Denver Herald Dispatch February 2, 2024

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‘The cult of Kaladi’

Gig workers are employees, Denver auditor says

BY TAMARA CHUANG THE COLORADO SUN

bars throughout Colorado, and even beyond. Most of Kaladi’s clients are scattered between Castle Rock and Boulder. Overly said the company likes face-to-face connections with customers and that means doing business locally.

Originally from Alaska, Overly has been in the coffee business since 1988, when he worked for another coffee company called Kaladi Brothers. After the owners of Kaladi Brothers fell apart, Overly said he “ended up with the business.” The company’s original owners weren’t the Kaladi Brothers. Rather, Kaladi is the name of a mythical creature who discovered coffee.

More than 3,000 temporary workers serving food or cleaning hotel rooms are employees, not gig workers, and should be treated as such, the Denver Auditor said in a decision that seeks more than $1 million in penalties against two staffing agencies.

Instawork and Gigpro, which specialize in hourly workers for the restaurant and hospitality industries, call the workers “independent contractors,” but the jobs that the companies fill run counter to that term and fall under what the state law defines as employees.

The companies also were accused of numerous unpaid wage and overtime violations, and failing to provide sick leave.

“You can’t be a dishwasher in a restaurant and be an independent contractor,” Denver Auditor Timothy O’Brien said.

“That defies logic.”

Both companies provide mobile apps for the temp workers to apply for openings. The business clients pay Gigpro or Instawork directly, not the worker. And both companies take an extra fee as payment. Neither company withholds taxes or pays for unemployment insurance for the worker — that’s left to the individual worker.

But like permanent employees, temps go through a vetting process, confirm shifts a day in advance, meet requirements like dress codes, go through something akin to performance reviews and can be terminated based on the company’s discretion. An independent contractor, on the other hand, has a contractual agreement that “prevents consequence-free termination because ending such an agreement early and without cause gives rise to damages.”

“Instawork does not operate as a passive online marketplace where clients merely post shifts and receive responses from — potentially — the entire body of users.

SEE KALADI, P2

SEE GIG WORKERS, P3

Kaladi Coffee Roasters co-owner Mark Overly holds unroasted coffee beans which are his business’s biggest commodity.

PHOTO BY ELISABETH SLAY

Englewood coffee roaster finds perfect brew

BY ELISABETH SLAY ESLAY@COLORADOCOMMUNITYMEDIA.COM

Two rooms make out the layout of Kaladi Coffee Roasters on South Broadway in Englewood.

One is a coffee bar containing tables, chairs and ambient lighting. The other is the roaster room, filled with burlap sacks of beans, roasters and, for ambiance, a disco ball. Inside this building is where the “cult of Kaladi” receives their vice.

But this bustling coffee bar isn’t the only place where Kaladi is

making its mark. The cafe is the headquarters for a much more expansive enterprise.

A leader of this enterprise is selfproclaimed “one-trick pony” coffee connoisseur, Mark Overly who stands amid the burlap sacks and chrome pipes, in his brown sweater fest, describing the operation of Kaladi’s unique roasting machine and its one-of-a-kind taste profiles.

“We run two of our own coffee bars and, principally, we supply coffee bars,” Overly said as he carefully maneuvers a handful of unroasted beans, trying desperately to keep them in hand as he adjusts his glasses.

Kaladi’s roasted coffee can be enjoyed in 120 different coffee

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February 1, 2024

KALADI FROM PAGE 1

Co-owner of Kaladi Coffee Roasters Mark Overly holds coffee beans in the roaster room PHOTOS BY ELISABETH SLAY of his company’s main building on South Broadway in Englewood.

“According to legend, he was a goat herder in Ethiopia and it was his goats that were eating these cherries that made them all joyful and jumpy,” Overly said. “So he tried some out and discovered they made him feel very happy and that’s where the discovery of coffee came from.”

That’s also why the Kaladi Coffee Roasters logo features a prancing goat.

He kept the operation in Alaska going until about 1999 when he came to Colorado to handle a failing Kaladi Brothers shop.

Here, he met business partner, Andrew Melnick, and the two decided to open Kaladi Coffee Roasters in 2000.

“What Andrew brought to the table was technical knowledge and machines and more importantly running the books,” Overly said. “I am the product person.”

Overly said the two bought what is now their main location on South Broadway in 2015.

“We were already roasting just a couple of blocks away in a strip area and we were at the time desperately looking for a building that we could purchase and it was very difficult,” Overly said.

In addition to warehouse space, he and Melnick wanted retail space for another coffee bar because they didn’t want to rely solely on wholesale.

“The City of Englewood actually knew that we were on the hunt and they’re the ones that actually tipped us off to the building that we’re in,” Overly said.

Overly said the company currently employs about 22 people.

Kaladi is different from other coffee roasters because of its equipment and the way it roasts its beans, he said.

“We have a unique type of roasting machine that’s an air roaster as opposed to a cylinder drum machine,” Overly said.

He said it’s common for popular chain coffee shops to use machines with cylinder drums which can make their coffee taste very burnt, bitter or acidic.

“We’re neither one of those,” Overly said. “We’re in our own little world where we’re able to roast darker but the coffee doesn’t have that burnt bitterness to it and that’s kind of like our own little niche.”

