Last month, while in the backyard of his neighbor’s north Phoenix home, 11-year-old Randell Buchanan learned a painful lesson. Randell’s neighbor, Susan Finney, takes in stray, abused and abandoned dogs. At any given time, as many as a dozen displaced canines call her backyard home. Obeying his boyhood instincts, Randell…

A popular lunch hangout just down the street from the Capitol. Renz Jennings’ chicken taco languishes on his plate, untouched, as its owner explains the ins and outs of utility deregulation. Florid, balding and flamboyant, Jennings, an attorney by training, sees beauty in the nuts and bolts of a job…

An accounting firm hired to administer a state fund to clean up leaky underground fuel tanks has been padding its pockets at taxpayers’ expense, according to a woman who until earlier this month was charged with overseeing the cleanup effort. Tara E. Roesler made the allegation in a four-page September…

Martha Krupp slides a snapshot of her daughter, Leslie Burroughs, across a table in her Tucson home. “You’d never even think there was a thing wrong with her, would you?” she says, studying the photo of a smiling young woman. Krupp reaches for another photo, this one of Leslie and…

For a man charged with the herculean task of policing Arizona government and resolving citizen complaints, Pat Shannahan has headquarters that are, at least for now, humble. The Office of the Ombudsman is housed in the basement of the historic Carnegie Library, which stands about a mile east of the…

It’s a balmy night in June 1995. Petty felon Thomas Glen Campbell slouches in the cab of a borrowed pickup truck north of Casa Grande. As he puffs on a cigarette, a helicopter drones low overhead. He gets spooked. He has no driver’s license, there’s a warrant out for his…