25 Stories Then and Now

The process of going through all of our stories from the past 25 years of Yellow Scene Magazine (YS) to find the 25 stories best suited for a sort of “Where are they now?” segment proved to be a little more overwhelming than I expected. That’s even when you consider the fact that our first several years aren’t well documented on our website, with the earliest being 2007, which is itself incomplete, and all the rest of YS’ early years only exist in physical form, collecting dust somewhere in the home of our publisher and founder, Shavonne Blades. Even if you take away those years, that’s still a mountain of articles to go through.

While some were absolutely fascinating, did all of them reflect the time that had passed and demonstrate something significant that changed over time? In the past 25 years, our coverage area of East Boulder County and the surrounding metro area has gone through significant changes. So has Colorado as a whole. So has the country, with Colorado often along for the ride while the country has bounced from one right-wing extremist presidency, to eight years of Obama, to another right-wing extremist presidency. In fact, what I found was that seemingly insignificant stories look very different through the lens of history.

Take, for example, “Bare Necessities” — which we’ll count as the first of our 25 stories — a strange 2012 story about North Boulder nudist couple Bob and Cathy Pierce who attempted to sue the city for harassing them but found it difficult when Cathy tried to enter the county courthouse topless. The unusual story raised some interesting issues at the time about personal freedom and the ability of police to enforce laws they don’t understand, considering that baring breasts is actually legal in Boulder. We didn’t follow up on the Pierces afterwards — it’s hard to imagine that story having an interesting follow-up, but boy would you be wrong. The following year, the couple was arrested in Marblehead, Ohio after a waitress overheard what she thought was Bob threatening then-President Barack Obama. Bob insisted he was talking about killing Obama in a debate and that he wanted to go to Washington to set the politician straight. The Pierces once again made headlines in the Daily Camera in 2016 after Cathy was convicted of felony theft and criminal exploitation of an at-risk elder for allegedly tricking a 73-year-old, half-blind man into signing away his trailer home for $1.

While the Pierces’ sordid exploits weren’t something we wanted to make front page news, it demonstrates that almost every story, no matter how inconsequential it may seem at the time, could have an interesting follow-up if you take the time to look into it. So how could I narrow it down to just 25 stories that demonstrate the inevitable passage of time? In some ways, the articles I chose were somewhat arbitrary, as almost any article could have fit this piece. But I think I found a series of articles that truly do reflect the important changes in local history.

Fighting Words (2008)

Riding the blue wave that the 2008 election brought, Colorado’s first all-Democratic leadership in the legislature looked to use their newfound majority status to get affordable healthcare passed in the state, with one phrase on everyone’s lips: “single payer.” As the article pointed out, “single payer” is the other term for one of the most terrifying concepts in American politics: universal healthcare. Why it remains such a divisive issue when most other countries in the First World have long since instituted a single-payer healthcare system is somewhat of a mystery, but for whatever reason, there’s always a completely unjustified pushback on the topic in American legislatures. But at this unique moment in 2008, Democrats finally thought they could get it pushed through. Spoiler alert: They didn’t.

Single-payer healthcare in Colorado is much like the proverbial football that Lucy always holds out for Charlie Brown, promising she won’t pull it away at the last moment, only for poor Chuck to land flat on his back when Lucy inevitably does so anyway. In 2017, Colorado attempted to pass a single-payer healthcare system by ballot initiative, but there was a problem: Colorado’s constitution bans public funding for abortion, so the ballot initiative, the way it was worded, would have meant that everyone who currently has abortions covered by private insurance would be forced to pay out of pocket, a situation that drew opposition from major abortion advocates. As recently as February of this year, a new bill was proposed to study the potential impact of single-payer healthcare, a bill that’s similar to one that failed in the last few years, but this version of the bill wouldn’t be funded by taxpayers, giving it a fighting chance of getting passed. Still, a lot has changed since 2008 when Democrats thought they could get single payer passed. Now they’re fighting just to explore the possibility.

An Education in Luring Top Minds (2008)

In 2008, Colorado State Sen. Brandon Shaffer was trying to get more people to go into teaching, particularly in districts and subject areas that are significantly understaffed, by instituting a $500,000 scholarship fund to get kids to go to Colorado public colleges and take teacher prep courses. Well, it seems he succeeded and created what became known as the Teach Colorado Grant, and in 2009 he introduced the “Troops to Teachers” bill which sought to bring more military veterans into the program.