Overly said the type of roasting performed at Kaladi is convection roasting as opposed to radiant drum roasting which is more common for other coffee businesses.

“In a standard roaster the coffee beans go into a large cylinder drum and you heat the drum to heat the beans,” Overly said. “But you have to heat the drum up to very high temperatures so the beans are in contact with very hot temperatures as they’re tumbling, like a clothes dryer if your clothes dryer only had the drum to transmit that heat.”

With convection roasting, Overly explained the beans are placed on a perforated bed and roasted in hot air, which comes up from below the bed and stops the beans from

touching the surface of the roaster.

This prevents the beans from being burnt on surfaces hotter than proper roasting temperatures.

He said the result of Kaladi’s method of essentially “levitating” the beans is a cup of coffee with a taste that can’t be found anywhere else.

“We’re kind of like a cult,” Overly said “People who know us are way into us. My joke is ‘we don’t want loyal customers, we want fanatics.’

And, that’s what our customers are, they’re just fanatics because it’s such a unique type of flavor profile (and) it’s really hard to find it somewhere else.”

Kaladi has built a wholesale business from that cult-like clientele For Overly, his favorite aspect of his job is sourcing the coffee beans and creating the recipes for the blends.

“It’s just always kind of been an endlessly fascinating part and it’s one of the greatest jobs you can have,” Overly said.

However, it comes with some challenges, the biggest being the subjectivity of coffee.

“There’s always changing taste preferences from customers and a big challenge is keeping true to your own principles on how you present products and not going chasing after the latest fad,” he said.

Kaladi maintains the same products and doesn’t change them.

“I’ve been doing this now for 30 years and for the first half of my career all I ever heard was I didn’t roast dark enough and now all we ever hear is we over-roast,” Overly said. “We don’t let the market dictate how we go about it.”

Overly said he thinks it’s because Kaladi stays true to itself that it maintains such a “radical customer base.”

“We’re dependable and they know what they’re going to get,” Overly said.

About 50% of sales come from customers purchasing bags of coffee beans.

“We’re a known place to come to buy coffee beans and that’s very unusual for our industry,” Overly said.

Going forward, Overly said Kaladi is not focused on growth, but being just the right size to keep employees, owners and customers happy.

“We’re all about long term sustainability so we’re not a growth focused business,” Overly said.

“Our principal idea is making sure we’re financially stable, that we pay our staff well. We prefer having our staff stick around for a long time because we really value experience.”

Overly said some of his employees have been with Kaladi approaching two decades and that’s something that customers value.

“We don’t have any grand designs of market dominance,” he said. “We just want to make sure we stay healthy and stick to what we know.”

Kaladi has two locations, one 2823 S. Broadway in Englewood, and the other at 1730 E. Evans Ave. in Denver.

For more information on the shop visit https://kaladicoffee.com/.

Denver Herald 3

February 1, 2024

GIG WORKERS FROM PAGE 1

Instead, the employer takes direct action to ensure compatibility for its business clients by ‘automatically’ and ‘intelligently’ (matching) businesses with our vetted pool … of workers,’” the auditor’s order said.

San Francisco-based Instawork received the brunt of the fines — more than $820,000, most of which came from 13,195 violations of failing to provide sick leave. They also must pay another $275,516 in restitution to nearly 3,000 workers. Gigpro faces about $50,000 in fines and restitution to about 90 workers. The companies were ordered to cease and desist from misclassifying workers and

have 30 days to comply.

In an email, Kira Caban, Instawork’s head of strategic communications, said, “Instawork is coordinating with the City of Denver to address an incomplete and non-final administrative determination issued

by Denver Labor. While the company does not comment on active investigations, Instawork prioritizes compliance with applicable regulations and is committed to ensuring every person who uses our platform to find local work receives full and proper worker protections including payment at hourly rates that meet or exceed the minimum wage.”

In Colorado, staffing agencies are employers that supply the temporary placements to a second employer and that is how a company like Instawork operates, O’Brien said. Clients

pay Instawork for the employment service and if they want to hire the temp worker permanently, they must pay a “direct hire fee” to Instawork.

The auditor’s office did not share which hotels or restaurants had worked with the staffing agencies because it’s considered confidential.

A new wage-theft ordinance was passed last year in Denver giving the auditor’s office the ability to proactively conduct investigations. “We don’t have to have a complaint to go forward,” O’Brien said. “We know that in the hospitality industry, workers are subject to abuse, for lack of a better term, from employers.”

His office has aggressively gone after wage theft, which can happen after the minimum wage increases and Denver employers don’t raise wages accordingly. Last year, the auditor’s

Downtown Denver as seen from Highland Park in July 2021.

PHOTO BY OLIVIA SUN FOR THE COLORADO SUN VIA REPORT FOR AMERICA

office said it recovered more than $2 million owed to workers.

This story was printed through a news sharing agreement with The Colorado Sun, a journalist-owned nonprofit based in Denver that covers the state.

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How Much Did Home Sales Fall in 2022 and 2023, and Was It a Record Drop?

