You may remember Barnett Lotstein from the Ev Mecham saga. He was the cocky little guy from the Attorney General’s Office who failed to convince a jury in 1988 that the quirky ex-governor was guilty of anything more than stupidity. As boss of the attorney general’s major fraud section, the…
Jesse Garcia is trying to explain why he was in the wrong car, on the wrong street, with the wrong pal, on that steamy afternoon last July. “Very bad luck,” says the 22-year-old Phoenix native. “I wish I didn’t have that day off. I wish I never was on that…
Dick Jonas is a guitar-pickin’ Vietnam War hero who says he still gets a kick out of putting on his blue air force suit. “You can call me a true-blue kind of guy,” he says. “You can call me an old pilot who likes to have some fun every now…
The Don Bolles case continues to be a political tar baby for anyone who gets close to it. The latest Brer Rabbit is new Arizona Attorney General Grant Woods. One of Woods’ first acts as successor to Bob Corbin was to fire Judson Roberts, an assistant attorney general who was…
Phoenix school principal Camerino Lopez figured he had the perfect forum in which to express his surprising views on the chief threats to America’s youth. As Arizona’s only representative on the 26-member National Commission on Drug-Free Schools, Lopez was eager to get his new point of view out for public…
Phoenix insurance agent and wheeler-dealer Dennis Chapman got away with murdering his mom for money–if his father, four siblings and the cops are to be believed. Now, Chapman has been nailed in Oregon for pulling an impersonation stunt that has enraged military veterans. Chapman always proclaimed his innocence in the…
The bad word from city officials just about broke the hearts of Bobbie O’Haver and others affiliated with downtown’s Arizona Museum: If the Phoenix City Council goes along with a staff recommendation at its October 30 meeting, the museum likely will be stuck in its high-crime neighborhood until at least…
Rex Ann Bills was washing her dishes one night last November when Dale Crosby barged into her unlocked trailer. Bills had been living in the northeast Arizona community of Eagar since the summer of 1987. The Michigan native liked its moderate climate and small-town intimacy. But things weren’t right beneath…
In his world, Eusebio Vielma is a rich man. Arizona’s State Compensation Fund cuts Vielma a check every month for $883.38. Of that amount, half automatically goes to pay child support for two of his youngest children. Another chunk–probably 10 percent–goes to his attorney. The rest, about $350 a month…
The crafty old trainer watches his new kid shadowbox in front of a full- length mirror. Fifteen-year-old Chris Campbell is working out for the first time at the Tuff Side Gym on 17th Avenue and Van Buren. Sweat pours off both of them. It’s 110 degrees outside the gym and…
Two years and $100,000 later, no one can say for sure how widespread cancer is among Arizona’s firefighters. And, just as important, no one knows whether firefighters contract cancer on the job. The mystery seems so difficult to solve that even the firefighters who pushed for the study aren’t angered…
“Upon hearing firsthand recommendation of either the proposing or the seconding member or both at a scheduled committee meeting, the Membership Committee shall vote upon each applicant separately and by ballot. The proceedings of the committee shall be confidential. The Board of Directors shall vote on all applications simultaneously …
Donna Rossi survived Phoenix’s meanest streets and the heavy hand of Police Chief Ruben Ortega in a sordid mid-Eighties scandal. After what she’s been through, television reporting must be a snap. Rossi, now 29, is assignment editor, news anchor and reporter for KNAZ in Flagstaff. She’s carved a reputation in…
The contents of the letter left George Coppock trembling with fear and anger. “We have received a report that Michael has possibly been abused,” the curt note from the Arizona Department of Economic Security started. Coppock recalls feeling helpless when he read those words three years ago. “Here you are…
Coby Perkins is talking about the days when he could play his bluegrass banjo like a champ. “I loved to play,” the nineteen-year-old says in a sluggish monotone. “I was fast. I was good. I played `Foggy Mountain Breakdown’ and `Cripple Creek,’ all of them. I played with Bill Monroe…
This is not how Art and Lynn Shupe envisioned their life in Arizona’s White Mountains. “Since all this happened with the company, we haven’t had any life,” Art Shupe says. “My place is about destroyed. We had this beautiful spring–clear as a pin–and the fish were pretty. The water was…
PRODUCTION: hit list measure includes five inches for an addition on Monday. Please save that amount of space. The day after Grand Canyon University fired basketball coach Bill Westphal April 5, he met with his team one last time. Westphal said some parting words and handed each player a copy…
So it’s shocking that Maricopa County sheriff’s deputies used stun guns on environmental protesters in little Mobile? And it floors you that Arizona’s elected officials and oxymoronic Department of Environmental Quality don’t always act in the best interests of the state’s citizens? That shouldn’t be news to anyone who has…
Doug Lynch was the best and the brightest that the ROTC program at Arizona State University had to offer in the early 1980s. For four consecutive semesters ending with the spring of 1984, he won election as the military program’s “outstanding cadet” and maintained its highest grade point average. Lynch’s…
James Devine picks up an empty Silver Bullet near the curb of a downtown Phoenix street. It’s 7:30 on an early-April morning. He crushes the can with his boot, and tosses it into his large plastic sack. The bag is almost filled from the previous afternoon’s work, but there’s always…
Self-described teenage hoodlum Leigh Adelmann says his contact last year with the Jehovah’s Witnesses “turned me around and probably saved my life.” Now, the onetime punk is mad because his Intensive Probation officer won’t let him attend the sect’s meetings. “If I were a drug addict or an alcoholic,” says…
The disgusting smell jolted Darryleen Kelley last June 1 when she arrived for work at the Mesa Police Department. “I said to someone, `They must have found bugs as big as rats in here,'” recalls Kelley, an investigative assistant who had been with the East Valley department for a decade…
