Steve Krafft, a reporter with Channel 10, asked last Friday if I’d print the Unabomber’s lengthy manuscript. This is the sort of question that’s supposed to stump journalists. There will be convention panels on this weighty matter all year long. Earlier in the week, the Unabomber had threatened to blow…
It didn’t take long for the investigation of the bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building to wind its way back to the nation’s 48th state. Within days, federal agents were swooping through Kingman, Mesa and even tiny Oatman, Arizona, in search of evidence and co-conspirators and anything else connected…
At least 13 times in the last 18 months, Department of Health Services investigators have found one or another of Steve Broe’s American Child Care Centers to have more children per adult caregiver than the law allows. And last fall, Craig Barton’s Camelback Desert School in north Scottsdale, which offers…
Another attempt to develop property in the historic Roosevelt neighborhood has been rejected. The proposed project was a new, expanded campus for Magnet Traditional School, the brightest star in the Phoenix Elementary School District, a school whose students score better on national tests than their district counterparts, and better than…
While workers begin the $1.7 million renovation of Governor Fife Symington’s office, the state’s historical landmark next door is going to hell in a handbasket. The Old Capitol Building, built in 1900, is in need of some care. There are holes in the domed ceiling where the plaster has fallen…
Not too long ago, an employee at the Arizona State Compensation Fund was questioned under oath during legal proceedings against the fund. Some of the questioning dealt with the work atmosphere inside State Fund headquarters. At one point, the questioning turned to The Firm, a film about a seemingly respectable…
Camille Kimball has a brand-new dog named Clara. She got it about a week ago to keep her company and to watch the central Phoenix home she bought a few months back. It is her first pet. She wants to teach it some tricks, and worries about whether she’ll be…
Lorne Shantz looks like a cop, even out of uniform. He’s so fresh-scrubbed he could have walked a beat in Mayberry, but instead he got a job as a patrol officer for the Arizona Department of Public Safety. In his 14 years with DPS, his worst offense was waiting a…
To get an idea of just how very on-the-verge CNN sportscaster Daryn Kagan has become, consider this: She is more current, more suitable for framing, than Armando. Armando is Armando Alvarez, who from his home in Miami has phoned Calling All Sports, the CNN late-night sports talk show hosted by…
Vernon Foster, of the American Indian Movement of Arizona, stood before a drum and looked straight at five weary Croatian human-rights activists. “We are all warriors,” he said. Foster, wearing a beret with a feather, jeans, cowboy boots, a leather vest and a belt with a bright red AIM buckle,…
MIDDLE-AGED WOMAN NEEDS GAINFUL EMPLOYMENT Convict groupie Donna Hamm was arrested for obstruction June 12 outside Tucson during a staged media event. Hamm had bellowed into a bullhorn for an hour in a clumsy attempt to incite a chain gang of 20 men from the Arizona State Prison complex. Not…
Yellow Journalism E.J. Montini’s writing style can be trying. You know what we mean. Or perhaps you don’t. In any case, Montini and Steve Benson are the only Arizona Republic commentators whose names should appear in the same sentence with the words courage and imagination. (Memo to management: While you’re…
A dove settles on Loreen Bustardi’s head. Happens all the time, says Bustardi, not to worry. The bird figures Bustardi is its mate. Sometimes, it lays eggs in her hair. Bustardi usually doesn’t know about the eggs until she changes position. The eggs aren’t fertile, so it’s not a loss…
They played one song at Phil Girardin’s memorial service last week. “Everybody hurts,” the R.E.M. vocalist droned over and over in the small chapel at a Peoria funeral home. Girardin committed suicide by drug overdose June 8, one week after New Times told his story in a special report (“Mental…
After six months of nausea and pain, and a battery of tests, Sherrian Beagle was finally on her way to the hospital to have her gallbladder removed. Then she learned that her insurance company, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Arizona, had decided she didn’t need the surgery and wouldn’t…
In 1952, Ron and Carolyn Warner pulled together $1,400 and bought a burned-out grocery store at 26th Street and Osborn Road. Together the young 20-somethings shoveled out the soot and the trash, and in its place opened Warner’s Furniture and Interiors. In the early days, they sold just about everything…
Will Jerry Colangelo and the Arizona Diamondbacks struggle to make a buck in their new, taxpayer-financed stadium? Or will they turn a huge profit right out of the gate? The answer from Colangelo is both. It all depends on whom he’s telling. When he was convincing the Maricopa County Board…
Don’t Tread on Us Jerry Colangelo isn’t the only one gorging himself at the public trough that will fund the downtown baseball stadium. Private property owners are chowing down, too. Most landowners in the 22-acre stadium site have agreed to sell to the county–after putting up a good fight. One…
James Jorquez has been caught up in the gusts of his wife’s passion for historic homes. They’ve lived in some of Phoenix’s older houses in some of the city’s older neighborhoods, places like Willo and Story and now Roosevelt, a spring afternoon’s walk from the original downtown core. About eight…
Bob Hirschfeld, fathers’-rights custody lawyer, keeps the door of his Phoenix office locked during business hours. Unexpected visitors are vigorously questioned by Hirschfeld’s staff, and he seems almost proud of two bullet holes in the windows of the reception area. Hirschfeld is convinced he is a good lawyer. But now…
Gambling on the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community, which borders Scottsdale, could generate $450 million annually, projections show. At this point, however, projections are all anyone can make. No casinos have been approved or built. The tribe hasn’t decided whether to run the casinos itself or to hire an outside…
In March, archaeologists under contract with the Arizona Department of Transportation, inching along with trowels and brushes, exhumed 57 skeletons alongside a lonesome two-lane road in the Tonto National Forest. The bodies dated to the 13th or 14th century, the earthly remains of prehistoric Native Americans, laid to rest with…