At right is a chart showing the number of residential sales within a 25-mile radius of downtown Denver over the past 10 years. I was inspired to do this research because I read in an email newsletter that the nationwide drop for 2023 versus 2022 was the biggest drop in 30 years. As you can see, however, here in the Denver metro area, the 2023 drop in sales was the biggest drop since… the prior year!

Moreover, the drop in 2022 was only so big because the increase during the first full year of Covid was so big.

As I said, my statistics were for the area within 25 miles of downtown Denver, which I consider to be a reasonable definition of “metro Denver.” The Market Trends Committee of the Denver Metro Association of Realtors uses the same data source as me, namely REcolorado.com, but they define “metro Denver” as 11 counties, many of which extend far from downtown Denver. Here’s what the same chart looks like using those criteria: (11-County Metro)

(Full MLS)

the metro area distort the figures enough to paint a less than accurate picture of the Denver metro market.

I’ve added a third chart above top right, this time using the full REcolorado database, which covers much of the state. It’s common to refer to REcolorado as the “Denver MLS,” but it can and does include listings from all over the state. There are other MLSs in the state, but if a listing agent wants to reach Denver buyers, as he or she should, then entering those farflung listings on REcolorado is a must.

The third chart tells an important story. If you recall the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, workers throughout the state (and country) were forced to work

from home. When it looked like the pandemic was going to linger, many of those workers decided that working at home could be a long-term arrangement.

Moreover, they wanted to move somewhere that was less populated, so they wouldn’t be rubbing shoulders with possibly infected neighbors. That caused a huge surge in out-migration from Denver, which is best reflected in the third chart, where the slow market in rural listings pulled down the statewide average — until the pandemic. Looked at statewide, you’d think that the big drop in 2023 sales was more of a return to pre-pandemic levels than an absolute drop — which it certainly was if looked at on the metro Denver level.

REcolorado has released the rules for a new kind of listing called “Private Exclusive.” It replaces an earlier status called “Office Exclusive,” which made listings by individual brokers only visible to fellow agents in their office, which I felt discriminated against brokerages with fewer agents, like Golden Real Estate.

many sellers wanting to limit the exposure of their listing so drastically. When a listing is active on the MLS, it is displayed not only on REcolorado and other regional MLSs, it is displayed on Zillow, Redfin and every other consumer website, including the websites of virtually every brokerage including Re/Max, Coldwell Banker, Century 21 — and Golden Real Estate.

The one likely application for this non-public status would be if the home is in a multi-million dollar neighborhood and is owned by a sports star or celebrity who values his or her privacy, and the listing agent has sold scores of such homes and has a huge personal database of prospective buyers, including other celebrities and ultra-rich persons.

The motivation of our MLS to create this new status was to maximize the accuracy of its sold database.

When a home is sold off-MLS or as a pocket listing, it’s less likely to be posted on the MLS once it has sold, thereby limiting its visibility to appraisers and other agents looking for comparable sales. When a private exclusive listing is sold, it must be updated with the sold price and terms and is then fully visible as a “closed” listing for all to see, including on those consumer websites like Zillow, homes.com and others.

Large brokerages still have an advantage over us smaller brokerages, because other agents within the brokerage can search for and find those listings. They have the same sharing limitations as the listing broker.

MLS Introduces ‘Private Exclusive’ Listings to Combat Pocket Listings

I have been trying for years to get the Market Trends Committee and other real estate statisticians to switch from using the county definition to using the radius definition of the metro area. At right I have overlaid the 25-mile radius of downtown Denver over the 11 counties used

by DMAR and other statisticians.

Clearly, the rural components of those 11 counties which touch

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The new status is intended for sellers who desire a higher level of privacy, by not publicizing widely that they are selling their home and for how much. Under this status, the listing agent cannot put a sign in front of the house and can only promote the listing one-onone to other agents or to prospective buyers in his or her sphere of influence. That means that the listing may not be promoted on social media or be mass emailed, and will not be displayed on the MLS or consumer-facing websites like Zillow until it has sold.

The problem with “private exclusive,” of course, is that it severely limits the number of potential buyers who will see it. The advantage for the listing agent of off-MLS listings or “pocket listings” is that he or she is more likely to “double-end” the sale and not have to give half his listing commission to the buyer’s agent.

That’s why the listing agent is required to affirm during the listing entry process that the seller requested keeping the listing private, and that that the seller was informed of the implications of not being displayed on the full MLS. With such an affirmation, if valid, it’s hard to imagine

No Real Estate Brokerage Exposes Your Home to As Many Buyers As Golden Real Estate Does

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February 1, 2024

Meet the 8 locals preparing for Olympic marathon trials in Orlando Former high school athletes gun for glory at the top of their sport

BY JOHN RENFROW JRENFROW@COLORADOCOMMUNITYMEDIA.COM

Between hours of practice bleeding into one another as runners take step after exhausting step, a singular goal dangles in front of them like an elusive, eternal-glory-bringing carrot: a shot at the 2024 Olympics.

Only 150 runners in the country are chosen to partake in the U.S. Olympic Team Marathon Trials in Orlando on Feb. 3, and several are from around the Denver metro area. Only three will be chosen for the Olympics from the 150 who qualified for the trial run.

We counted eight different runners from the Colorado Community Media coverage area. Though we could only speak with a few of them, meet all your local runners below.

