When the coronavirus began its deadly rampage across Colorado, the hardest hit communities were in the high country, where visitors brought the disease from across the globe, and on the populated Front Range, where it easily spread from person to person in crowded urban areas. But now the county with the highest coronavirus infection rate […]
Posted inBusiness, COVID, News
From very busy to barely anyone: What Colorado businesses looked like as they reopened after a coronavirus pause
Would it be a bonanza or a bust? As commerce across Colorado reopened its doors on Friday with about half the state’s population entering its “safer-at-home” phase of the coronavirus crisis, the business reboot produced something in between. Barbers resumed cutting hair, an ice cream shop in Vail started serving customers again, a bookstore whose […]
Posted inBusiness, Coloradans, COVID, News, Outdoors
Colorado casinos went bust when coronavirus hit. Here’s why they see a lucky streak ahead.
BLACK HAWK — Sean Demeule leans over the railing and surveys a silent sea of slot machines in the state’s largest casino. The general manager of the 523-room, 1,250-slot Ameristar Casino Resort shakes his head and chuckles quietly. It’s the only sound in the cavernous gambling hall. “It would never be like this. Ever,” he […]
Posted inOpinion, Write On, Colorado
While the world melts around me, I look to Colorado’s landscape for relief
I wake every morning looking out at the still-snowcapped Byers Peak with a pinkish hue from the sunrise. I believe in starting each day by giving gratitude and now more than ever I realize the importance of being grateful for my life. While the world is melting down around me, I watch Instagram-worthy sunsets over […]
Posted inColoradans, COVID
How an emergency food network grew out of the coronavirus crisis to deliver 90,000 free meals to Coloradans
The Lost City coffee shop was open only 39 days in Capitol Hill before Gov. Jared Polis ordered all Colorado restaurants and bars to temporarily close March 16 due to the coronavirus crisis. “Definitely a brutal time to open a business, that’s for sure,” Lost City owner Michael Graham said with a laugh. The day […]
Posted inColoradans, COVID, Health, News
Colorado COVID diaries: A day in the life of people across the state as they navigate coronavirus
A teacher greets her students. An imam counsels his congregants. A firefighter reports for duty. New parents take their baby home from the hospital. These are routine moments in the lives of Coloradans. But the coronavirus has transformed the routine into the remarkable, upending how we live and interact with each other. As a heavy […]
Posted inArts, Coloradans, COVID, Culture
She was awaiting her Colorado Ballet curtain call. Coronavirus delayed the dance, for better and worse.
Chandra Kuykendall, a longtime ballerina with the Colorado Ballet, was set to give her final performance at the Ellie Caulkins Opera House, replete with ceremony, flowers and a standing ovation. And then she got an email. Suddenly, the carefully choreographed end to Kuykendall’s 22-year career was swept up in the vortex of the coronavirus pandemic, […]
Posted inBusiness, Coloradans, COVID, Health, News
Coronavirus has left an Aurora clinic for refugees busier than ever and facing big challenges
“If she was my mom, I would take her to the hospital,” Dr. P.J. Parmar said through a barely cracked car window to a refugee family from South Asia on April 11. Parmar, who runs Ardas Family Medicine in Aurora, had been the family’s doctor for years. He knew the woman sitting in the backseat […]
Posted inCOVID, Health, News
“How did that happen so fast?”: She watched from afar as coronavirus killed her dad in a Colorado nursing home
As Katie Jacobs Stanton read stories about a deadly outbreak of the new coronavirus ravaging a Seattle-area nursing home in early March, her thoughts immediately turned to her father in Colorado. The 77-year-old, sports-loving jokester with three grandchildren was a resident of Juniper Village at Aurora, a long-term memory care facility where he had lived […]
Posted inColoradans, COVID, Education, News, Technology
How do you study online without a computer or internet access? It’s a reality for many Colorado kids.
Once Centennial School District R-1 attaches an antenna to its K-12 school building, students in the tiny San Luis Valley district will have a new place to access the internet for their classes: the parking lot. At a minimum, Superintendent Toby Melster said, students will be able to come to the school, sit in the […]