Elephant Talk

By Kristin Pazulski

Photography by Adrian DiUbaldo

At the request of a friend, two years ago Randy Harris visited a church food pantry in Denver’s Villa Park neighborhood, just west of Federal and south of Colfax. A few loaves of bread and canned goods sat on the shelves. A girl came to the church with her father. She was irritable and grumpy; the reason, her father explained, was she hadn’t eaten in three days. They took their bread and cans of vegetables and went home.

Harris was horrified not only that she hadn’t eaten in three days, but also by the quality of the food they left with. When Harris asked the church why there was a lack of fresh food, he learned that they didn’t have the money to buy much more and donations from food drives are focused on canned and boxed non-perishables.

Harris, a former corporate and government research consultant, started looking at Colorado’s current food pantry services. What he found, he says, is an unorganized business model, with scattered pantries full of well-intentioned people, but not much food. In his mind, why not pool the services?

“There’s plenty of food. We’re trying to parse it out to way too many places,” Harris said.

Mulling Over the Mall

By Kristin Pazulski

Photography by Adrian DiUbaldo

Another group of casually dressed business people runs by you, trying to catch the bus, talking about the latest speaker and wearing lanyard tags naming the convention they are attending at the Hyatt.

You look down at your jeans and sweater, and wonder if you’re supposed to be wearing a suit to be on the 16th Street Mall, because that’s all you can see. But no, it’s just that Denver’s downtown is different. With fewer people living in Denver than working and visiting, the downtown area’s one dominating street, the 16th Street Mall, sees more traffic from the more than 100,000 office workers and 2.1 million annual visitors than it sees from Denver residents.

Not only that, but walk a block off of 16th Street and the story is much different.

Downtown Denver is dominated by a 15-block strip of stores, restaurants and vendors that attract most of the area’s pedestrian traffic. The Mall Ride is beeping, bags are rustling, conversations float from cafes and the street furniture as people take a rest from shopping or walking. But the adjoining streets are quiet. There are shops and restaurants—plenty of shops, some which have been there for years. But the bustle is missing. Cars whizz by in four lanes of one-way traffic. The white-walking-man lights go on, but only a few people saunter across the street—most on their way to a hotel, a bus stop or the Mall.

Those side streets could be the future of Denver’s downtown development, but having oriented the city around one street, what will it take to build a more balanced city-center—one with shopping, entertainment, residences and pedestrian areas throughout?

People's Polo: This game comes down from the King's court to a street near you

Denver VOICE EditorSeptember 1, 2010Adrian Diubaldo, DIY, Denver, Kristin Pazulski, Mallet Mafia, Sports, bike polo, hardcourt polo, polo

Feature: Crime or Punishment?

Published April 2010 Vol. 14 Issue 4

by Margo Pierce, with contributions from Kimberly Gunning and Ross Evertson

photos by Adrian Diubaldo

Economic profiling treats homeless people as criminals.

In 2007, approximately 3.6 million people were homeless at some time in North America, according to a number of non-profit organizations. “Homelessness” is defined in a variety of ways, so it is impossible to paint a uniform picture of what this reality looks like, but the numbers show that homelessness has reached epidemic proportions. And looking around the country, for many communities a popular response is punishment.

A man holds up a ticket in Denver for camping ilegaly . The ticket had no fine, but required him to go to Homeles Court.

Local Buzz: Jazz & Gentry

Published March 2010 Vol. 14 Issue 3

Will Denver Have its own Harlem Renaissance?

written by Tim Covi
reporting by Dwayne Pride
photography by Adrian Diubaldo

Standing at the corner of Welton and Washington Streets, if you look hard enough you might still see throngs of people coiling around the sides of the Rossonian Hotel. Young men standing under tipped fedoras and women in cocktail dresses and heels lined up to hear some of the best jazz the country has to offer. You’d have to look hard, mind you. Past the dusty, lightly sootsoiled brick, past the 1993 renovations, around the light rail that sidles up to the hotel’s flank and comes to a slow, furtive stop at the traffic light before rushing off down Welton with its payload. You’d need to look beyond the empty shell being remodeled, well into history. Because for several years, this corner has been a husk of what it was.

DV StaffMarch 1, 2010Adrian Diubaldo, Dwayne Pride, March 2010, Tim Covi, local buzz

Local Buzz: Schooling Shelters

Published January 2010 Vol. 14 Issue 1

text by Michael Neary

photography by Adrian DiUbaldo

Living at the Salvation Army Lambuth Center in Denver, Luz Hernandez and her two children face some uncertainty about their future. But uncertainty and all, their lives clearly feel better to them than they did last spring.

About six months ago, Hernandez was holding down two jobs while the family lived in a Westminster apartment. The jobs—part of an effort to emerge from a deepening financial trench—left little time for Hernandez to spend with her daughter Lesley Velasquez, 13, and her son Adrian Velasquez, 12.

