It is midafternoon. As a shrill electric bell signals the end of another day of classes, a tall, middle-aged man in a dark blue suit and a red tie leans down to talk to the young woman walking by his side. Dr. Roger Romero, superintendent of the Wilson Elementary School…
Representative Don Kenney, the public servant best known for his ability to fit $55,000 in cash into a gym bag, was a very noticeable defendant at the group arraignment last week. For one thing, he came alone, unlike some of the accused, who were accompanied by friends and spouses. For…
It never ends. You’d think the breach of public trust would bottom out in this state. You’d think the tales of political corruption at the Arizona State Legislature would inspire the other players in the public arena to show some integrity. What with our first gubernatorial run-off election only days…
It’s the most important decision you have to make whenever you enter a grocery store: Which brand of sugar-frosted, honey-coated, chemically colored, artificially flavored breakfast cereal should you purchase for your kids today? Once again, let’s join hands, gaze skyward, and thank God I’m here to help. Originally, I planned…
Among the stubby commercial buildings that surged northward along 16th Street when Phoenix started booming after World War II, there is one in the 2600 block that catches the eye again and again. It is part of a cinderblock row of storefronts patterned, like much of the street, by odd…
The elderly woman in the TV-show audience pleads with the shadows on the screen to give up the gang life and stop terrorizing her neighborhood. Sitting in a studio with a hundred other people, the woman describes to them how her fourteen-year-old grandson was shot down in a gang incident…
After four weeks of Operation Desert Storm, American airplanes have made more than 50,000 sorties over Kuwait and Iraq and have dropped more ordnance than was used against Japan in all of World War II. Although Pentagon spokespersons say “smart bombs” can make surgical strikes against military targets–with sufficient accuracy…
Dressed in his pale yellow golf sweater and jogging shoes, Bob Anderson, a seventy-year-old retiree from Chicago, fits right in with the other retirees in Carefree. Like his neighbors, he has golf on his mind. But there’s a difference. In the world of Arizona water politics, the retired real-estate lawyer…
These days it takes a blood lust to run for public office. In time, the candidate must forsake time-honored virtues. He must lie. He must cheat. Sometimes he must do both. Three weeks ago New Times ran an investigation of Fife Symington’s real estate empire. Like many others, we wondered…
There is no limit to the sacrifices parents will make for their children. Sometimes they are forced to kill. Sometimes they are forced to die. And sometimes they are forced to attend Walt Disney’s World on Ice. Actually, I was excited when my wife told me she’d purchased a family…
Just when I was beginning to tire of CNN’s coverage of “attrited” warehouses in Iraq, Phoenix Police Chief Ruben Ortega unwrapped his million-dollar sting of state legislators. Is this hilarious? I feel like I ought to send out postcards across the country that announce, “Hey, I’m from Arizona, where people…
Senator Carolyn Walker stuffs $5,600 in cash into her purse. She smiles. She rises from her chair and heads for the door. “Sorry I have to take your money and run,” Walker says. But there is not the slightest note of apology in Walker’s tone. Instead, she seems absolutely gleeful…
On the morning after the indictments came out, Representative Jim Meredith came to his state capitol office at his usual time. He wore his newest three-piece suit and a cautious smile. He was determined to brazen it out. I was surprised to hear that Meredith had actually stopped briefly when…
On Thursday and Friday nights, the forces of flamenco are unleashed at Tapas Papa Frita. The guitar slashes, the vocalist wails. At the center of the stage, the dancer pounds his heels and claps his hands. The customers–who come for the blood-red wine, the little plates of marinated mushrooms, the…
Margaret Lochhead walks toward the lake in Phoenix’s Encanto Park with her bread bag, on her way to feed the ducks. She’s been doing it for years on Sunday mornings–ever since her childhood when she set free her pet duck at the park. Along the way to the lake, Lochhead…
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…
The first battle of Operation Desert Bull began two weeks ago when Phoenix television stations aired a short clip of Terry Goddard in his naval reserve uniform. Fife Symington reacted angrily, accusing his opponent in the governor’s race of taking advantage of Persian Gulf patriotism. “I’m not wearing a uniform,”…
Don Moon is not an easy man to intimidate. Physically, he is only slightly smaller than a grizzly bear. Within state political circles, Moon, a Phoenix attorney, is considered shrewd and streetwise. But when a cop tipped him that he was the target of a vendetta by a local Hispanic…
It’s odd about the people you remember best. I came into this business before Don Larsen pitched his perfect game for the New York Yankees and before John F. Kennedy was shot in Dallas. I have encountered an uncommon assortment of characters, but I don’t stake any claim to fame…
The battle over Peter Arnett and his reporting from Saddam Hussein’s capital of Baghdad will not go away. Turn on any local talk show these days and you will hear outraged citizens accusing Arnett and CNN of being naive dupes for the enemy line of propaganda. Some think Arnett has…
The television in the saloon was tuned to CNN as the first wave of American bombers struck Baghdad. The crowd, mostly men, gathered in front of the screen erupted with shouts of joy and pumped the air with their fists, woofing encouragement in the style popularized on the Arsenio Hall…
This morning, my son told me that he and his pal Brian are planning to build a time machine so they can zap themselves back to prehistory and cavort with the dinosaurs. Should they succeed, I’m going to ask him to drop me off in my own childhood. Nothing against…