Well, Schaffer went on to become President of the Colorado State Senate from 2009-2013, and, even though he’s no longer involved in politics, his dream of scholarships for teaching lives on. Today, the Educator Recruitment and Retention Program (ERR) offers up to $10,000 in one-time assistance to towards teacher prep courses, as long as the recipient signs on to work for three years in a “shortage area” for Colorado Public Schools. Still, education has a long way to go in Colorado, a state that was recently ranked 45th in the nation for education by USA Today, with teachers making less than the state median salary. It seems like we need more than just scholarships, we need to pay teachers more to incentivize better performance.

The Most Expensive Seat in the Country (2008)

In 2008, YS stopped in to a fundraiser for a “non-descript” man self-financing his campaign for the second U.S. Congressional District seat in what was being called the most expensive seat in the country (or at least one of the most expensive), predicting at the time that it would take $10 million or more to settle the seat. That non-descript man was none other than Jared Polis who, in 2019, was sworn in as Colorado’s first openly gay governor as well as our first Jewish governor.

Polis not only made CD2 one of the most expensive in the country, ten years later, he helped make that election the most expensive in Colorado history up to that point, with more than $200 million spent on Colorado campaigns and with Polis pumping more than $23 million into his own campaign. In 2022, he won re-election with a bit less of his own money financing campaign but still pumped $12.6 million into his own campaign that year. And, while we had a hard time picking Polis as our endorsement for the CD2 election in 2008, we had a little bit of an easier time in 2022 picking him for governor against the too-extreme Trump supporter Heidi Ganahl.

Far From the Party: A Republican Fights for Her Political Life (2008)

In 2008, we checked in on Betsy Markey, the Democratic challenger for Colorado’s 4th Congressional District against incumbent Marilyn Musgrave. The seat had traditionally been held by Republicans in this district, but Musgrave saw her lead in each election dwindling more and more, making it seem possible that, in 2008, Markey might overtake the Republican and win the seat.

Well, she did. In the 2008 election, Markey’s 11-point win was more than even her own staff had hoped for. The victory was short-lived, though, as Republican Cory Gardner won the seat back for his party in 2010, which he kept until 2015 when he moved from the House to the Senate. Markey’s political career didn’t end there, though, as she was then appointed to be secretary for intergovernmental affairs in the Department of Homeland Security under the Obama administration, a post she held until 2013.

Who Killed The Rocky (2009)

The closure of Rocky Mountain News, one of Colorado’s major newspapers, in February 2009 was a seismic shift in the local news industry that we look at in more depth in this issue titled, “The History of Independent Media in Boulder County,” which discusses how the 300 reporters at Rocky Mountain News (nicknamed “The Rocky”) competed with the same number of reporters from The Denver Post, resulting in too much competition for the same leads. In our 2009 piece, former Rocky writer Lacy Boggs explained the flaws of The Rocky’s parent corporation, E.W. Scripps Company, and how they failed to let The Rocky find a niche by focusing on local news while also failing to grow their digital content to reduce print costs.

Nearly 10 years later, in 2018, The Rocky’s biggest competitor, The Denver Post, nearly met the same demise. Learning lessons from the past, the staff of The Post launched what became known as The Denver Post Rebellion where its writers printed a series of articles protesting against the leadership of its hedge fund owners, Alden Global Capital, with the headline “News Matters” and the subheading “Colo. should demand the newspaper it deserves.” While Alden Global kept to their gameplan rather than following The Post’s call for them sell to better owners, Coloradans demonstrated that local news mattered to them, and The Denver Post Rebellion is often cited as part of the reason the newspaper didn’t fall the way The Rocky did.

Graduation: Now What? (2015)

In 2015, we examined how difficult it was for college students to find jobs in the wake of the then-recent recession. At the time, 44% of college graduates were underemployed, meaning they took jobs that didn’t require their college degree. According to an article in Forbes last year, the situation hasn’t improved in the past decade. 52% of college graduates — more than half — are now working in jobs that don’t require higher education and 75% of them remain in this situation for a full decade after college.

