On a cool winter day, late afternoon casts a creepy, lonely light across a little girl’s bedroom. Madeline sits waiting for a tea party. A row of Disney princesses lines a bed that’s never been slept in. Carol Dunlavy spends a lot of time alone in here, one of two…
Part of what makes Carol Dunlavy’s case so complicated is the accusation of Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy. The disorder is incredibly rare — rarer still, experts say, if properly diagnosed. And a proper diagnosis is tough. The syndrome is not officially listed in the DSM-IV, though it is mentioned in…
A late-July monsoon beat down on the roof of BJ Bolender’s Honda as she drove the streets of west Phoenix, desperate to find her son Drew. He was at a house somewhere in Laveen, but she’d never been there before. Roads were flooding, and she could see barely five feet…
Though Arizona is considered ground zero for the current debate surrounding illegal immigration, this is not a new fight. What is new is a national push, led by Arizona, toward states taking the issue into their own hands. According to Brian Gratton, a professor at Arizona State University and an…
Daniela’s world is very small. Though she was born in Mexico and traveled thousands of miles to Phoenix, she might never leave her neighborhood again. As an undocumented immigrant in Maricopa County, it’s just too risky. Her eldest child longs for the family to take a trip to California and…
Not a hair on his salt-and-pepper pompadour is out of place, but there are huge bags under Elias Bermudez’s eyes. He’s behind the microphone on a recent Wednesday morning, at KIDR 740 AM. You can catch his radio show on Monday, Wednesday and Friday from 7 to 9. The show…
No one can quite figure out how the Arizona Diamondbacks made it to the playoffs. Some say it’s the team’s versatility, and resiliency. Some credit manager Bob Melvin’s confidence in using players other managers might not. Others say it’s because the Diamondbacks are truly a team; because not even Babe…
As the energy force behind the year-old gay bar Burn, Angela Zydek spends her days zipping around town in her white convertible Mercedes and her nights covered in body paint to promote the downtown Phoenix club, or serving bottles of champagne in Burn’s VIP cabanas. The perfect combo of party…
April Bojorquez is one of those rare Phoenicians who was born here and decided to stay. Good thing. She’s a veritable encyclopedia of interesting information, especially on the city’s ancient history — she used to work at the Pueblo Grande Museum. By day, Bojorquez is the educational events coordinator for…
All over town, overgrown kids are whispering at the water cooler, “Hey, have you been to Red Hot Robot?” The central Phoenix shop offers specialty limited-edition toys usually found only in bigger cities and online. The toys became popular in Japan (where else?) and made their way stateside, with many…
From Magnolia Bakery in New York City to Sprinkles in Beverly Hills (and, soon, Scottsdale), gourmet cupcakes are the nation’s sweetest dessert fad. But until earlier this year, the Valley hadn’t caught on to the trend. So when sisters Stephanie and Lindsay Esparza, originally from Orange County, decided to open…
Sam Pewitt doesn’t look anything like White Goodman (Ben Stiller’s character in the 2004 movie Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story) but he cares about the sport with the same intensity. A Scottsdale businessman by day, Pewitt spends his nights and weekends playing a game most people haven’t thought about since…
When Tony Carrillo started his comic strip, F Minus, as an undergrad at Arizona State University, he was just looking for a way to make some extra cash. As a fine arts student, he certainly never thought he’d wind up cracking jokes for a living. But within a year of…
I am standing topless in front of a photographer. My back is against the wall as she snaps picture after picture of my bare breasts. This is quite possibly the most embarrassing day of my life. Not only am I half-naked with a stranger, but the lighting in here is…
When Jamie Bates boarded Delta Flight 86 bound for London, she was excited and a little nervous. She’d just graduated and was about to set off on the trip of a lifetime: 28 days in Europe with 80 current and former Dobson High School students. Her family paid more than…
On a recent Sunday morning, several twentysomethings in jeans and T-shirts race around the otherwise deserted offices of La Buena Onda 1190-AM, a radio station in central Phoenix. In an hour, El Break will go live for its weekly noon to 2 p.m. broadcast. It couldn’t have been easy for…
Outside the entrance of ASU’s old gym on a warm Saturday in May, hundreds of teenage girls stand in full prom get-ups, chattering, shrieking, and hugging in the way only adolescent girls should. It’s a windy day and the girls fidget with their hair and poofy dresses while they wait…
Last fall, a sophomore at Arizona State University named Matthew Jezierski started a club in honor of a group he considers to be oppressed and undervalued: the white male. The Caucasian American Men of ASU grabbed attention thanks to the club’s name, but Jezierski insisted it wasn’t a white pride…
On a quiet morning in early January, Kathryn Milun sits at a table in the back corner of a Tempe coffee shop, hunched over a huge stack of papers. Not long ago, that stack might have held papers to grade. Milun used to be a popular professor at ASU. But…
Jim Torgeson is just a guy with a sign. Well, a guy with a sign and a crew of 150 other guys with signs who contract to stand in front of car dealerships around the Valley, pimping the wares. Unfortunately for Torgeson, holding a sign on a street corner in…
Three years ago, when CocoRosie burst onto the scene with its lo-fi recordings of almost-lullabies sung over a beat box and toy animal noises, psych-folk fans of the Devendra Banhart variety took note. Now out of Brooklyn comes Bunny Rabbit, the trip-hop answer to CocoRosie’s Cassady sisters. The comparison between…
The biggest controversy at this year’s Art Detour — the weekend when artists in downtown Phoenix open their studios and galleries to the public — began before the event ever started. Jon Gipe, an accomplished artist (he once worked as New Times’ staff photographer) e-mailed John Spiak, a curator at…
