The normally sleepy Deer Valley Village Planning Committee has become a whirlwind of political intrigue that pits current and former members of the advisory panel against Phoenix City Councilmember Thelda Williams. The antagonism centers on the land-use plan for 87 acres west of Deer Valley Airport. The village committee wants…
For state Senator Jim Buster, environmental regulation is like a midway game named Whack-a-Mole played at the Yuma County Fair. As soon as industry dares to make a buck, whack! Regulators pound it with environmental laws. Buster, chairman of the Senate Natural Resources, Agriculture and Environment Committee, intends to change…
Way out on U.S. Highway 70, past Zeke’s General Store and towns so small the post offices have dainty curtains in the windows, sit the adjoining southeastern Arizona towns of Thatcher and Safford. They are places where routine and tradition have a way of becoming the same thing, and neither…
On October 6, 1992, Peoria ironworker Sabino Jayo Jr. blew out his knee while playing hacky sack in the white sand dunes of New Mexico. Two and one-half years and piles of paperwork later, the Arizona Court of Appeals says Jayo was entitled to workers’ compensation benefits as a result…
Representative David Farnsworth stepped to the microphone of the Arizona House of Representatives to deliver the opening prayer. “Father, there is a great battle that rages in the hearts of many of those who are really concerned about our environment,” he droned. “We pray that Thou wilt touch their hearts…
Ivan Makil sets down his chopsticks, gives the Szechuan chicken a rest. A slim guy, he watches what he eats. He’s reminiscing about his high school days, when he played trumpet in South Phoenix for a blues band called the Soulsations. “I was the only Indian guy in the band,”…
Few Arizona Republic readers will remember an August 1, 1984, story headlined “U.S. Crime Strike Force in L.A. Accused of Corruption.” The story seemed straightforward enough. Its opening sentence: “The U.S. Justice Department is investigating allegations of corruption and misconduct of high-ranking officials of the federal Organized Crime and Racketeering…
Ann has three young children and a husband who held a gun to her head. “He threatened me in front of my kids, and my little boy started crying, and saying that he didn’t want to be there,” Ann recalls. So on February 13, Ann called a battered women’s shelter…
Ladies and gentlemen, live from one of the Valley’s most upscale areas, it’s the ultimate neighborhood-growth grudge match. In one corner, wearing suits and weighing in with big bank accounts, developers building luxury homes in north Scottsdale. In the other corner, wearing waffle-stompers and weighing in with vehicles large enough…
Harvey Howell, a ranch hand for most of his adult life, lives in the middle of the quiet vastness of the Coconino Plateau, a high desert plain stretching north from the railroad town of Williams to the south rim of the Grand Canyon. Most of the time, silence rules. Only…
Greg and Bernadette Johnson started looking in March of 1994. The two had some scratches and dings on their credit records but had been working diligently for some time to pay off their bills. Greg had just changed jobs after working at one company for years. When Greg got back…
For 15 years, Linda Hayes had the mettle to toil as an ironworker at the Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station. She was there in 1980, when construction on the plant was just beginning. By 1985, she was doing major overhaul work on the three nuclear generators when they were shut…
As Jerry Colangelo’s major league baseball bandwagon rolls on, seemingly unabated, a small pack of stadium-tax foes continues to give chase, yelping like bloodthirsty poodles. Now, however, one segment of the opposition wants to wage economic warfare. A group known as Taxpayers Against Corporate Welfare has announced a sales-tax boycott…
Suzzane Rivera knows people look at her funny sometimes. Maybe they feel threatened, think they see a hard-core gang member. She says to herself: Go ahead. Get a good look. See the bandanna, the proud tattoos, the dangling crucifix. I may surprise you. She sees the impressions form behind those…
“Marcia, Marcia, Marcia!” When this magic mantra rings out across the land on Friday, it won’t be the sound of Judge Lance Ito admonishing the head prosecution lawyer in the O.J. Simpson trial. Instead, that’s the catch phrase du jour that’ll be echoing around another big, mysterious cultural phenomenon America…
From where he stood on the ridge, Ron Day could hear the hounds baying as they lined out on a scent, and he could make out the hunter on his mule ambling across the rocky meadows behind the dogs. He didn’t expect to see the mountain lion they were trailing,…
On weekends, the big dirt parking lot next to Pinnacle Peak Patio, a cowboy restaurant in distant North Scottsdale, is usually filled with the cars and trucks of climbers, who rope themselves up Pinnacle Peak, and the mountain bikers, who pedal the single-track trails through the neighboring hills. Last Saturday,…
On Christmas Eve 1992, at the advanced age of 64, Carlos Contreras hiccupped for the first time in his life. Sixteen months, four dozen doctor visits, thousands of dollars in medical bills and more than two and a half million hiccups later, the retired Phoenix postal service employee was still…
James Dunham cringed while he was watching the film Wyatt Earp last year. Well, so did a lot of other people, but mostly they were film lovers appalled by Kevin Costner’s performance. Dunham was covering his eyes because of the historical inaccuracies he saw perpetrated onscreen. One was particularly close…
Hi, NBA fans! I’m Chuck Barkley, and I own this town. New Times asked me to do this guide for the folks who are pouring in to Phoenix for the big All-Star show. Hope you dig it. Party hard, and don’t spit on anyone! EAST VAN BUREN STREET For those…
Jan Brooks was bustling about her new Mesa apartment, preparing for her daughter Ashley to come home from the hospital. It was June 9, 1993, and in a few days, Ashley would be 18 months old. Happy days like this one had been rare for Brooks, who had moved from…
The two-lane asphalt road stretches southward across the desert, eerily blending at the horizon with three steam plumes that surge 2,000 feet above the Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station. Four miles ahead lies the nation’s largest nuclear power plant; during the past two months, more than 800 migratory ducks have…