Down the Road: Ten Transportation Issues Impacting You in the Next 10 Years (2011) and Derailed (2016)

In this 2011 article, writer James Burrus talked about the transportation issues that would define the next decade. Now that it’s 14 years later, how much of what Burrus talked about has been realized? The Boulder BCycle bike-sharing program that he mentioned continues to this day, but now it competes with e-scooters from Lime, Lyft, and other major companies. Still, other transportation options that Burrus talked about in 2011, like FasTracks, have not fared as well over the years. In our 2016 article “Derailed” talked about a modified FasTracks proposal that was being put to voters.

The 2004 FasTracks program ran into funding difficulties in the 2010s that pushed their projection to build a commuter rail between Denver and Boulder/Longmont to the 2040s. As recently as February 2025, RTD has been talking about a revised plan to have a train from Denver to Fort. Collins with stops in between, such as Boulder and Longmont, by January 1, 2029. At this point, we’ll believe it when we see it.

Frack Attack (2012)

The concept of “fracking” or hydraulic fracturing is a familiar one in 2025, especially for those living in the oil-rich areas of Colorado such as Erie. But, in 2012, the concept was still somewhat of a new one to our readers, enough so that we had to explain what it was. According to the Natural Resources Defense Council, fracking dates back to an idea from 1862, although the modern concept of hydraulic fracturing started in the 1940s. Still, the boom in fracking is largely a 21st century phenomenon and, of the approximately 1 million wells that have been fracked from 1940 to 2014, about one-third of them were fracked after the year 2000.

In 2025, fracking and horizontal drilling have become more commonplace, and the results are becoming more and more catastrophic. EnvironmentAmerica estimates that 57,000 acres of land in Colorado have already been damaged by fracking, a number it says is equivalent to one-third of the acres of land in the state’s park system. Our latest fracking controversy happened just last year when the Draco Oil and Gas Development Plan proposed by Extraction Oil & Gas Inc./Civitas Resources was set to start drilling underneath residential areas and schools in Erie but was halted indefinitely by a unanimous vote of the Colorado Energy & Carbon Management Commission.

Notables: The New Guy (2012)

In 2012, we sat down with Longmont’s “New Guy,” the new city manager Harold Dominguez who had just uprooted himself from San Angelo, Texas to manage the Boulder County city. “Considering we had over 100 days of over 100-degree weather in San Angelo, I think we will enjoy it,” he said at the time about making the move from the sweltering Texas heat to the more temperate climate in Colorado. Well, he seems to enjoy it pretty well, because Dominguez isn’t the new guy anymore. He continues to serve as Longmont’s city manager to this day. In 2023, his base salary was raised to $305,620 by a unanimous vote  from Longmont City Council due to his exceptional competency at the job and the council’s desire to hold onto him in that position.

Breaking out of the cubicle (2012) and The Rise of Flexible Jobs (2012)

In 2012’s “Breaking out of the cubicle,” we checked in with Avery Brewing Company and explained how they’re considered one of the most fun places to work in Colorado, largely because of the fact that they let employees grab a free beer from the taproom at any time, even during work hours. We also dipped into some other fun workplaces such as Louisville’s Natural Habitat Adventures, which was sending employees on annual trips and holding ping-pong tournaments, and Training Peaks in Lafayette which gave employees a $600 per year stipend to spend on fitness. In “The Rise of Flexible Jobs,” we talked to Sara Sutton, who started FlexJobs to help people in the then-difficult task of finding flexible jobs that allowed work from home.

Of course, we all know how the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted the standard workplace, forcing companies to allow more employees to work from home. At the height of the pandemic, 61.5% of all work in the U.S. was remote. Today, hybrid and remote work is still popular, with the average American worker spending 1.4 days of the week working from home. So getting a free beer during work hours doesn’t quite hold a candle to being able to work out of your own home.

Kiss the Ring (2012) and Lucky Stars (2012)

We did two articles on Brad Feld in 2012, the man who was one of the pioneers of Boulder becoming a hub for tech start up companies. As managing director of venture capital firm Foundry Group and founder of Techstars, Feld was quickly becoming one of the rockstars of the venture capital field.

13 years later, and Feld still lives in Boulder with his wife, Amy Batchelor, who he started the Anchor Point Foundation. Foundry Group and Techstars are still up and running. Meanwhile, Feld spends his time writing books about venture capital and startups, running marathons, and sponsoring documentaries about topics he’s passionate about. Meanwhile, Boulder is still listed amongst the top cities in the U.S. for tech startups, recently making the lists from Crowdspring and Yahoo! Finance.