Garret Lee

For Lee, a strong high school athlete at Heritage High School, his tunnel-vision approach to the Olympics sparked a second wind in his love for running.

“I think I always loved running, but I took a little break,” said Lee, who didn’t run in college at the University of Denver. “Once I graduated college and started working, running kind of became my main reprieve. In college, I liked to play intramural sports. But I found once I graduated and everyone was working, it was much more difficult to get groups together to play sports. I found that running every day was a better outlet for me.”

Lee finished in fifth place at the 2010 5A cross country state championships for Heritage, which finished second as a team that year.

He also finished 10th place in the 2011 5A track 3200-meter run.

“I’ve always been pretty good at running, so I think once I jumped into running marathons, it became a bit of a calling to try and make the Olympic trials,” Lee said.

It’s been Lee’s focus for the last four years, he said.

To qualify, runners have to run a marathon in two hours and 17 minutes or less during a 23-month qualifying period. Lee just made it with a time of 2:16:57 in the 2023 Grandma’s Marathon in Minnesota. His goal is to finish in the top 30 in Orlando.

Connor Winter

Winter was a decorated high school runner for Arapahoe High School. In 2010, Winter was a 5A state champion in the 800-meter, 1600-meter and 3200-meter runs. In 2011, Winter returned for a sweep in all three categories to become a two-time state champion.

He also finished second in the state in 5A cross country in 2010. But he knows it’s a very different ballgame now.

“It is humbling. Anytime you go from the best in high school to even college at CU, when my teammate is lapping me on the first day of practice, it’s tough,” Winter said. “Now going from college to professional runners, I know it just gets even harder.

But it’s always you versus yourself.”

Winter qualified with a time of 2:15:51 at the 2023 Bank of America Chicago Marathon. It was a big fullcircle moment for Winter, who tore his Achilles while training for the

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It’s been two years of recovery and training, but he’s now back to running 100+ miles per week. If he finishes in the top three in Orlando, he said he’ll take a week off running and spend time with his family.

Scott Fauble

Fauble is one of the more famous and trophied runners in the entire poll of 150 participants. For one thing, he finished fourth in the 2016 U.S. Olympic Trials; just one spot short of being selected to represent Team USA. He was also the top American finisher in each of the last three Boston Marathons, finishing seventh place in each one. His qualifying time for 2024 was 2:08:52 in the 2022 Boston Marathon.

Fauble is a Nike athlete and released a book called “Inside A Marathon,” which recorded Fauble and his longtime former coach Ben Rosario during their training regimen leading up to the TCS New York City Marathon in 2018.

After multiple championships and records for the Wheat Ridge Farmers, Fauble was a multiple-time All-American, All-Region and All-Conference selection in cross country and track for the University of Portland.

Tyler Pennel

This Golden High School graduate qualified with a time of 2:12:16 in the 2023 Chevron Houston Marathon.

After a strong high school career in which Pennel was selected as an AllConference cross country and track runner and All-State in the 3200-meter in track, he attended Western Colorado University in Gunnison.

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Ian Butler

Butler is a Green Mountain High School graduate who still lives in Lakewood. His qualifying time was 2:14:48 in the 2022 Boston Marathon, but his personal best marathon time is 2:09:45.

Butler famously overcame two brain injuries to become an All-American runner in the early 2010s. He also attended Western Colorado University and racked up accolades which can be found on the school’s website.

Connor Weaver

Weaver’s hometown is Parker but he attended Mountain Vista High School in Highlands Ranch before running cross country at BYU. He qualified with a time of 2:15:46 in the 2022 Grandma’s Marathon. According to his BYU cross country profile, Weaver: • Received All-Academic honors all four years in high school • Was named to the All-State team in track for the 1600m and 3200m • Led cross country team to two state championships • Was named cross country and track and field team captain • Was a two-time national champion in Olympic distance triathlon • Was an All-State cross country runner • Was a Nike cross cou ry All-Region athlete • Was a three-time national champion triathlete Weaver was also a member of the only national championship cross country team at BYU in 2019.

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February 1, 2024

OLYMPICS FROM PAGE 4

Ben Payne

Payne currently lives in Colorado Springs but is from Arvada. He cut his teeth as a runner at Faith Christian High School and qualified with a time of 2:17:15 at the 2023 Bank of America Chicago Marathon.

As a pilot, Payne works for Southwest Airlines and flies for the Colorado Air National Guard.

This will be Payne’s third Olympic trial after trying in 2016 and 2020. He finished 17th and 31st in the previous trials, respectively. Career highlights include finishing ninth at the 2016 New York City Marathon.

Paxton Smith

Smith is now an eighth-grade English teacher in Miami, but he’s from Highlands Ranch and ran at Mountain Vista High School. He qualified with a time of 2:17:24 at the 2022 Grandma’s Marathon.

Smith’s list of accolades in both high school and for the Colorado University Buffaloes is too long to list here but can be found on his Buffs athletic profile on the university’s athletic website.

For the Buffs, Smith ran for two cross country Pac-12 Championship teams in 2019 and 2021. He is the youngest runner on this list at 25.

Colorado camaraderie

Both Lee and Winter said they know the strength of athletes and

runners in Colorado, and not just from training at 5,280 feet up.

