It was a new moon, so the desert was dark and shadowless on that warm mid-August night two years ago. A little after 3:15 a.m., a Ford diesel pickup truck turned down a remote dirt road that leads to an isolated desert hot springs about 20 miles south of Safford,…
Given the opportunity last week to go head-to-head with Governor Fife Symington, Attorney General Grant Woods flinched. Not only did Woods pull his legal punches, refusing to seek criminal charges in his investigation of Project SLIM, the attorney general’s actions also raise serious questions about why Symington is being distanced…
It’s Dumpster-diving paradise. And the best thing is you don’t have to dive into a smelly garbage can. Thanks to lax security by the state Department of Transportation, hundreds of condemned homes in the pathway of the Squaw Peak Parkway north of Shea Boulevard sit empty, vulnerable to anyone with…
It didn’t take long for the investigation of the bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building to wind its way back to the nation’s 48th state. Within days, federal agents were swooping through Kingman, Mesa and even tiny Oatman, Arizona, in search of evidence and co-conspirators and anything else connected…
Will Jerry Colangelo and the Arizona Diamondbacks struggle to make a buck in their new, taxpayer-financed stadium? Or will they turn a huge profit right out of the gate? The answer from Colangelo is both. It all depends on whom he’s telling. When he was convincing the Maricopa County Board…
Land owners inside the downtown stadium site say their properties can’t be condemned because the facility is being built to benefit private interests. They say the state constitution requires that property condemned under eminent domain must be for a public use, and that the stadium project doesn’t meet that standard…
“It’s a new day,” Phoenix Police Department 911 operator Tracy Lorenzano tells millions of people listening to National Public Radio’s popular, magazine-style news show, All Things Considered. In a five-minute piece that aired last month, Lorenzano is giving a day-in-the-life account of an emergency police dispatcher’s work in the Valley…
Jawad Hashim raises his chin slightly, looking directly into the video camera recording his statement. Droves of lawyers hover. They all want to know just what Hashim did with several tens of millions of Arab dollars that disappeared more than a decade ago. It’s not the first time Hashim–a 57-year-old…
The heavy spraying of DDT and its impact on dairy herds is well-known to Arizona farmers, but not to the public. And a new law passed by the legislature may make it more difficult for the media to raise questions about the safety of the food supply. The so-called “veggie…
Thirty-seven years ago, state and federal agriculture officials launched a massive attack on the pink bollworm, spraying the powerful insecticide DDT on 65,000 acres of Maricopa County cotton. From May 15 to July 19, 1958, about 500,000 pounds of DDT were applied in the county. It was just the first…
Flush with millions of dollars of surplus tax revenue, Tempe will soon place a $70 million bet that developers will flock to its long-sought Rio Salado project. It’s a wager Tempe taxpayers will have no say in. Most city councilmembers, led by Mayor Neil Giuliano, are so confident that taxpayers…
Gary Giordano is convinced that a decadelong grand conspiracy involving the most powerful business and political interests in the state is finally coming to fruition. Unless it is unmasked, he insists, that sinister plot will destroy the rural community where Giordano lives–New River, Arizona. At a cafe in downtown Phoenix…
Fast. Extremely fast. Wide lanes. Deep gutters. No waves. Perfect water temperature. And most important: clean air. These are the physical attributes that separate an average swimming pool from a great one. There are only a handful of elite competitive swimming facilities in the United States. One of the best…
Months before a lucrative state contract was offered for public bid, Governor Fife Symington and former top aide George Leckie conspired with an official from the governor’s personal accounting firm, Coopers & Lybrand, to steer millions of dollars of work to the firm, an internal Coopers & Lybrand memo obtained…
The normally sleepy Deer Valley Village Planning Committee has become a whirlwind of political intrigue that pits current and former members of the advisory panel against Phoenix City Councilmember Thelda Williams. The antagonism centers on the land-use plan for 87 acres west of Deer Valley Airport. The village committee wants…
Harvey Howell, a ranch hand for most of his adult life, lives in the middle of the quiet vastness of the Coconino Plateau, a high desert plain stretching north from the railroad town of Williams to the south rim of the Grand Canyon. Most of the time, silence rules. Only…
For 15 years, Linda Hayes had the mettle to toil as an ironworker at the Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station. She was there in 1980, when construction on the plant was just beginning. By 1985, she was doing major overhaul work on the three nuclear generators when they were shut…
The two-lane asphalt road stretches southward across the desert, eerily blending at the horizon with three steam plumes that surge 2,000 feet above the Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station. Four miles ahead lies the nation’s largest nuclear power plant; during the past two months, more than 800 migratory ducks have…
Jerry Brock slowly leans over and to his right, stretching slightly to reach the candy jar stashed behind his office desk. Very deliberately, he opens the wrapper to a piece of hard candy, and precisely places the morsel in his mouth. The ritual gives him a moment to contemplate disturbing…
Ruth Brown joined LA Fitness Sports Club last spring expecting to regularly exercise in the pleasant surroundings of the spacious and well-equipped fitness center. Instead, Brown has spent the past six months deadlocked in a dispute with the health club stemming from foul-ups with electronic withdrawals the club takes from…
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating whether Maricopa County’s massive budget deficit precipitated a series of illegal bond sales in 1993, several county officials say. While the officials refused to comment on the record, one county supervisor confirmed last Monday that an SEC investigation is under way. The…
When we last checked on Dean Mark Brewer, he was sitting in Maricopa County Jail on $314,000 bail, charged with 132 counts of theft in the looting of $8.17 million from the now-closed Charter Title Agency. But Brewer didn’t gain access to the world of high finance by being a…