Smoke Signals: Q&A with Mason Tvert (2012)

Anyone who enjoys cannabis legally in Colorado has Mason Tvert to thank for it. He led successful campaigns to decriminalize cannabis possession on CU and CSU campuses, passed an initiative to legalize the possession of small amounts of cannabis for adults in Denver and, in 2012, we interviewed him about his efforts to pass Amendment 64: The Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol Act, which, at the time, looked likely to pass.

It’s little secret what happened after that. About a month after our article ran, Colorado voters approved Amendment 64 and Colorado and Washington became the first two states to legalize recreational cannabis use. Other states caught on, and recreational cannabis use is now fully legal in 25 states as well as the District of Columbia. Taking it a step further, Colorado has just started issuing licenses for “healing centers” where people can ingest psychedelic mushrooms under supervision.

Small Space, Big Idea (2013) and Resurrecting a Village: Tiny Homes for the Homeless (2016)

In 2013, we profiled Jay Shafer, founder of Tumbleweed Tiny House Co. and the movement to live more simply in homes built to be under 150 square feet. In 2016, we looked into how tiny homes could be a better solution for solving homelessness than jail-like temporary shelters which are undignified for the people living in them as well as more expensive in a comparative analysis of costs compared to Dignity Village, (a Tiny Home community in Portland, OR). Flash forward to 2025, and the tiny home market is expanding very rapidly. Yahoo Finance! Predicts that the size of the tiny homes market is estimated to grow by $3.71 billion from 2025-2029.

The Privatization of Colorado’s Public Education (2014)

If we thought that education was overly privatized in 2014, we had no idea what we were in for in the years to come. In our 2014 article, we looked at the increasing use of private corporations to dictate standardized tests in an attempt to cut costs and, by adopting a consistent, objective measure of student knowledge and skills, qualify for No Child Left Behind funding. Over reliance on companies such as Pearson went hand in hand with the introduction of Common Core State Standards.

In the years since this story ran, public education has become even more privatized nationwide with the sudden boom in charter schools, independently managed schools that somehow still qualify as a public school option for kids. According to pro-charter school advocacy group National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, the five years from 2019 to 2024 saw an increase in enrollment in charter schools of 400,000 students nationwide in the 46 states that allow charter schools. Colorado is, of course, one of those 46 states. So, while the use of private companies to handle day-to-day operations in a public school was problematic, the move to make public education more privatized has become a sort of horrifying mutation of the existing problem.

Net Neutrality (2015)

In 2015, we looked at the decision by the FCC to classify the Internet under Title II of the 1996 Telecommunications act to ensure that service providers would treat every website equally and not charge fees to certain sites, like Netflix, to ensure the fastest possible speeds. The issue has gone back and forth over the years, being repealed during the Trump administration, then reinstated last year under the Biden administration. But then, in January of this year, a federal appeals court struck down the FCC’s net neutrality rules, arguing that the FCC did not have the legal authority to enact such rules. Interestingly enough, our article predicted that the net neutrality rules would make the Time Warner/Comcast merger more likely, but that merger never happened.

Hard-partying brothers Mike (Adam Devine) and Dave (Zac Efron) plan to turn their sister’s wedding into a wild getaway. Photo Credit: Gemma LaMana.

Spotlight on Adam Devine (2016)

In 2016, we got a chance to sit down with actor Adam Devine to talk about his new comedy Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates, a movie you might not have heard of before despite its all-star cast featuring Zac Efron, Anna Kendrick, and Aubrey Plaza. That might have something to do with the abysmal reviews of the movie, which currently holds a score of 38% on Rotten Tomatoes with the critic’s consensus reading “Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates benefits from the screwball premise and the efforts of a game cast, even if the sporadically hilarious results don’t quite live up to either.”

Meanwhile, Devine’s family has had a new addition, as last year he and his wife Chloe Bridges welcomed their son Beau into the world. Devine said of the experience of being a new dad that “Every day is like a new adventure.” Fatherhood seems to suit him pretty well.

Graphic image by De La Vaca

The ORR v. Abortion | Duly Noted (2019)

In this 2019 piece, we looked at Scott Lloyd, the Trump appointee who was then running the Office of Refugee Resettlement and denied a refugee the right to an abortion, even going so far as to say that he has never granted permission for a detainee to receive an abortion for any reason. Thankfully, the refugee sued through the ACLU and won her right to an abortion, but the incident demonstrated the Trump administration’s real agenda on abortion: They wanted to end it at all costs.

