Two years ago, Hector (a pseudonym) was one of Angela Kirkendall’s best students, a boy so taken with Kirkendall that he sat close to her desk and imitated her speech patterns. Like other students who find themselves in Kirkendall’s sixth-grade class, Hector discovered new motivation and became a better student…
When Scott Bundgaard was 18, he was convicted of a felony in connection with stolen goods. The felony was expunged, and at that point Scott Bundgaard was at a crossroads. With his background as a salesman at The Gap, should he venture into the world of retail fashion? Or should…
Angela Kirkendall’s 26 11- and 12-year-olds pull out math homework, straighten crumpled papers and whisper urgent messages. It’s the morning of May 4, and the Rose Linda Elementary School sixth-grade class is about to start in earnest. But first, students must endure morning announcements, which come out of a tinny…
Last week, the Phoenix City Council crammed a $112 million hotel down our throats. Is the Marriott deal good public policy? I don’t know. But what I do know is that securing its passage was no “emergency”–even though the city council invoked its so-called emergency clause and put the deal…
The Sleepwalker Murder Case may be over, but one question continues to captivate the public: Is it true that Scott Falater talked about a 1980s Canadian sleepwalking murder case with colleagues at Motorola before the murder? The short answer: no. This story within the story–what had Falater been chatting about,…
Wednesday night, driving along Central with zip to do. And what a main drag it is, too; black glass office buildings on a treeless thoroughfare with nary a soul in sight–save for this ruddy-faced homeless guy sitting on a bus bench, miming with his moon shadow. By 8:30, the sidewalks…
A former pastry chef at a tony Valley bistro met a violent death on the morning of Sunday, June 27. Twenty-six-year-old Dion Ybarra was killed instantly when a 14-year-old in a stolen minivan smashed into him, hurling him from his vehicle. But angry friends and former co-workers at Christopher &…
Off the Hook I think Fife Symington is guilty (“Paradise Lost,” John Dougherty, July 1). It always seems as if these so-called politicians who are supposed to be working for “the people” always find a leeway to try to get themselves out of a bind. And Mr. Symington is doing…
The state of Arizona pays veteran Child Protective Services caseworker Mark Peterson $16 an hour to investigate serious reports of child abuse or neglect. Peterson, 46, a graduate of Northern Arizona University, has worked for CPS for seven years, and has spent a total of 22 years as a social…
They’re not with us,” Scott Falater whispered moments before the prosecutor began his closing argument in the Sleepwalker Murder Case. Falater gestured toward the jury box, soon to be filled with citizens who would decide his fate. The 43-year-old Phoenician reminded his listener about something he’d said during an interview…
Editor’s note: The names of child sex-abuse victims, their relatives, the state-licensed foster parents and the actual perpetrators have been changed to protect the victims, who still reside in Arizona and are still minors. All others in this story have been accurately identified. Stephanie and Brittany Jackson As they walked…
Near drownings. Spousal abuse. Carjackings in progress. Most people would agree that angst-ridden 911 calls represent the height of hysteria. But tragedy aside, longtime Valley emergency operator Beth Compton claims a lot of that 911 hysteria is, well, distressingly funny. The result is Did You Say An Alligator?, a self-published…
As Fife Symington dons his scuba gear this week and descends beneath Hawaiian island waves as a felony-free man, one must wonder what the former governor is thinking. More than a week has passed since the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned his September 3, 1997, conviction on six…
Sleepwalking on Air The Flash happened to be sitting in the office of New Times scribe Paul Rubin last week as Rubin was being interviewed about the verdict in the Sleepwalker Murder Case. His interlocutor was Ted Simons, the normally deft afternoon drive-time talker at KTAR Radio. (Disclosure: Simons is…
“Here! Listen to this,” shouts Steven Yazzie as he applies another touch of dawn-tinted paint to the clown’s Mohawk while Neutral Milk Hotel blares from two suspended speakers. “I paint to Neutral Milk all the time.” We stand in his studio near downtown, under a half-dozen blazing lamps, the room…
Fetal Position I read, I will admit, with horror-struck fascination your profile of Dr. Brian Finkel (“The Terminator,” Amy Silverman, June 17). The remarkable reporting of Ms. Silverman left me with two looming questions, relating (respectively) to Dr. Finkel and to the article itself. First, I was left at an…
When Ed Pastor, as Arizona’s ranking (and only) Democratic congressman, was asked to nominate Janet Napolitano’s successor as U.S. Attorney early in 1998, he deliberately set out to find a qualified Hispanic for the job. Pastor wanted a Hispanic, and the White House did, too, “to break the glass ceiling,”…
Officer Scott Masino began CPR even though he knew his friend was dead. Masino tried in vain to push breath into the chest of fellow cop Marc Atkinson, to get his heart to beat after it had been stopped by the gunshots. Atkinson was killed in an ambush on March…
Here We Go Again The Flash tore up this week’s column after hearing that the bank-fraud conviction of former governor J. Fife Symington III had been overturned by the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. The 2-1 court ruling, announced Tuesday, states that the judge in Symington’s federal fraud trial…
Shock Doc Thanks for the excellent article on Dr. Brian “Kiss My Ass” Finkel (“The Terminator,” Amy Silverman, June 17). It brought back memories from when I was active praying on the sidewalks as part of Children of the Rosary in the early Nineties with one of today’s greatest social…
I don’t wish ill on the clerk to the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, but it’s a good thing she was sick on June 15. That was the day the Board of Supervisors met in a hastily called “special study session” to discuss the media melee over their plan to…
HELP WANTED: CANDIDATE for mayor of nation’s sixth-largest city. Qualified applicants must have some name ID and a vision for the future of this burgeoning megalopolis of 1.2 million residents and a $1.7 billion annual budget. Must gather 1,500 signatures by July 9. Should be able to raise at least…
