Maria Bocanegra Tejeda awakens as the rising sun lights her room. Her room. In the house her family owns. That fact is still capable of surprising her, so far removed it is from her cousins’ crowded trailer in the crowded mobile home park where she spent nearly half of her 22 years. The night before, […]
Tina Griego
Colorado News Collaborative
Email: tina@colabnews.co Twitter: @tinagriego
Posted inColoradans, COVID, Health
On Edge: For Tylan Jones, anxiety is also a battle between optimism and pessimism
Tylan Jones is not naive. He is a 20-year-old Black man living in the United States. This reality does not easily accommodate naivete. When he was in middle school, he says, he and some Black friends got off the bus in their east Denver neighborhood and an “old white lady” came out of her house […]
Posted inCOVID, Health, News
On Edge: A veteran Colorado paramedic grapples with coronavirus’ toll on his lungs and sense of self
Even now, nearly three months after COVID invaded his body, Jason McGinnis cannot stop asking himself how he contracted the virus. On its face, the answer seems clear: He’s a paramedic. But he was careful, thought himself well-protected, thought that if he did catch COVID, he’d knock it right down. “Up until the point I […]
Posted inColoradans, COVID, Health, Politics and Government
On Edge: In the wake of furloughs, closings, suicides, a Breckenridge businessman searches for balance
Dick Carleton came to Breckenridge from Virginia when he was 24. He had a business degree from Virginia Tech, a ‘69 Volkwagen bug, $100 and three friends willing to share a crappy two-bedroom condo with no insulation. It was awful. It was glorious. He was “full of rebel spirit” in a town of kindreds and […]
Posted inColoradans, COVID, Health
On Edge: Heightened anxiety, depression are testing Colorado’s already-frayed safety nets
On Denver’s west side, an elderly man had been managing his solitude just fine until the pandemic hit, taking with it what social life he had and leaving in its place a loneliness he had not felt for years. Not far from his house, a young woman fights panic attacks after COVID-19 killed her grandfather […]
Posted inColoradans, COVID, Health
On Edge: A coronavirus survivor in Denver finds her footing amid her fears
Until this year, Elizabeth Torres would not have called herself a particularly anxious person. Stressed, sure. Who wasn’t? Everyone has ups and downs. Torres was working a couple part-time jobs, taking care of her elderly grandparents, raising three kids on her own. Her son, the middle child, has been diagnosed with autism and he likes […]
Posted inColoradans, COVID, Health
On Edge: First, COVID took this Colorado man’s friends, then it took his health
Eddie Kemm found the pool table early in the pandemic. It was the second one he had scouted after the governor’s order shut down the bars — including Kemm’s favorite pool hall — in late March. When the halls went dark, so, too, did a significant part of the social life of an 81-year-old man […]
Posted inColoradans, News, Politics and Government
Supreme Court ruling on DACA brings more time, but no less uncertainty for Coloradans
As of the end of last year, Colorado was home to 14,640 DACA recipients. They have always known their freedom runs on a clock. Thursday’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling that the Trump administration cannot summarily shut down the program does not change the precariousness of their legal status in this country, but it buys more […]
Posted inBusiness, Coloradans, News, Politics and Government
At nearly every turn in Denver, protesters confront a reason to march
Kenny White, a black man in his late 20s, joins the downtown Denver protesters near dusk. A speaker has just wrapped his exhortation to the hundreds gathered at the west steps. “This is not a black-versus-white issue,” he says. “This is an us-versus-them issue.” The words “By any means necessary” are spray-painted on the Capitol […]
Posted inColoradans, COVID, Health
Amid coronavirus quarantines and job losses, Colorado girds for wave of domestic violence
The call to the hotline came in on Holly Kasper-Blank’s phone just before dawn last Wednesday. She remembers because she had been trying to get some extra sleep and the ring awakened her. A whirlwind of need had descended at the domestic violence organization where she works in Avon, everything from pleas for help and […]