The rapid proliferation of Arizona’s charter schools hasn’t won over many traditional public-school advocates, liberal politicians or teachers’ unions. But the conservative camp’s pet project has won converts in an unlikely arena. The state’s Indian reservations. Arizona’s charter-school law has allowed tribes to rake in extra cash for what they…
People wearing latex gloves sit on the floor of a west Phoenix living room, pulling artifacts from the life of Roger Somers Rudin out of large garbage bags and stacking them in leaning piles. Court documents. Photographs. Church records. Financial ledgers. Religious tracts. Articles of clothing. Nearly all of it…
There’s a group of people who salivate at the thought of coming to the desert wasteland we Arizonans call home, a segment of the population that would sell its eyeteeth to be where you’re sitting right now. And no, we don’t mean the country’s retirees, half of whom seem to…
Is Patrick Bidwill, son of Arizona Cardinals owner Bill Bidwill, a racist who fired a man for hiring blacks at his car dealership? Did he refer to Cardinal football players as “overpriced niggers”? Did he call an employee who hired an African American a “nigger lover”? That’s the charge made…
Jeff Ofstedahl is sipping a tall glass of beer at Wink’s, and for the third time in as many minutes, someone comes up to ask him the same question. “What are you still doing here?” Each time, it’s asked with the same tone: a mixture of surprise and admiration. Everyone…
A highly publicized county investigation of environmental violations at the Sumitomo Sitix plant in northeast Phoenix ended earlier this month with the feeling that it was all much ado about nothing. County attorney Rick Romley even loudly blasted environmental activist Steve Brittle for making accusations about the plant he couldn’t…
At age 61, John Mollard likes things consistent. Close. Convenient. And he’s done his best to set up his life so that it stays that way. The same restaurants and the same meals, for example. Most days it’s raw fish here or raw fish there, the sushi not only a…
Central High School’s ringer is coming down with the flu. Albert Cho is ingesting fluids as quickly as he can, but it isn’t doing much good. In the big competition tomorrow, he knows he’ll be in the grips of a fever. Even healthy, Cho would hardly be intimidating. The slight…
Facing demolition just a month ago, the Desert Crest retirement community may be saved from razing after all. So why aren’t its octogenarian residents celebrating? The elderly renters at Desert Crest are pinning their hopes on a buyer who proposes to keep the retirement home running. But they know it’s…
Sheriff Joe Arpaio won’t have to reveal how much money his posses have raised and how they spend it. Superior Court Judge Rebecca Albrecht has rejected arguments that the private, nonprofit posses are so closely controlled by Arpaio that they should be subject to the state’s open records law. In…
Jim Dilettoso is playing a duet on a piano with a man who has a cross made of his own crusty, drying blood on his forehead. On Dilettoso’s own head is a mass of curly grayish hair. His mane dips and sways with the fluid rhythm he lays down, and…
A robust, superannuated woman with the stern countenance of the righteous guides her electric tricycle to within hailing distance of two relaxed-looking men who have filled patio chairs for a leisurely smoke. The three exchange brief pleasantries. “Did you go to church today?” the sober matron asks the men. “Was…
On March 1, 1994, while awaiting trial on burglary, county jail inmate Matthew Creamer was beaten so badly there were blood blisters in his ears. Creamer filed numerous grievances, saying that he had been the victim of an unprovoked attack. But his attackers, two Maricopa County detention officers, swore that…
Maria Sepulveda’s father so offended her, she doesn’t want anyone else from his native Chile to come to the United States. Or at least not many more. As a spokeswoman for a national association which seeks to virtually end immigration–legal and illegal–she’s paid to promote the idea that the country…
Drew Nolan sets down his briefcase before he reaches out for a handshake. “Always have to have one hand free,” he says with a smile. It’s a statement he makes only partly in jest. He is armed, and after spending more than a year crisscrossing the country to keep from…
The federal government followed up its two-year investigation of Maricopa County’s jails Friday by filing a lawsuit realleging inmate abuse and official indifference to that abuse. That lawsuit will be dropped if Sheriff Joe Arpaio abides by a settlement agreement which calls for a new use-of-force policy, new guidelines on…
Tom Bearup was once one of Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s most trusted aides, a political operative who, until his fall from grace earlier this year, played a key role in creating the myth of the self-proclaimed “America’s Toughest Sheriff.” Bearup now regrets taking part in that project, which he…
“I call this Poseyland,” city council candidate Phil Gordon says, pointing to two pink pushpins on a wall map. The pins impale neighborhoods in north central Phoenix, wealthy enclaves where Gordon’s opponent Posey Moore Nash polled well in a September 9 general election. Other pins radiate out from Poseyland and…
Iceland’s supreme court has upheld the decision of a lower-court judge who had refused to extradite Connie and Donald Hanes to Maricopa County because of conditions in Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s jails. In July, District Court Judge Ingibjorg Benediktsdottir heard evidence about the condition of the county jails–including a half-hour German…
The Paradise Valley Unified School District is learning the hard way about how state government works in Arizona. The lesson school officials say they’ve learned: If you’re a multibillion-dollar foreign corporation looking to put a toxic-chemical-using plant in pristine desert, Arizona will bend over backward for you. If you’re a…
The old man who sold paintings of cats in Balboa Park entered San Diego’s Mercy Hospital on March 9, 1993. He was dying of congestive heart failure, the result of a heart attack that he’d suffered weeks earlier. Although he was only 61, his years in the park had prematurely…
For more than 20 years, people around the world have participated in Amnesty International’s letter-writing campaigns to protest mistreatment of prisoners by repressive foreign governments. Following investigations into allegations of prisoner abuse, the organization calls upon its volunteers to send mountains of mail to petty dictators and sadistic jailers. Sheriff…