There’s a sense of support and brotherhood that comes from growing up here together.

“It is special to be able to train in some of the best locations and with great runners who call Colorado home,” Winter said. “I have learned so much from my high school coaches and then at CU that have shaped me into the tough runner I am today. My goal is to continue to perform at a high level and inspire the next generation of Colorado runners to do even better.”

They admitted they lean on each other for training, discipline, friendship and strength. Waking up to run 20 miles alone for training could seem almost impossible, Lee

said.

But with Winter ready to tackle it with him, it becomes not just possible, but something to be conquered.

“Above all else though, the community of runners in Colorado is what inspires such great performances from Colorado athletes,” Lee said. “There are always people to run with and friends to help get you out the door. We all root for each other and together we can go further than we could alone. If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.”

For more information about the 2024 Olympic Trials in Orlando, including how to watch your locals in the race, visit www.orlando2024trials.com.

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February 1, 2024

5 ways to protect yourself from viruses this winter

BY NINA JOSS NJOSS@COLORADOCOMMUNITYMEDIA.COM

This time of year, it seems like just about everyone comes down with some kind of illness. From sore throats to stomach bugs, the winter always seems to come with a vengeance of viruses.

Dr. Ming Wu, a family medicine physician with AdventHealth Littleton, has seen a dramatic uptick in viral illnesses in recent weeks.

“Flu, COVID — I definitely have positive cases in my clinic,” he said.

“But even beyond that, just viral illnesses that can’t be identified.”

Wu said there are millions of viruses, but doctors tend to only test for a handful of specific ones.

With viral illnesses generally rising among patients in the winter months, Wu said there are steps you can take to strengthen your immune system. Although it’s hard to entirely prevent illnesses, these tips can give you a better chance of fighting off infection.

Wash your hands

Wu said practicing self-hygiene by washing your hands is one of the best ways to prevent getting a viral illness.

“Viruses are spread through airborne particles — sneezing, coughing, those kinds of things,” Wu said.

“Touching a surface exposes you to all of those viral particles.”

For a virus to infect a person, it needs to contact a “mucous membrane,” Wu said, such as your mouth,

Dr. Ming Wu from AdventHealth Littleton said eating a healthy, balanced diet can give your body vitamins to protect it from disSHUTTERSTOCK IMAGE ease.

nose or eyes.

“If you touch a surface and then you eat a piece of food or you brush your nose — anything like that — it exposes those viral particles to the mucous membranes,” he said.

“If you’re able to wash your hands, keep your hands clean, you’re not exposing yourself.”

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Keep your distance from sick people

Although many people associate the term “social distancing” with COVID, Wu said this practice can help a person stay healthy no matter what virus is at play.

“If someone sneezes in your face, you have a higher likelihood (of getting sick) than if you’re six feet away and someone sneezes,” he said.

He said that people who are sick can help protect their community by wearing a mask, even if they do not have COVID. Although it is not as common in the United States, Wu said masking when sick is part of the social contract in many other places in the world.

“If you are sick and you wear a mask, you are protecting your neighbors,” he said. “You are helping prevent the spread of illness in the community.”

Health experts also often recommend that people should stay home, if they are able, to avoid infecting others while ill.

Dr. Ming Wu is a family medicine physician with AdventHealth Littleton.

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as well,” he said. “If you’re exposed to a virus, it is more likely that you will get sick because your immune system is not as strong as it could be.”

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To keep your immune system strong, rest is crucial, Wu said.

“Proper sleep and rest allow your immune system to kind of recover from the day,” he said, by giving it time to replenish white blood cells to recharge the immune system.

He said lack of sleep puts your body under stress, which can weaken your immune system.

“Stress has been shown to prevent your immune system from working

Drink water

Staying hydrated is another important way to keep your body strong to fight illness, Wu said.

“Think of (water) as the highway that allows everything to travel,” he said.

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Denver Herald 7

February 1, 2024

Colorado has less time to spend $1.5B in COVID aid come to that. Other states have already done similar funding swaps of their own to work around the deadline, he said, indicating that Colorado’s plan should pass federal muster.

“It is a well-trodden path,” Bridges said.

Colorado Sun staff writer Jesse Paul contributed to this report.

This story was printed through a news sharing agreement with The Colorado Sun, a journalist-owned nonprofit based in Denver that covers the state.

BY BRIAN EASON THE COLORADO SUN

Colorado state budget writers are in a race against the clock to spend $1.5 billion in leftover federal pandemic aid before the end of 2024 thanks to new guidance from the U.S. Treasury Department.

The deadline is two full years sooner than state lawmakers and Polis administration officials had expected. That has set off a mad scramble to rewrite the budget for the current fiscal year, which ends June 30, to allow the state to spend federal American Rescue Plan Act dollars faster than lawmakers intended.

The time crunch arose from shifting guidance from federal officials on how they define “obligated,” a term that doesn’t exist in state law.

Federal law has long required ARPA recipients to “obligate” all of their funding by the end of 2024, but the final spending deadline is not until the end of 2026.

That led state officials to assume they could spend their $3.8 billion allocation through 2025 and 2026, as long as they had passed legislation committing to do so by this year.

