2003 is shaping up to be the Year of the Child in Arizona. But don’t expect the lives of the state’s children to get any better. It’s only February, and already Governor Janet Napolitano has created a Children’s Cabinet. State legislators have formed a Children’s Caucus. Maricopa County Attorney Rick…
School district officials and consultants have a warning for the young families buying up houses in the new developments ringing the Valley: Don’t expect a neighborhood school for your kids. Double sessions, packed classrooms and long bus rides will be a reality in the not-so-distant future if laws for finding…
Last April, the doctors gave James Manak some painkillers and sent him home to die. After months of unexplained chest pain and difficulty breathing, Manak was diagnosed with a rare, untreatable form of cancer called mesothelioma. At 81, he wasn’t so shocked by the death sentence, but he was surprised…
For the past 20 years, a liberal Jew from Tucson has had as much impact on life in Arizona as anyone. While Republican governors were being impeached and indicted, while conservative legislators were whining about gay bowel disease and creating the alternative-fuels budget disaster, Arizona Supreme Court Justice Stanley Feldman…
At a time when officials were leaving faculty positions vacant, firing secretaries and talking about raising tuition as much as $1,000 per student, top executives at Arizona State University were getting hefty raises. And President Michael Crow was getting ready to redecorate his office. Between September and October of last…
On a recent Wednesday evening, Paul Hewitson dressed up in a neatly pressed gray suit and a western-cut white shirt, and headed out to dinner at his favorite restaurant, Red Lobster. Many people take a meal of crab legs and coleslaw for granted, but until recently, such an event was…
Charity work isn’t supposed to be about fame and fortune — unless you’re Susan Heywood, czarina of the Scratch & Sniff Awards. Scratch & Sniff — the annual Academy Awards-esque dinner party held to raise money to help cats and dogs — is the pet project of Susan and her…
Maurine Karabatsos can’t get a line from an old Joni Mitchell song out of her head. “They paved paradise and put up a parking lot,” she says, pulling her Porsche Boxster around the corner of Arizona Biltmore Circle toward a construction site that will eventually be a four-story, five-level parking…
A small ad on the letters page of New Times “Seeking Secret Pot Smokers” brought dozens of responses from marijuana users eager to talk about their quiet pastime — as long as they could be anonymous. The respondents ranged in age from teens to mid-50s. Some from the west side,…
Most days, Harriet comes home from work, takes off her bra and gets high. “I’m going outside,” she calls across the house, padding toward the garage in a tee shirt and jeans. The dog follows. Harriet stops to move wet clothes from the washing machine to the dryer, then heads…
The Spike smells fall. The shelves at Walgreens are stocked with candy corn, and every intersection in town is blocked with big, ugly signs advertising big, ugly candidates. It’s almost Election Day. One of the most obvious by-products of the Clean Elections law is that the big, ugly signs are…
The family of a boy who died in the custody of the Arizona Department of Juvenile Corrections has filed a claim against the state for $20 million. Christopher Camacho, 15, was found hanging from a sheet in his cell at Adobe Mountain School in north Phoenix on April 11. It…
Two founding members of a beleaguered animal charity have disassociated themselves from the organization. John Teets — former head of Dial, current boss of his own investment firm — and his wife, Nancy, are the latest defectors from Scratch & Sniff, a nonprofit founded and operated by Susan Heywood. Three…
Susan and Bill Heywood put Mister Laguna, their red poodle, to sleep on Groundhog Day, 1996. Most people honor a pet’s death with a few tears. The Heywoods thought an annual black-tie affair at the Arizona Biltmore would be more fitting. Several years later, the Scratch & Sniff Awards dinner…
Before the September 10 primary, The Spike thought it would be fun to devote this week’s column to all the wackos who lost the election. A parting shot at some folks we didn’t expect to see for another two to four years — the gay bashers, the home schoolers, the…
The ladies of the North Valley Care Home are propped in wheelchairs and La-Z-Boy-style recliners, blankly watching the Today show’s summer concert series on a recent Friday morning. The volume on the big-screen TV is set for the hearing-impaired, but even so, the women nod off as hip-hop queen Mary…
The other day, The Spike grabbed a bag of pork rinds and sat down to read Dominion, the forthcoming book by presidential speechwriter and former Arizona political gadfly Matthew Scully. Big mistake. The subtitle of this book is The Power of Man, the Suffering of Animals, and the Call to…
A favorite Valley coffee house has closed and reopened in a new location — a little smaller, a little sterile, but still serving lattes and chai tea to a diminished but loyal crowd. Gold Bar Espresso (“The Last Days of Gold Bar,” Amy Silverman, May 30) has moved across the…
Administrators at a state youth detention facility plan to conduct mock interviews and practice inspections in preparation for a visit from federal investigators. And they’ll have plenty of time to get ready, according to documents obtained by New Times. Minutes from the July 8 “Management Team” meeting at Catalina Mountain…
An internal investigation into the death of a child in the custody of the Arizona Department of Juvenile Corrections concludes that the boy accidentally killed himself by wrapping a sheet around his neck to make himself light-headed, a popular way to get high in the detention facility. But the report,…
The kid had slashed himself with a razor-sharp rock up and down his arm, at least 20 times. Maybe 30. Horizontal cuts on the inside of his wrist, like you make when you are trying to kill yourself. No one reported the mutilation. That’s disturbing, since the boy is in…
Gary Peter Klahr is eating. He grabs half a tuna melt in both hands and mows through it like a hamster, then shovels hash browns onto his fork with his fingers. Food falls out of his mouth as he talks, and by the end of the meal, Klahr’s cheeks and…
