Navee Essien has grown up keenly aware of her gifts.  More times than she can count, people have reminded the senior at Aurora’s Rangeview High how fortunate she is to...

It started about four years ago when Laurel Carpenter and Melissa Humphrey bought matching parkas and then matching comfort shoes.  Soon enough, the nurses-slash-best friends from Grand Junction found themselves...

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...

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...

Scott Zayatz upped his dosage of antidepression and antianxiety medication in early spring when the pandemic started clobbering the nation and the presidential race, post-primary, turned foul. The 43-year-old news...

Dick Carleton came to Breckenridge from Virginia when he was 24. He had a business degree from Virginia Tech, a ‘69 Volkswagen bug, $100 and three friends willing to share...

Millete Birhanemaskel, a refugee, long-time Denver resident and businesswoman, grappled with 2020 as many others have: She tried to protect her family, her employees, her tenants from COVID’s reach. She...

Some words fail us, and for Robert Werthwein, “depression” is one of them. The 41-year-old director of Colorado’s Behavioral Health Office prefers to say “everything turned to complete shit” when...

They love each other. That should go without saying. They have, in fact, gone through hell and back for one another — and that was before 2020 rolled out its...

Dr. Patricia Westmoreland washes her hands 20 to 30 times each day she does rounds at the Medical Center of Aurora. That, she says, “doesn’t count sanitizing them who-knows-how-many times...

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...

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,...

EADS – “The Splotch,” as some here call the brown mark on the map they check weekly, is the color of scorched earth. Here in Kiowa County, farmers have always...

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...