“The state had been operating under the understanding that it would have some ability to define that term itself,” Amanda Bickel, a Joint Budget Committee staff analyst, told lawmakers in a hearing this week. “Now that is absolutely not the case. Legislative staff and the executive staff all agree that what we need to do is expend this money as fast as possible.”

Under the new federal guidance, the state is gener-

VIRUSES FROM PAGE 6

“If you are not properly hydrated, your immune system cannot travel to the places it needs to go.”

Water carries blood cells and elements of the lymphatic system throughout your body, Wu said.

He said many physicians recommend drinking eight to ten glasses, or 64 to 80 ounces, of water per day.

But more important than following strict number guidelines, Wu said, people should listen to their bodies and drink water when they are thirsty.

Eat a balanced, healthy diet

Although there are no in-

A publication of

President Joe Biden signs the American Rescue Plan, a $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief package, at the White PHOTO FROM THE WHITE HOUSE VIA YOUTUBE House on Thursday, March 11, 2021.

ally prohibited from spending ARPA money beyond the 2024 deadline, with limited exceptions.

That’s left the Polis administration and lawmakers looking to swap out the funding sources for at least 36 programs in order to get the money out the door before the federal government requires Colorado to give it back.

Here’s how the funding swap would work: State agencies would spend the pandemic aid money as soon as possible on qualifying government services, a broad category that includes employee salaries. Doing so will free up state tax dollars that can be spent at any time. That money would be redirected to the programs the state had planned to use the ARPA money for in future years, such as behavioral health care, teacher stipends and wildfire preven-

tion projects.

But the clock’s ticking. The JBC on Wednesday directed its staff to present the funding swap plan by mid-February. It would then need the full legislature’s approval. Meanwhile, the JBC must submit its 2024-25 budget proposal to the legislature by mid-March.

The fear of losing the federal money has been a constant theme on the budget committee in recent months. Colorado budget writers this fall asked every state department for a detailed accounting of how they were spending ARPA dollars and how much they had left.

“We knew that there was a self-destruct time on those funds,” said Sen. Jeff Bridges, D-Greenwood Village, who serves on the JBC. But no one was sure what the 2024 “obligation” deadline actually meant.

Colorado’s not alone in facing a time crunch. As of June 2023, states had only spent about half the money the federal government provided, according to the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington, D.C., think tank.

The stakes are high. Lawmakers don’t want to risk losing federal money — the leftover dollars represent 40% of the state’s entire ARPA allocation. So if the new spending plan doesn’t work as intended, there could be pressure to call a special session later this year.

“The more thoughtful the General Assembly can be in tackling this issue in a bill, the less likely a special session will be required in fall 2024 to fix ARPA-related problems,” Bickel wrote in a briefing document.

Bridges told The Colorado Sun he doesn’t think it will

dividual foods that have every nutrient, Wu said it is important to eat a balanced, healthy diet that provides all of the nutrients your body needs.

Vitamin C — which is found in grapefruit, oranges, broccoli, strawberries and kale — enhances the immune system and is an antioxidant. Wu said some studies have shown that very high doses of Vitamin C can help improve and shorten viral symptoms.

Vitamin A, an anti-inflammatory substance that helps antibodies respond to viruses, can be found in carrots and spinach, he said.

Wu said Vitamin D can also help strengthen the immune system.

“Going outside and getting sunlight — 15 minutes of

sunlight, three times weekly — your body can produce the vitamin D that it needs,” he said. “But believe it or not, here in Colorado, Vitamin D is actually chronically low — I’ve seen in a lot of my patients.”

In addition to spending time in the sun, people can also consume salmon, fortified milk, mushrooms or Vitamin D supplements to boost their levels.

Beyond vitamins, Wu said some studies have shown that probiotics can help stimulate the immune system and promote the good bacteria in the gut. In doing so, probiotics can help with nutrient absorption, Wu said.

Specifically, a probiotic called Lactobacillus casei has been shown to reduce

the number of days a person is sick.

“You can get that through yogurt, kombucha, live culture cheese (or) taking a probiotic pill,” he said.

A lot of the vitamins and minerals that are required for proper immune function can be found in various foods, but no one food has them all. That’s why, Wu said, it’s important to make sure you are consuming a variety of healthy foods and staying away from processed foods when possible.

“Eating the healthier foods will be more beneficial,” he said. “I know, in our day and age, that is sometimes difficult with our running around, trying to do what we can. But just doing what you can, when you can, is always more beneficial than not.”

Call first: c/o The Colorado Sun Buell Public Media Center 2101 Arapahoe St., Denver, CO 80205 Mailing Address: 750 W. Hampden Ave., Suite 225 Englewood, CO 80110 Phone: 303-566-4100 Web: DenverHerald.net To subscribe call 303-566-4100

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February 1, 2024

Revisit a critical historical moment at Wings Over the Rockies

W

hen people think of the

Cold War, images of nuclear bombs and covert spies are probably among the first images that come to mind.

But for Stewart Bailey, collections manager at the Wings Over the Rockies museum, there’s something else he likes to focus on.

“The first battle of the Cold War was won by the Western Allies and was won with airplanes,” he said. “Not only that, but those airplanes didn’t have guns or bombs. Instead, for 11 months the Allies worked to support a city of 2.6 million people entirely by air.”

