Arizona Public Service Company is quietly laying off hundreds of workers at the Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station and replacing 200 union tradesmen with nonunion workers. APS, which manages the nation’s largest commercial nuclear power plant for a consortium of seven utilities, plans to eliminate at least 497 positions at…
Paul Sterrett stood in the late-May sunshine outside a Scottsdale post office, waiting for someone to sign his petition. The cardiac care nurse at John C. Lincoln Hospital was on loan from his employer to Arizona for a Healthy Future, the campaign to increase the state tax on a pack…
The comparisons stick in the back of your mind. The O.J. Simpson story is merely the opposite side of the coin to the now-infamous Phoenix Suns sex party. The difference is that in Los Angeles, two people died and it caused an immediate media explosion. In Phoenix, a woman may…
Shane Stant spent the last weeks of his freedom literally shoveling shit. He’d taken a construction job in rural Oregon while he was waiting to be sentenced to prison. He was working for meals and not a paycheck, and one of his tasks was to dig the excrement out of…
For her ride, the quinceaera has chosen the bed of a 1978 Chevy El Camino with a lipstick-colored, scooped-out interior. She floats in her velvety hot tub on wheels like a cloud, swaddled in sequins as the driver pilots the car toward the aging church on 17th Avenue just south…
It has been more than a year since Kathy Smith and Kim Seagraves, two longtime advertising saleswomen for the U S West Direct Yellow Pages office in Phoenix, were abruptly fired from their jobs for reasons they did not understand. Now, the reasons are becoming clearer as two federal agencies…
It was May 21, and the Valley was in mourning. The Phoenix Suns had just been eliminated from the NBA playoffs by the Houston Rockets after a roller-coaster, seven-game series. To many, the loss was especially bitter, because they feared it would be superstar Charles Barkley’s final game in uniform…
We go along thinking there are no surprises left. We think we have seen it all. And then a baseball coach like Jim Brock comes along. Without sermonizing, he teaches us a whole new definition of courage. Jim Brock was an uncommon man. He was not, however, a private man–and…
Ena McGuire remembers the morning after the main building at Castle Hot Springs burned to the ground. The fire took place in December 1976, only days before the resort was to open for the season. Ena McGuire delivered the mail up and down the road the hotel was located on…
Operating problems continue to mount at the Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station. It seems Arizona Public Service Company engineers have had a difficult time keeping a diesel electric generator running, let alone all three nuclear reactors at the power plant. APS manages the plant for a consortium of utilities. The…
When it comes to collecting samples of airborne radioactive dust, more is not merrier for the Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station. Internal documents discarded at an abandoned workers’ dormitory in Tonopah (Secrets of the Palo Verde Inn,” June 1) indicate that Arizona Public Service Company concluded in 1985 that a…
A Maricopa County prosecutor faces demotion and a salary cut because she told a grand jury foreman to rein in jurors who had pursued their own line of questioning. County Attorney Rick Romley last month asked another agency to determine whether criminal jury-tampering charges should be filed against Sandra Canter,…
Nothing like it has ever occurred in Arizona. Last Thursday, Judge Stanley Goodfarb stood in a courtroom, stripped of the familiar comfort he usually takes from his black robes. Ushered before the Arizona Supreme Court in the civilian clothes of the accused, Goodfarb stood charged with making racist comments and…
It’s the waiting, you keep thinking. That’s what will wear on Congressman Danny Rostenkowski, at least until the cell door finally closes. But I find it hard to understand all the frenzy. Sure, the government lawyers, all decked out in their nice, conservative suits, are bent on destroying him. But…
Early last Wednesday morning, a determined caravan of workers from Arizona Public Service Company trundled into the dusty, decrepit desert town of Tonopah on a special mission. The crew, led by the utility’s cellular-phone-toting public relations chief, had been urgently dispatched to retrieve thousands of internal APS documents that the…
The point where southern Arizona’s San Pedro River crosses Interstate 10 is not a memorable sight for passers-by zipping merrily along to Los Angeles or El Paso. At the crossing, marked by an almost ironic sign, the riverbed is little but a thin band of tan dirt and stream cobbles,…
Not all of the Palo Verde Papers obtained by New Times contain sobering information about the nuclear plant’s problems. Some APS files offer less serious, though not necessarily less revealing, insights into the people who run the biggest nuclear power plant in the country. Keep an Eye on That Pesky…
No matter how hard they run for Congress by bashing it, once they’re on Capitol Hill, representatives learn quickly that in dealing with fellow lawmakers, kid gloves are required accessories. It is not kosher to meddle in the affairs of another member’s state or district. And unless there’s opportunity for…
The Don Juan we’ll call Mr. X wasn’t just torn between two lovers–he was ripped. Parked in one corner of his heart was the fiercely independent “Dominique,” a vain shrew cursed by bad dentistry and even worse boudoir techniques. In another corner lounged the beautiful “Brenda,” a syphilitic yuppie who…
Dear Charles, This is the perfect time for you to retire from the National Basketball Association. Your stock both as a player and a publicly revered personality will never get any higher than it is right now. Those of us who watched you perform for two seasons with the Phoenix…
There has to be a certain amount of pride that goes into what you do. Someday, you’ll all be as old as I am now, and I don’t want you to look back and think you didn’t make the most out of this. This all goes by very, very fast…
What do you do when a loved one is reduced to an unsavory housekeeping problem? Even the world’s best-known authority on cleaning is scratching her head over that one. “[Homicide and suicide cleanup] is a real-life issue,” volunteers Heloise, the syndicated “high-priestess of household hints” whose column appears in 500…
