END OF AN ORDEAL

Someone raised the subject of “Steve’s ordeal” about midway through Stephen Wilson’s funeral service last week. “It’s hard to imagine what Steve and his family went through after his arrest,” a close friend of Wilson’s told those gathered at the Grimshaw Bethany Chapel. “But he stuck it out and stayed…

A GROIN CONCERN

Tim has a small penis, and he doesn’t want to talk about it. A tall, slim, balding figure in his 40s, he sits in a cramped waiting room, fidgeting nervously along with three other men–all of whom are doing their level best to ignore one another. Eye contact is verboten,…

END OF AN ORDEAL

Someone raised the subject of “Steve’s ordeal” about midway through Stephen Wilson’s funeral service last week. “It’s hard to imagine what Steve and his family went through after his arrest,” a close friend of Wilson’s told those gathered at the Grimshaw Bethany Chapel. “But he stuck it out and stayed…

END OF AN ORDEAL

Someone raised the subject of “Steve’s ordeal” about midway through Stephen Wilson’s funeral service last week. “It’s hard to imagine what Steve and his family went through after his arrest,” a close friend of Wilson’s told those gathered at the Grimshaw Bethany Chapel. “But he stuck it out and stayed…

A GROIN CONCERN

Tim has a small penis, and he doesn’t want to talk about it. A tall, slim, balding figure in his 40s, he sits in a cramped waiting room, fidgeting nervously along with three other men–all of whom are doing their level best to ignore one another. Eye contact is verboten,…

HOME WRECKERS

The cavalry came to the rescue on the afternoon of June 12, 1992. State inspectors handed a restraining order to Corliss Ford, operator of the Autumn Rest adult-care home in west Phoenix. The order, signed earlier that day by a Maricopa County judge, instructed Ford to remove the eight elderly…

CHARTER RUNS AGROUND

Dean Brewer quickly crosses the Courtyard by Marriott parking lot, glancing repeatedly over his right shoulder toward the hotel lobby. “There’s a photographer in there,” he says nervously. “No photographs.” Brewer continues at a quick pace into an alley between two office buildings. He has a story to tell, but…

AN AGE-OLD PROBLEM

Department of Health Services inspection supervisor Cathy Rodriguez says the truth of her own mortality often hits her when she’s out in the field. “You’re looking at someone and you say to yourself, ‘That’s me 40 years from now,'” says Rodriguez. “This country does not realize what it’s facing. We’re…

PROBE INTO UNION EXPANDSNLRB BROADENS INVESTIGATION OF US WEST DIRECT

Months after allegations of union corruption and favoritism first surfaced at the U S West Direct Yellow Pages sales office in Phoenix, investigations into the company and officers of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 1269 are mushrooming. Three federal agencies have now been asked to probe various allegations…

LOSING IT

Hillya Mooney’s voice on the telephone, so chipper, so sweetly cadenced, gave no hint of the story she would finally tell. “You wrote about me in your column,” said Hillya, pausing to allow words of acknowledgment to float back to her on the line. But I could not place her…

A FRIGHTENING DIAGNOSIS

In a downtown Phoenix law office, filed along with hundreds of other documents, are four unique sheets of letter-size paper. They are the personal notes of Arizona State University President Lattie Coor–written in his own tall hand–of a meeting held on March 25 of this year. The curtain was falling…

HOUSE OF THE RISEN SON

It’s showtime, and the crowd is restless. Already on their feet, the fans wait impatiently for the band to begin, shifting and murmuring in the tightly packed aisles. The keyboard player belatedly steps to the microphone, squinting through the glare of the stage lights. “Are you ready to move?” he…

PARENTS’ PROGRESS

On the evening of December 6, Wendy Cracchiolo-Sheedy gave birth to a six-pound, 15-ounce baby girl, “who looks like an angel, teensy-tiny and perfect.” She named the child Antoinette Catherine Sheedy. It was a miracle of sorts, because just a year earlier, after a double miscarriage, several surgeries and expensive…

DWM SEEKS REPARATIONS

When he placed a romance ad in the Globe tabloid, Ed Goldwater says he was “just a lonely guy that wanted to meet a nice woman.” The Mesa chiropractor thought he’d found her in Mary “Kathy” Cook, a respiratory therapist living in Virginia. The two began a courtship by letter…

THE PLUMBER’S LAWYER ACQUITTED HIM WELL

It was 10 a.m. Prosecutor Warren Granville had just concluded with the first part of his final argument. Granville had forcefully told the jury why it must find Jimmy Robison guilty. The lawyers in the crowded, 11th-floor courtroom of Judge Norman Hall nodded to each other. Granville’s argument had been…

PIERCING THE CLASS CEILING

Recently confirmed U.S. Attorney Janet Napolitano gets the biggest round of applause when dignitaries are introduced, but all eyes are on Cindy Resnick and Cathy Eden. The occasion, this December evening, is an opportunity to hear EMILY’s List founder Ellen Malcolm speak. Both Resnick and Eden, Democratic state legislators, are…

DESCENT OF A WOMAN

“I think I was like a little girl at Christmas,” Karan English says. With the McDowell Mountains behind her and a dozen rapt faces before her, English is sitting in the library of north Scottsdale’s Mountainside Middle School, telling the student council about her first year as Arizona’s first congresswoman…

HEIR OF OPTIMISM

Cinthia Gannett says she’s “still waiting for justice for my grandma.” She may not have to wait much longer. Sources say the state Attorney General’s Office is about to take a huge step toward Gannett’s goal of “justice” with criminal indictments against prominent Mesa attorney Wayne Legg and Webber Mackey,…

EV’S LATEST INKLING MECHAM STILL LONGS TO BE A NEWSPAPER TYCOON

Evan Mecham, Arizona’s only impeached governor, can’t make headlines these days, no matter how hard he tries. Four years ago, the ousted Republican governor announced plans to launch his own Phoenix newspaper, an “unbiased” publication to compete with the impertinent scribes who insisted on chronicling the financial and political quirks…