The story of that battle is told in the Air and Space Museum’s, 7711 East Academy Blvd. in Denver, new exhibit, The Berlin Airlift: Supplies from the Sky. The exhibition runs through Monday, May 27, and marks the 75th anniversary of the Airlift.

The exhibit tells the story of the nearly year-long effort by the United States, Britain and other countries to keep the people of Berlin alive during the Berlin Blockade, when the Soviet Union blocked the Western Allies’ railway, road and canal access to the sectors of Berlin under Western control.

“At the beginning, the Allies were using any kind of plane that could handle cargo and there were some accidents and a lot of confusion,” Bailey said. “Eventually it got better and the efforts were extremely efficient. There were planes coming in with materials like coal on average of every three minutes.”

The creation of “One of the key takeaways from this in Denver, first exhibition of 2024 — COMING the exhibit is largely exhibit is that freedom is something Nomadic Daydreams.

ATTRACTIONS due to donations to be valued and supported,” he said.

The group show runs through Sat-

from two families who had members who participated in the Airlift, including Denver resident Thomas Moss, who was a C-54 pilot during the events.

His daughters BarClarke Reader bara Drury and Linda Lewis donated many of their father’s artifacts to the museum and that provided the backbone for the story told in the display.

“This exhibit isn’t so much about the planes and technology as it is about the people and the human experience of what they went through,” Bailey said. “I think it’s powerful because it shows how people’s opinions can change — we went from years of fighting the Germans to helping them and Germans went through years of fearing the sound of Allied planes to finding hope in it.”

As well as donated artifacts, the exhibit features a lot of photos and creative set dressing to give just a taste of what being in bombed-out Berlin would be like. The aim was also to make it interactive for all ages, so it includes activities like weight and balance exercises and more.

In addition to learning more about a historical event that many people might not be aware of, Bailey hopes visitors come away with a greater appreciation of the many ways the Berlin Airlift influenced the ensuing decades.

“In many ways, the Airlift still echoes through our world today.”

Tickets and details can be found at https://wingsmuseum.org/exhibits/ berlin-airlift/.

LSO Uses ‘Peter and the Wolf’ to Enchant Young Audiences

Get ready for some family fun at the Lakewood Symphony Orchestra’s annual children’s and family concert, which will be held at 11 a.m. on Saturday, Feb. 3 at the Lakewood Cultural Center, 470 S. Allison Parkway.

Not only will it feature Prokofiev’s “Peter and the Wolf,” as it does every year, but also “Add Story and Play,” where the audience will create a story with several characters, develop a plot and choose music to go along with the story. Then the narrator, Joel Hillan, from CBS 4, will tell the brand-new story while conductor Matthew Switzer leads the orchestra, performing the music the audience has chosen to go along with the story.

Information and tickets can be found at https://lakewoodsymphony.org.

Sink Into Walker Fine Art’s Nomadic Daydreams

There are few times during the year when the relationship between man and nature is rich and nuanced as it is during winter. This makes it the perfect time for the opening of Walker Fine Art’s, 300 W. 11th Ave., No. A,

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urday, March 16, and features the works of Angela Beloian, Derrick Breidenthal, George Kozmon, Bonny Lhotka and Ben Strawn. According to provided information, the artists use two-dimensional mediums like oil, photography, drawing to explore the all-important interactions between man and nature.

Find all the details at www.walkerfineart.com.

Clarke’s Concert of the Week — Lydia Loveless at Globe Hall

Lydia Loveless, who hails from Columbus, Ohio, is a songwriter’s songwriter. Over their career they’ve delved deep into the rather nebulous “alt-country” world and in 2023 they released “Nothing’s Gonna Stand In My Way Again.” As usual, it’s an astounding collection of songs, chronicling a breakup and the struggle to find a way to move forward in a difficult world.

In support of the record, Loveless will be performing at the Globe Hall, 4483 Logan St. in Denver, at 8 p.m. on Saturday, Feb. 3. They will be joined by singer/songwriter Jason Hawk Harris and alt-country up-and-comer Cousin Curtiss.

Get tickets for the concert at https://globehall.com.

Clarke Reader is an arts and entertainment columnist for Colorado Community Media. He can be reached at Clarke.Reader@hotmail.com.

Denver Herald 9

February 1, 2024

powered by

Thu 2/08 Featured

Cory Pearman Music @ 5pm Rock Bottom Restaurant & Brewery, 1505 Park Central Dr, Highlands Ranch

Featured

Tue 2/13 Featured

NAILS - A Nine Inch Nails Tribute: Tributes to Tool (Schism) - NIN (NAILS) - Deftones (My Own Summer) in Denver at The Oriental @ 6pm The Oriental Theater, 4335 W 44th Ave, Denver

Nirvanish @ 7:30pm Little Bear Live, 28075 CO-74, Evergreen

Featured

Nate Smith @ 7:30pm Bluebird Theater, 3317 E Colfax Av, Denver

Till The Moon, Public Picasso, The Midday Sons

Mon 2/12 Kinder Aftercare 02/12/2024

@ 8pm / $15 The Black Buzzard at Oskar Blues, 1624 Market St, Denver

@ 3:45pm / $10 French American School of Denver, 2350 N. Gaylord St., Denver. 720-966-1380

