CIGNA: Class, Action The tightwads at CIGNA Healthcare face further legal troubles stemming from their practice of hiding discounts for hospital services from CIGNA customers. Last March, the firm signed a state Department of Insurance consent decree admitting no wrongdoing but agreeing to pay $127,000 in restitution to several hundred…
It starts with the big floating chickens rolling in from Tucson, legions of fat, fluffy formations that have the weather wonks salivating over their radars. Weather soldiers from around the Valley call the storm hot line for instructions: Be here at four, it says; there is activity to the south…
The Troon North golf course on the far north edge of Scottsdale is a sight to behold. An emerald grass carpet, smooth, even and weedless, snakes its way along saguaros, next to mesquite bushes and paloverde trees. The grass rises and falls, from tee to green, enveloping manmade lakes, skirting…
Environmentalists fighting to restore a stretch of the lower Gila River to its historic biological splendor have found an unlikely ally in the Federal Emergency Management Agency. In a surprising policy shift, FEMA on August 18 notified a politically powerful irrigation district near Yuma that it will not fund a…
Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio likes to boast about all the attention he receives from the national media, mostly for the spartan life of jail inmates. Now his jails are the focus of a different kind of national spotlight–an investigation by the United States Department of Justice. New Times has…
One steamy morning in the summer of 1958–no one knows the exact date–a young man named Art Kane took on a daunting task. Weeks earlier, the editor of Esquire magazine had invited Kane to contribute a photograph to an upcoming issue devoted to jazz. Remarkably, Kane never had taken a…
Finally, an Accounting The Arizona Attorney General’s Office has slapped another major accounting firm with a large fine. Arthur Andersen & Co. joins fellow Big Six accounting firm Coopers & Lybrand on AG Grant Woods’ list of wayward accountants. Arthur Andersen has agreed to pay the Arizona State Board of…
How to describe such men as these? Men of vast and deliberate muscle. Men of spartan, militaristic coifs, men of rigidly cascading hair anointed with mousses of the highest caliber of holding capability. Men of rugged, insouciant, determined countenance. Men with devastating powers of erotic enchantment, capable of deploying a…
The Fault Line Earlier this year, a young man named Rudy Buchanan Jr. was shot to death by Phoenix police. Buchanan was brandishing a weapon at the time, but police officers fired 89 shots, hitting Buchanan at least 30 times, including several times in the soles of his feet. Maricopa…
Nine years ago, U.S. Senate candidate Richard Kimball implored Arizona journalists to “follow the money” that was flowing into his opponent’s campaign coffers. Few heeded the Democrat’s pleadings. The 1986 senatorial race lifted Republican John McCain, a two-term member of the House of Representatives, into the U.S. Senate to replace…
In August 1987, the Secret Service arrested a Phoenix man in Southern California on charges of threatening to kill then-President Ronald Reagan. It didn’t matter to the feds that John Sahhar was being held in the Santa Barbara County Jail on minor charges when guards heard him utter threats against…
Imagine my shock when I found out last week that Money magazine had released its annual list of the top 300 U.S. cities to live in, and Phoenix had come in at the lowly 94 slot. Finished third in the entire state of Arizona. That’s third out of three, mind…
In the Tradition of Eldon Rudd Sportscaster-cum-lawmaker J.D. Hayworth has received lots of attention since his arrival in Washington, D.C. Last week, the Washington Post featured him in an article about freshmen members of the House who have unorthodox occupations. Hayworth told the Post, “Our founders didn’t name this just…
When Cathy England smiles–and life does amuse her–you see a black hole, a gap where her right incisor and the tooth next to it are missing. In fact, her mouth harbors two crescents of cracked, rotten teeth, enamel relics of a tough life and a trio of bitter men who…
Sue Ellen Allen once wore a crystal-studded frog pin on the back of her blouse, hoping to get attention for her costume-jewelry business. The gimmick worked. In the early Nineties, jewelry from Tempe-based Collectibles by Sue Ellen was featured in fashion periodicals like Women’s Wear Daily and in stores like…
At six o’clock on the evening of July 7, a Friday, James Witt was standing on a boulder in his front yard near the corner of Alma School and Dynamite roads in north Scottsdale, looking for the signs of a lightning strike one of his house guests had seen from…
It’s time to hit the road. One last time. Calls are made. Entanglements broken. The appointed time for departure comes and goes. A revised departure time is also missed. Things are going well. A montage of characters gathers, cutting ties to the grind, if only for a while. The group…
Disc jockey Jose Cortez, the grinning “Homeboy de Aztlan,” is enjoying his little weekend corner of heaven at KNAI radio in El Mirage. First he plays a little something in Spanish, and already there are three callers on hold. Then he throws on Santana’s “Oye Como Va,” and after that…
Practically every month, 85-year-old Edith Christy hightails it down Central Avenue in her Ford Taurus, parks in the underground garage of the Norwest Tower and rides the elevator up to the headquarters of the Arizona State Retirement System just in time for the pension fund’s board meetings. Like dozens of…
An obscure state Supreme Court ruling may allow auto accident victims to collect additional large settlements from their insurance carriers. The June 29 ruling means an additional $400,000 for Janice Lindsey of Phoenix, who was severely injured in a 1989 automobile accident that also killed her husband, Walter. Lindsey sued…
After months of promising to pursue prosecution of hunters who sponsored an illegal event in which nearly 700 birds were released from cages and shot, both the Arizona Game and Fish Department and the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office have backed out. The event, sponsored by the Valley of the Sun…
You can see something a million times before an epiphanous truth hits you, and this is what slammed into my consciousness as I switched on the TV the other day: Andy and Opie. You know what, and whom, I’m talking about. The theme, more familiar than “The Star-Spangled Banner,” and…
