasted that he had accumulated $8 million in financing. That was a problem–but…

It may be old-fashioned, but it is a dream many people still hold: to start and run a family business. What could be more satisfying than earning a living while working closely with loved ones? The answer, if you’re a member of the Lewis family, is, just about anything. Nine…

Clyde Hoeldtke, the Evergreen developer who built Florida houses under the name Beacon Homes, liked to think of his customers as satisfied. “Thirteen thousand happy Beacon homeowners,” he’d called them, even after he left numerous buyers with incomplete homes or liens filed against them by subcontractors Hoeldtke hadn’t paid. Now…