Arizona State University’s men’s basketball coach Rob Evans revived a program disgraced by a notorious point-shaving scandal and reached postseason play four out of his eight seasons. While winning was important, Evans’ overarching goal was to teach his players how to succeed in life. He kept close watch on his…
The majestic red rock sculptures and rare desert vistas of Papago Park are in the gun sights of some of the most powerful real estate interests in the Southwest. Led by Phoenix attorney Grady Gammage Jr., the intellectual architect of Arizona’s rapacious development industry that’s systematically tarnishing the Sonoran Desert,…
Is this the best the Democrats can do? The question kept rolling through my mind in the days after Tempe political kingpin Harry Mitchell declared his candidacy for Congress. Mitchell is challenging the sharply listing, Jack Abramoff-stained Republican J.D. Hayworth for the 5th Congressional District seat in November. The race…
Published online April 11, 2006, 1:55 p.m. MST State and federal authorities and the Mormon polygamist sect headquartered along the Arizona-Utah border seem finally headed for a showdown. So far, there have been no reports of violence in the towns of Colorado City, Arizona, and Hildale, Utah, but tensions are…
Carrie Stoudemire, the mother of sidelined Phoenix Suns star Amaré Stoudemire, narrowly avoided jail during a hastily called March 31 hearing before Maricopa County Superior Court Commissioner Aimee Anderson. Stoudemire had violated several conditions of her five-year probation on a 2003 felony DUI conviction. But rather than toss Stoudemire in…
A federal jury awarded $9 million to the family and estate of a 33-year-old man who died after Maricopa County detention officers improperly strapped him in a restraint chair inside a county jail. Mentally retarded and high on methamphetamine, Charles Agster III was forcibly placed in the chair inside the…
By now, even the casual professional basketball fan knows that Amaré Stoudemire is making a very risky comeback from October 11 surgery on his left knee. Eight days after signing a $73-million, five-year contract extension, the Phoenix Suns superstar underwent the tricky “microfracture” procedure that has ended the careers of…
How would you like to sit inside a federal courtroom for seven weeks watching a grainy videotape repeatedly document the final moments of your mentally ill son’s life inside one of Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s county jails? What would go through your mind as you saw the jailhouse video of Arpaio’s…
You’d think that the great real estate boom engulfing the Phoenix metropolitan area would bypass the dusty, decrepit town of Gila Bend. The main drag bisecting this wayside of about 2,000 folks 60 miles southwest of downtown Phoenix is littered with crumbling commercial buildings, abandoned motor inns, half a dozen…
The City of Phoenix’s $878 million bond election, early voting in which is already under way, comes down to one issue: trust. Do you believe bond proponents’ pitch trumpeted by Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon that the bonds can be sold “with no new taxes”? Or do you think it’s impossible…
The Colorado City Marshal’s Office is in a state of insurrection. And nobody in authority — from Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano on down — seems to give a damn. As the leader of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Prophet Warren Jeffs exerts absolute control over the…
The Phoenix Coyotes betting scandal that has ensnared hockey legend and Coyotes minority owner Wayne Gretzky and his movie actress wife is just the latest in a series of financial shenanigans linked to the team’s ownership. The Coyotes’ financial success has always been a huge gamble for the franchise’s majority…
This is a career opportunity for U.S. Attorney Paul Charlton. The 45-year-old Republican prosecutor could be the public servant who restores integrity to elections in Maricopa County. Charlton’s decision to launch a grand jury investigation into the September 2004 District 20 Republican primary and subsequent recount for a state House…
We are inching dangerously close to the point where elections in Arizona can be suspended for an indefinite period of time for the flimsiest of reasons. Claiming to be acting at the request of the U.S. Department of Defense, Secretary of State Jan Brewer is seeking unprecedented authority from the…
Published online January 25, 2006, 5:02 p.m. MST The search for the fugitive leader of the fundamentalist Mormon church escalated when FBI agents entered the Colorado City, Arizona-based sect’s packed meeting hall during a church-related function to serve grand jury subpoenas. The January 14 raid on church property was the…
Show us the ballots! That’s the only way to get to the bottom of a raging scandal that started with an obscure 2004 Republican primary election in the Ahwatukee Foothills and is now entangling six prominent Republican officials. Speaker of the Arizona House Jim Weiers, Senate President Ken Bennett, Secretary…
The crucial District 20 ballots that have become the centerpiece of a mushrooming election scandal are not in the Maricopa County Treasurer’s vault as apparently required by state law. Instead, I have discovered that the 17,000 ballots are stashed away in an unguarded, un-air-conditioned warehouse west of Sky Harbor Airport…
Published online: Wednesday, January 11, 2006, 3:10 p.m. MST An independent voting-technology expert has discovered widespread problems within the Maricopa County Elections Department that raise serious questions over the ability of voting officials in the nation’s fourth-most-populous county to conduct fair and accurate elections. “Any election where the margin of…
Fifteen years ago, a strange-looking child suffering from severe physical maladies and acute retardation was brought into the office of Dr. Theodore Tarby. The pediatric neurologist regularly deals with a wide range of serious childhood diseases as a doctor with the state-funded Children’s Rehabilitative Services in Phoenix. Tarby says he…
Polygamist leader Warren Jeffs continued to elude a nationwide manhunt at the end of 2005 as the fundamentalist Mormon municipalities he controls along the Arizona-Utah border headed toward financial disaster. Jeffs, 50, was named to the FBI’s most wanted list last August after he fled the largest polygamist community in…
As the December 3 Colorado City Unified School District board of governors meeting draws to a close, Alvin Barlow, Arizona’s longest tenured public school superintendent, instinctively opens his pocket calendar to set the date for the next meeting. Barlow flips through the calendar for a few seconds and fumbles with…
I first met former Hopi tribal chairman Vernon Masayesva in December 1992, when my then-wife and I were publishing a weekly newspaper in Flagstaff. Masayesva called one afternoon and said he wanted to tell me a story of great importance to his tribe. A few days later, we met at…
