I’m opposed to this ordinance,” Godzich admits. He begins to roll, the timbre of his voice rising and ebbing with the elastic, jazzy rhythms of preacherspeak. And I’d like to clarify something. A radio disc jockey recently called me a `homophobic’ person and I just want to let people know…
La Ciudad de los Mojados-the City of the Wetbacks-is what hundreds of illegal immigrants from Mexico call their community of rundown houses and apartments near 16th Street and Van Buren. And Maria Robles and her 13-year-old granddaughter, Elizabeth Robles, know practically everyone in that community because Robles owns Kuki’s Store…
When the Brophy Broncos ripped out five runs in the first inning of a recent regional high school baseball game, their opponents and longtime rivals from St. Mary’s knew they were in for a long night. Both teams were already assured spots in the state 5A championship tournament when they…
Mike Page joined the Air Force when he was 17 years old. He stayed out of trouble, served his country, made his rank and saved a little money. By the time he was ready to retire and move to Colorado to open a hunting and fishing lodge with his new…
For the second time in three years, the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism at Arizona State University has finished first in the Hearst Foundation Intercollegiate Writing Competition, winning $10,000 for the school. ASU journalism students beat out entries from Northwestern University and the University of Missouri for first place in…
A Phoenix cop since 1983, Hardin had been a sergeant for only three months when Rodriquez stole the Chevy and presented him with one of his first major tests as a supervisor. Hardin interviewed Rodriquez a few hours after the clash. He focused on the guy who smashed into the…
ARCHITECTS WOULD always rather start with a clean slate-a nice, bare patch of dirt with no other buildings crowded around it, and no architectural masterpieces in the neighborhood that a new kid would either have to bow to or fight with. When the lot isn’t vacant and the architect has…
MAURICIO RODRIQUEZ celebrated his 20th birthday a few days after Christmas 1990 by hot-wiring a late-model Chevy pickup. He and two friends then careened through the streets of west Phoenix in the stolen vehicle. ²Along the way, the Phoenix man slowed long enough for his pals to hop out, then…
A few months ago, a Shar-Pei escaped from his north Phoenix backyard and wandered to a nearby apartment complex on Shangri-La Road. The friendly dog trotted up to a woman named Vickie Back, and she fed him a snack and a bowl of water. No dummy, he stuck around Back’s…
To the state Land Department, it seemed like a good way to make money. A group of civic boosters touted it as an economic shot in the arm.” But to many of the people who live north of Carefree Highway, the very idea of three 200-foot-high radio towers in the…
The romantic mirage of small-town life is bucolic contentment. This is one of life’s sadder delusions. In remote Arizona, the disputes are loud, frequent and messy. Worse, the intimate potholes of your life fascinate your neighbors. Your debts, your love interests, your spouse’s shingles-it’s all grist at the local coffee…
That’s certainly one viewpoint. But it ignores entirely the faculty’s feeling that its members had no say in campus matters. And Dr. Walker was widely viewed as ruling the campus like Idi Amin Dada. Walker enforced a gag order that forbade all faculty and staff from making any public statements…
Jeanine herself got cancer in her late 40s. Before she died in 1989, she told her daughter Lisa that she suspected that living near the plant had a lot to do with the family’s illnesses. Then Jeanine’s husband, Tom, got cancer. Next, Lisa got cancer. Now 31, Lisa thinks a…
Of course Lee Vance has heard of Arazi. Lee Vance is an air-traffic controller at Yuma International Airport, from which 250,000 airplanes land and take off every year. He helps make sure they don’t crash while they’re doing it. It’s an `initial approach fix,'” he says of Arazi. No, Lee…
The ax fell with scant warning at Community Legal Services last week. The nonprofit law center that serves as a last resort for poor clients fired one-fourth of its staff, including four attorneys, in the face of a hefty drop in funding. Long in precarious financial straits, CLS decided that…
¯ Oh, brother. We definitely drank it. There’s no doubt,” says Lisa McNamara, who lived just four doors down from the Motorola plant. It just makes me sick that the city didn’t start testing the wells earlier.” Lisa McNamara has reason to be angry. Various members of her family have…
DANIEL E. NOBLE was hardly a charismatic patriarch. He was bald and soft-bellied, with a thin, stiff smile. His favorite conversations centered on transistor design. Nobody paid much attention in 1949 when he opened a research lab on North Central Avenue called Motorola.” But it wasn’t long before folks renamed…
This was an estimated annual discharge rate from this facility that could have been ongoing for previous years,” the report says. Motorola admits it emitted solvents into the air-in 1987, for instance, 500,000 pounds of solvents were released. But the company won’t say for sure that during the span of…
You can watch the news and you can see Malcolm and Martin in the people they interview,” says a young black woman during a discussion following the opening of Black Theatre Troupe’s new production, The Meeting. The play could not have opened at a more apt-or a more painful-time. Last…
For almost a year, Jerry Holt has worked in bureaucratic limbo as Governor Fife Symington’s commissioner of the Arizona Department of Real Estate, running the agency and awaiting word on whether the state Senate will confirm his appointment. Now, with a hearing on his confirmation likely next week in the…
Time is running out. Unless attorney Steve Mitchell finds the woman, the murder charge against Dan Willoughby must be dropped. Without her testimony, there is no case. Yesenia Patino is her name. For months she has been on the run in Mexico since allegedly collaborating with Willoughby in the brutal…
Here’s an interesting way to begin your day. Lie awake in bed before the sun comes up thinking about explaining to the woman who cares for your 3-year-old that you are not a cocaine dealer. No matter what the morning newspaper says. Television reports had begun airing that charge about…