“I would hardly see them,” she said.

Hernandez, who spoke quietly, seemed to relish the time she could now spend with her children.

Hernandez talked about her move to the shelter as her son worked on lessons in a tutoring program begun this year by Denver Public Schools. Luz said her daughter, who wasn’t at the shelter that afternoon, would also be taking up the lessons. With wooden floors and modest but comfortable chairs, the shelter is an inviting place, and the moods of the families staying there seemed serene.

The children at the shelter are studying in ways they wouldn’t have been able to a year ago. DPS started the tutoring program where Adrian was learning with federal funds made available by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. The ARRA funds are part of a big increase in federal dollars available to Colorado public schools to help homeless students this year—but the problem itself is growing at a daunting pace.

Adrian Velasquez, 12, works on a math worksheet at the Lambuth Center.

DV StaffJanuary 1, 2010Adrian Diubaldo, January 2010, Michael Neary, homeless students

Freature: Magazine Crew - Human trafficking may have knocked at your door.

Published November 2009 Vol. 13 Issue 10

by Margo Pierce
photos by Adrian Diubaldo

Some of the 27 million people worldwide who are bought, traded or are unwitting victims of human trafficking live and work in Colorado. It could be the person in the fields you drive past or on your doorstep telling you about a magazine offer. It’s not clear if Jose Garcia was a victim of human trafficking. He had one of those jobs that operates in a grey area. But one thing is certain: he is one of the lucky ones who was able to escape that possibility.

DV StaffNovember 1, 2009Adrian Diubaldo, Margo Pierce, November 2009, homeless youth, human trafficking

Local Buzz: Mental Health Cuts

Published October 2009 Vol. 13 Issue 9

by Dwayne Pride
photographs by Adrian Diubaldo

“The difference between the closings before and the closings now is that this time half of the hospital will be closing down.”
—Steve Wager

As the state budget gets carved up, Colorado residents, state workers, service providers and clients are all scrambling to figure out what the looming budget cuts mean for them. One area of concern is among the health and human services. These services are directly responsible for supporting homeless and poor people in the metro area and across the state, a portion of whom are considered disabled. Fort Logan Mental Health Center is among the organizations taking large cuts to balance the budget, and the cuts could mean as many as 200 people won’t get needed mental health services.

Fort Logan provides hospital services for the mentally ill. It serves patients with complex, serious and persistent mental illnesses. There are 153 inpatient beds and 20 residential beds. Each year about 650 patients are admitted, according to hospital admissions at Fort Logan. Cuts could mean that most of these patients would need to be redirected to other institutional facilities or not hospitalized at all.

Fort Logan Mental Health Institute is losing much of its resources due to state budget reform. Beds and employee hours are being cut, leaving employees unhappy and many homeless people without a place to recuperate. Photo by ADRIAN DIUBALDO.

DV StaffOctober 1, 2009Adrian Diubaldo, Dwayne Pride, Mental health institute, October 2009, budget cuts, local buzz

Feature: Aftershock - Addressing secondary trauma in a setting mindful of both clients and service providers

Published August 2009 Vol. 13 Issue 7

by Mandy Walker
photos by Adrian DiUbaldo

Barbara molfese sits in her small office at the Boulder Valley Women’s Health Center and remembers a client she counseled about an unintended pregnancy. The young woman, dressed in boys clothing, told Molfese about the incest and sexual assaults she’d experienced beginning when she was just five-years-old.

“You could just feel the pain sitting in a room with her,” said Molfese. “I felt heartbroken for her for the next couple of weeks. Sad, depressed. I just kept seeing her, picturing her in my mind.” Molfese, counseling supervisor and chaplain at the center, knew she was suffering from secondary trauma.

Like Molfese, Rene Brodeur, program director at the Boulder Shelter for the Homeless, can recall traumatic events, like attempted suicides or violence and the impact they’ve had on him. He also knows there are times when he can’t identify a single specific incident and yet has found himself experiencing secondary trauma.

Rene Brodeur, left, and Janet Walker of the Boulder Shelter for the homeless have a meeting along the trails west of the shelter.

DV StaffAugust 1, 2009Adrian Diubaldo, August 2009, Mandy Walker, trauma recovery

Feature: Outsmarting Crime

text by Margo Pierce
photo by Adrian Diubaldo

Christie Donner, Executive Director of the Colorado Criminal Justice Reform Coalition, works at her desk

When a street cop says that simply throwing criminals in jail isn’t the way to protect the public, it’s worth listening. And when that street cop has worked his way up to a top position in the Colorado Department of Corrections, it carries that much more weight.

Denver VOICE EditorJanuary 1, 2009Adrian Diubaldo, Margo Pierce