The memory of the uniquely Mexican way of practicing his religion. After a short time in Tombstone, Francisco settled in the area around 24th Street and Baseline Road, a part of the Valley that was then devoted to citrus orchards and cotton fields, and to a great extent still is…
“Here’s how I felt about it,” Steve Bisbee, the lawyer, was saying. He was talking about his role in the biggest trial of his career. He was also talking about a period of more than a month during which some who wanted him to lose kept threatening every day to…
Hey, you Democrats, Bob Grossfeld has a message for you: Things aren’t as bad as they seem. Unless you’re a “liberal” Democrat. In that case, you’d best start calling yourself “progressive.” Grossfeld, a Tempe-based Democratic political consultant, suggests that his party’s malaise is, to some extent, a matter of semantics…
Sodium azide, the chemical that inflates auto safety air bags, is nasty stuff. It is highly flammable, often explosive and extremely toxic. It is so sensitive, in fact, that large explosions have been set off by workers performing such innocuous tasks as placing a wrench on a bolt or using…
“!@#%&*!+?!” Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, we return you to the Tourette’s syndrome support-group meeting currently in progress. “Yeah, you’re in the right,” says the meeting’s good-natured host as she welcomes a couple of newcomers into a recent monthly gathering of the group. “The AA meeting’s…
Cindy Monkman opened a Gideons Bible in her La Jolla motel room. She read the verse she had turned to randomly–Psalm 39, Verse 4–then scribbled it in her journal: “Lord, make me know mine end, and what is the measure of my days; That I may know how frail I…
The first time we saw Brian Kingman in uniform, he was wearing the green and gold of the Oakland A’s. In the late Seventies, Kingman had a blistering fastball, a baffling curve and the worst luck in baseball: Kingman stands in the record books as the last major league pitcher…
Who killed Carmen? Almost 30 years after the attractive young legal secretary’s bludgeoned body was discovered northeast of Phoenix, Rose Weite still doesn’t have a clue who murdered her friend–and that explains why the fledgling true-crime author has just written a book using that question as its title. But at…
The other day, quite by accident, I received a fascinating notice in the mail about Keith Turley. It was an alumni bulletin from Arizona State University, and it reported that Turley, the retired head of Arizona Public Service Company, had been granted an honorary doctor’s degree by the school. Dr…
These hectic days, all bargain-conscious holiday shoppers must, as a matter of faith, make their pilgrimage to I. Magnin. I. Magnin, the luxury department store that helps anchor Sam Grossman’s Biltmore Fashion Park, is going out of business. Everything in the store, remodeled only recently at a cost of millions,…
Dr. Brian Finkel is an outgoing bear of a man given to bursts of enthusiasm and outrage. Even though he has a long history of working with the press, on first meeting, he seems overeager to impress, to demonstrate that he is one of the good guys. After a while,…
Can You Spell “Sellout”? By Tom Fitzpatrick Jerry Rubin died last week. He was 56. Once a famous Vietnam War protester, Rubin was struck by a car near his affluent Los Angeles home and never regained consciousness. They said he was jaywalking. I remember him as a young man. With…
L.S. Shoen is a lonely, 78-year-old man who now lives in a small tract house outside Las Vegas. He is regarded by some as a business genius, responsible for building the billion-dollar U-Haul empire. He has fathered 12 children. Some hate him enough to have run him off from the…
Don’t go breaking my heart. Carla was singing along to the radio as she slid out of her jeans. It was April 16, 1991, and Carla, who was 14, was spending the night with her brother and sister at the apartment of their Sunday-school teacher, Douglas Gates. Gates was a…
Attorney Richard Gierloff admits he’s had some dogs for cases during his legal career. But until a black, male chow named Gunner trotted into his life, Gierloff had never defended an actual canine in a court of law. The tale of Gunner’s recent reprieve from a date with a Maricopa…
Charles Barkley strolled underneath the stands to the Phoenix Suns’ dressing room. Barkley appeared nervous. He was ill at ease. Like a rookie before his first big game, he seemed tentative. A sportswriter from a daily newspaper who covers Barkley regularly attempted to make small talk. He spoke innocently. But…
Congressman Newt Gingrich is one of those staunch Republican figures who has the courage to stand up for family values. In a cynical age, we are often too willing to snicker at such men. We do so at our own peril. They are the backbone of the Republican party, which…
Just a couple of miles north of Interstate 8, where the freeway cuts through some of southwest Arizona’s harshest desert, lies a narrow ribbon of riverfront property that is one of the most productive farming areas in the world. A relatively few farmers there–perhaps 125–like to brag that they can…
“Hempy Halloween,” proclaims the sticker plastered on the door of a conference room at the Hermosa Inn. Above the slogan is the image of a jaunty jack-o’-lantern with a joint dangling from its mouth. Elsewhere, a couple of children whose parents are attending the convention skateboard around the sidewalks of…
“I think that I shall never see/A tort lovely as a tree.” Or something like that. Bill and Sherri McDowell of Scottsdale probably wouldn’t find humor in that variation on the famous Joyce Kilmer line. After all, their lawyer has told a judge that the McDowells are suffering “irreparable harm”…
He’s been around. The veteran baseball writer has covered every World Series and every All-Star game since 1958. He is so highly regarded by his peers that he has already been inducted into the baseball-writers’ wing of the Hall of Fame at Cooperstown. No one now covering baseball has such…
Attorney Steve Doncaster, an ardent cyclist, was pedaling home from work the other day. He was heading west on Washington Street from his office at Salt River Project when a car pulled out of a side street, crashing into Doncaster and his bike head-on. The driver fled. A Good Samaritan…
