In the late 1980s, the name Charlie Keating became a national symbol of fraud within the S&L industry. Now, in 1996, Maricopa County itself has become a national symbol–of municipal-bond securities fraud. In an October 28 story headlined “Miami Inquiry Becomes ‘Son of Maricopa,'” the Wall Street Journal reported that…
Amity Horror John Dougherty’s article about Amity, Inc., put a horrid “spin” into print, thereby doing a disservice to Amity board members, past and present, all of whom are of exceptional integrity and honor and who should be thanked for selfless, exemplary and dedicated service (“Children of Synanon,” October 10)…
Same day, October 19. Fireworks pop over Sun Devil Stadium and 74,947 fans cheer as Arizona State University kicks off to the University of Southern California. Four miles east, another football game is about to begin, this one with considerably less fanfare. Today, the Chandler Varrio Locos are scheduled to…
The friendly fat woman who brings their baby to them for a few hours each week is regaling Raul and Karla Larranaga with stories from her career saving neglected children: Kids with cigarette burns on their arms; two children left in a park on a hot day with a note…
Forgery. Lies. Organized crime. Multimillion-dollar transactions. Two guys in dark suits with expensive haircuts. It sounds like a B-movie, but it’s really the race between incumbent John David “J.D.” Hayworth Jr. and his challenger Steve Owens for the opportunity to represent Arizona’s sixth district in the U.S. House of Representatives…
There’s not much to sustain life–water, grass or other feed–on the eastern flank of the Four Peaks Wilderness Area, 60 miles east of Phoenix. Last May, the Lone Fire scorched 60,000 acres there, including prime wildlife habitat. The 30,000-acre 3 Bar Wildlife Area was particularly hard hit. Ponderosa pines were…
After recently notifying the state Department of Economic Security that her mother-in-law had died and would no longer be needing food stamps, Melissa Winston correctly assumed she’d heard the last from the agency. Her departed mother-in-law, however, would not be so lucky. Less than a week after the Chandler woman’s…
Last month, while in the backyard of his neighbor’s north Phoenix home, 11-year-old Randell Buchanan learned a painful lesson. Randell’s neighbor, Susan Finney, takes in stray, abused and abandoned dogs. At any given time, as many as a dozen displaced canines call her backyard home. Obeying his boyhood instincts, Randell…
U.S. Justice Department lawyer assaulted an attorney representing several environmental groups earlier this month during closed-door talks in Phoenix aimed at ending the 15-month-old injunction that has halted logging, one environmentalist says. According to Peter Galvin of the Southwest Forest Alliance, who witnessed the alleged assault, John Marshall, a Washington,…
Proposition 102’s Truth Ache Savvy Arizona voters–both of them–generally expect political ads flooding the airwaves to be as fair and objective as an old issue of Pravda. Yet even by this generous standard, a spot paid for by supporters of Proposition 102 fails miserably. The ad features Connie Richardson, whose…
For the average supermodel or teenage girl, “accessories” is a magic word. The right handbag, a certain scarf, a new pair of earrings, a tasteful choker or maybe a bangle or two (or three or four!) is all it takes to turn a “ho-hum” outfit into a look that says,…
“U” is for … Unruly, uncivilized, underage drinking, unfulfilled, unable to see the headliner act and “U” paid too much money for this (“Stage Fright,” David Holthouse, October 17). I paid $30 to see the headliner act Type O Negative, but I left this concert feeling angry and upset at…
Late on the sizzling afternoon of July 25, two police officers saw a disheveled black man pushing a shopping cart along a south Phoenix street. He staggered a few steps, then dropped face first onto a sidewalk at 16th Street and University. The man, who carried no identification, had a…
The Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office has distilled its four-month investigation of jail inmate Scott Norberg’s death into a convenient, 137-page shrink-wrapped summary, available for the asking. The concluding paragraphs of the investigation–the summing up of the summary, as it were, written by Detective Todd Bates and reviewed by Sergeant James…
Up Next: Bankruptcy Sympathy Day Governor J. Fife Symington III has the timing of Wile E. Coyote. Only the Fifester would huddle with tobacco lobbyists (probably in a smoke-filled room), then yank the state out of a $500 million lawsuit against the tobacco industry. And only he would announce his…
Recover Story John Dougherty’s story “Children of Synanon” (October 10) fails to convey an accurate description of how Tucson and Arizona lost a major drug rehabilitation center, which served 700 addicts a day, and which can only serve 36 residential clients. New Times accuses two former and one current drug-program…
In these pages some five months ago, you were introduced to the phenomenon of Rods. Unidentified Flying Rods, to be exact. Unexplainable, tubelike things perhaps hundreds of feet long of unknown origin that allegedly course through our skies so fast as to be barely perceptible to the human eye. But…
In 1987, officials at Arizona’s Department of Health Services promised they would study the high rate of childhood leukemia death in one portion of west Phoenix. The last phase of the study, which searches for causes of the so-called Maryvale cancer cluster, was to have been completed in 1991. More…
Dave Alexander is on his hands and knees in front of the VCR. After shuffling through a pile of videotapes, he pops one in and–with noticeable effort–hoists his five-foot-eight-inch, 250-pound, 51-year-old body off the floor and onto a leather sofa. The television’s oversize screen soon fills with images of hard…
A popular lunch hangout just down the street from the Capitol. Renz Jennings’ chicken taco languishes on his plate, untouched, as its owner explains the ins and outs of utility deregulation. Florid, balding and flamboyant, Jennings, an attorney by training, sees beauty in the nuts and bolts of a job…
Whoever whispered, “Build it, and they will come,” obviously wasn’t speaking to Andrea Zuhri-Adams. In 1993, Zuhri-Adams, an African American, was recruited by Phoenix city officials who wanted a minority-owned business in the ground floor of the city parking garage at 333 East Jefferson, just east of America West Arena…
It might have made lively theatre of the absurd, if it hadn’t been so boring and stupid and real. First, the lady with the semi-bouffant hairdo–imagine a cross between Mary Poppins and the Church Lady–thanked the 14 people at the conference table for participating in the Task Force. Next, the…