Sadly, we all know where this story goes: In 2022, the Supreme Court, in the case of Dobbs v. Jackson, overturned the landmark case of Roe v. Wade which declared a legal right to abortion. The decision reversing Roe v. Wade, spearheaded by all three of Trump’s Supreme Court appointees — Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett — found that “The Constitution makes no reference to abortion, and no such right is implicitly protected by any constitutional provision,” setting the battle for reproductive freedom back decades. The result has been that the decision on abortion rights was thrown back to the states, with many now finding their access to abortion to be severely restricted. Make no mistake, the Trump administration always wanted its appointees to stand in the way of any and all rights to abortion.

Time After Time… (2019)

Sadly, our 2019 article entitled “Time After Time…” was not a tribute to longtime pop star and LGBTQ+ advocate Cyndi Lauper. Instead, it talked about how time after time Donald Trump chose the dishonorable, disreputable, and immoral path and asked if the Republican Party had the fortitude to break ranks and vote to impeach one of their own amidst the strict party-line votes that are so common for Congress in the 21st century.

As we now know, Trump’s first impeachment trial in 2019 brought forth charges against him  for improperly seeking help from a foreign power to boost his chances of re-election. In fact, in 2021, Trump became the first president to be impeached twice, having faced another impeachment over his role in the January 6 insurrection. But he was acquitted of all charges in both cases by the Senate, keeping him from being removed from office and being barred from running again. Thus, he ran again in 2024 and became the second president to serve two non-consecutive terms as well as the first convicted felon to be elected to the Presidency.

“…Unmarried, straight white dudes who couldn’t get laid.” (2019)

In 2019, we discussed the Newsweek interview by Tareq Haddad with Cambridge Analytica whistleblower Christopher Wylie that explained that Steve Bannon, former White House Chief Strategist, targeted incels and other insecure white men with a message of xenophobia and racism because of how easy they are to manipulate. In essence, we learned that Bannon knew exactly what he was doing the entire time, using hatred and frustration as fuel for the fire that skyrocketed Trump into an unlikely presidency in 2016.

When Trump was re-elected in 2024, Bannon was no longer a member of the inner circle, and yet he still communicates with Trump and his team from time to time. However, Bannon recently told Chris Cuomo on NewsNation that he is part of an effort to win Trump a third term in 2028, despite the fact that presidents are term limited by the 22nd Amendment to the Constitution. Short of a violent overthrow of the government, a third Trump term seems unlikely.

Fatal police shooting in Boulder over the weekend (2023)

Despite being one of the most recent stories on our list, this might be the story with the most significant developments in the time since the original article was posted. In 2023, we reported on the erratic behavior of a then-unidentified woman, who was later identified as 51-year-old Jeannette Alatorre. After officers responded to reports of a woman at the North Boulder Recreation Center refusing to leave the bathroom, less than an hour later they received another call about the same woman pointing a gun at the people trying to exit the recreation center. The gun was later determined to be an airsoft gun with the orange tip removed, but officers say they were unaware of that at the time. The police claim to have taken the proper steps necessary to de-escalate the situation non-violently before ultimately using lethal force, resulting in Alatorre’s death.

It’s possible that the police used every means available to them to avoid the death of Alatorre, but in the wake of officer-related shootings that could have been easily prevented, it was important to make absolutely certain that the right actions were taken in Alatorre’s case. This is where YS entered the story. When YS requested the officer’s body-worn camera (BWC) footage, Boulder Police Department demanded an exorbitant fee of $2,857.50 for locating and redacting the footage. YS, attorney Dan Williams, and Alatorre’s daughter entered into a lawsuit alleging that the fee violated Colorado’s Law Enforcement Integrity and Transparency Act of 2020, which restricts such fees. The city of Boulder argued that the broader Colorado Criminal Justice Records Act allowed them to charge reasonable fees of requesters. A district court ruled in YS’ favor in April 2024, but the City of Boulder filed an appeal in January of this year that has yet to be heard by a court. So, while the tragic story of Jeannette Alatorre is heartbreaking, it may change the way police are held accountable for such incidents in the future.