News

part 1 of 2 John Trost takes a deep breath. Dressed in a sports jacket and tie that speak of upper-class tastes, the slight, boyish-looking man and his “wife” bustle onto the stage at the Theatre on Broadway. “Boy, have we got a story to tell you,” exclaims another couple…

It was in late August 1984 that residents in the southwest Denver subdivisions of Friendly Hills and Harriman Park called a news conference to demand an explanation from public officials about an unusual number of cancer deaths and health problems among children living in the area. Ten years later, they’re…

California schemin’: Douglas Bruce, the self-proclaimed “terrorist” who keeps Colorado hopping with his ballot proposals (including this year’s much-feared Amendment 12), turned 45 last week. To mark the august occasion, the almost-year-old Colorado Springs Independent sent news editor Cara DeGette to uncover Bruce’s Southern California roots. Among DeGette’s findings, published…

In legal matters involving disgruntled former teachers, the Catholic Archdiocese of Denver has won one and lost one. And the victory came when a judge ruled that the federal government couldn’t intervene on a fired Machebeuf Catholic High School instructor’s behalf without infringing on the Church’s First Amendment religious freedoms…

Their Passion Was in Tents I have just read Patricia Calhoun’s August 17 column, “Fold Your Tents,” in reference to the airport. Well done! It says everything that needs to be said again and again and again. The whole project from the beginning–there may never be an end–hasn’t been well…

City of Denver airport officials are continuing to woo financially troubled MarkAir–this time with a deal that could give the Anchorage-based airline up to seven months of free rent for agreeing to put a new reservations center at Stapleton International Airport. Despite MarkAir’s precarious fiscal history, city officials and the…

Rob Betts loves industrial rock, dislikes authority and has a grudge against police. And for more than a year now, the Denver college student has channeled those traits into editing The Denver MonkeyWrench, a funky underground newsletter with an anti-cop bent. Not surprisingly, Betts’s creation has earned him a special…

At first glance, it looks like an inconsequential little controversy involving nothing more significant than some burned-out light bulbs, missing trash cans and wads of discarded chewing gum. But in recent weeks, a seemingly mundane dispute over street maintenance along Denver’s Santa Fe Drive has turned into a heated political…

Teresa Hailey, state director of the Miss Colorado Metroplex pageant, would have done well to commit her organization’s mawkish creed to heart. “Be too large for worry,” it reads, “too noble for anger, too strong for fear, too happy to admit the presence of trouble.” On June 12, however, nearly…

All stirred up: According to Denver police chief Dave Michaud, the SafeNite program “is an excellent additional tool that is being used by police officers to remove kids from dangerous environments.” Coffee, anyone? One month into the program, the city had nabbed a total of 118 kids for curfew violation–at…

On Your Mark! Regarding Andy Van De Voorde’s “The Alaskan Pipeline,” in the August 10 issue: Wait a minute. Let’s see if I’ve got this right. We have an unusable $3 billion airport because a contractor can’t get a $190 million baggage system to work. So the city is going…

Eight years ago area transportation officials pronounced that Denver needed a public helicopter landing facility near its downtown to accommodate the growing demand of business executives and to keep the city on par with other financial hubs around the country. Consultants have spent the past two years–and more than $125,000…

When he was booted from school, Terry Hamburg did what any student these days would do. He sued his teachers. Except that Hamburg was no ordinary student. At the time he was shown the door, he was in the final months of the family-practice residency program at Presbyterian/St. Luke’s Medical…

For anyone who has ever attended a local government planning meeting, it is a familiar sight: A developer or lawyer wheels in a stack of boxes, crammed full of what are presumed to be crucial documents necessary to make a convincing case to decision makers. Not necessarily, it turns out…

Seven years ago, when Glendale mayor Steve Ward was a law student at the University of Denver, he learned of a midterm vacancy on the city council of the small municipality on Denver’s southeast side. He was then 27 years old and three years out of the Marines, where he…

In the beginning, there is Tower Road. A vanishing point leads east toward I-70 and the rising sun. The view offers not just amber waves of grain, but purple mountains’ majesty as well. Downtown Denver hangs fifteen miles to the west, a few water towers impersonate giant golf balls on…

Color my world: Although Denver International Airport won’t open for months, it’s clearly ready for takeoff. Witness the hot-off-the-press Denver’s International Airport (In)Activity Book, by (no joke) Ellen Cockshoot. “If I were using that as a pen name, I’d be doing porno,” she says. Instead, she’s done a sendup of…

There’s a Levi’s commercial,” notes Littleton political activist Donna Huffman, “where all of these young people are flipping through the air and sitting in a tree. It’s interesting, and the effects are good, but when you watch it you think, `What am I missing here? What exactly is being sold?'”…

Sometimes old soldiers don’t die–they just become political liabilities and get shuffled out a side door. And thus ends the career of Major General John France of the Colorado National Guard. France has been under scrutiny since last year, when he was named in a civil suit accusing him of…