Cory Pearman Music @ 8pm Morrison Holiday Bar, 403 Bear Creek Ave, Morrison

Featured

Fri 2/09

Shakedown Street

Featured

@ 9pm Ophelia's Electric Soapbox, 1215 20th St, Denver

DJ Rockstar Aaron: Forbidden Bingo Tuesdays - 'Bout Time Pub & Grub @ 8pm Bout Time Pub & Grub, 5225 W 80th Ave, Arvada

@ 8pm / $75 Paramount Theatre, 1621 Glenarm, Den‐ ver

Shawn Nelson Music

Wed 2/14

@ 9pm Broadway Roxy, 554 S Broadway, Denver

Black Market Translation: Punketry!

Sat 2/10

@ 6:30pm Mutiny Information Cafe, 2 S Broadway, Denver

@ 7:30pm Little Bear Live, 28075 CO-74, Evergreen

Crescent City Connection

@ 4pm Feb 9th - Feb 10th Belmar, Lakewood. anna@ gumpoppresents.com

@ 7pm Cervantes' Masterpiece Ballroom & Other Side, 2637 Welton St, Denver

Club Seating: Paramount Theatre Ilana Glazer

Selasee & The Fafa Family

Valentine's BAZAAR

Tkay Maidza

Cherished

Frost Children

@ 9:30pm BurnDown Denver, 476 S Broadway, Den‐ ver

@ 7pm Larimer Lounge, 2721 Larimer St, Denver

Sun 2/11

The Greatest Love of All - A tribute to Whitney Houston

Zach Neil: The Grizzly Rose @ 8pm Grizzly Rose, 5450 N Valley Hwy, Denver

@ 7:30pm / $29.50-$59.50 Paramount Theatre, 1621 Glenarm, Den‐ ver

The best place to promote your events online and in print. Visit us @ https://jeffcotranscript.com/calendar

@ 8pm Hi-Dive, 7 S Broadway, Denver

Evan Honer @ 8pm Bluebird Theater, 3317 E. Colfax Ave, Denver Calendar information is provided by event organiz‐ ers. All events are subject to change or cancella‐ tion. This publication is not responsible for the ac‐ curacy of the information contained in this calendar.

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10 Denver Herald

LOCAL

February 1, 2024

VOICES

When it comes time for our own reboot

H

ow many times over the past

few years have we found ourselves calling customer service or support because we were having an isWINNING sue with a phone, deWORDS vice, or laptop? How many times have we had to get in touch with our help desk at our company to try and help us troubleshoot a problem?

And it doesn’t matter if we find ourselves interacting with a Michael Norton chat bot that guides us through the potential fix or if we are lucky enough to speak with a live person, the first question they ask is this, “Did you try turning your device off and then on again?” Or “Have you tried to reboot your system?”

For most of us my guess is that the answer is yes, we have tried restarting our phone or computer.

But then the agent trying to assist says, “Well let’s just try it one more time while I have you on the phone.”

Frustrated, we do as instructed, and after a few minutes of the phone or device rebooting, the problem still exists. Luckily, sooner or later our technology is back up and running and we are happily back in business.

Again, for most of us this has become common sense. If we are experiencing troubles, just simply reboot, stop and restart the technology as the first step in self-serving the problem.

Now here’s another question, why don’t we know enough to take the same action when something is going on with us personally? When upset, frustrated, angry, disappointed, or just plain tired, why don’t we simply reboot ourselves? Hit the stop button for a little bit and then restart.

It doesn’t always work with tech-

nology, and it won’t always work with us as humans. But what if we started there? Giving ourselves a break from the action and the crazy and hectic pace of the race. Taking a pause, giving ourselves and others a period of grace, or maybe just choosing to walk away for a few minutes to see if we can gain a little clarity.

With technology sometimes the machine gets overheated, or has too many functions, applications, or windows running at the same time. Or maybe the device has been corrupted in some way by being hacked. Well, sometimes as people we get overheated, we are doing too many things at once, or maybe we let someone else’s opinion corrupt our beliefs about ourselves, they have figured out how to hack into our psyche.

As much as it frustrates me when someone asks me if I have tried rebooting my device before I made the

call, I also recognize that sometimes it is the simplest things that we miss or overlook. So, if we find ourselves running hard, multi-tasking more than we ever have, upset at a situation or other people, or just flat out exhausted, give yourself permission to reboot your system, shutting it down for a little bit before restarting.

Although some of us workaholics refuse to take vacations or personal days off, there are plenty of good and healthy reasons that we should. We can all benefit from recharging our batteries, taking a rest, and taking time for self-care, rebooting if you will. Believe it or not, our emails will all still be there when we get back, the projects we left behind will be waiting for us upon our return, and the world as we know it will not have blown up.

But our patience levels will have been restored, our outlook will have improved, and maybe, everyone around us seems better than they

were before we left.

Whether it’s walking away in the moment to take a pause when things seem out of sorts, catching our breath for a moment, or finally taking a day or two or a week or more off, there is always tremendous value in rebooting our own system when necessary.

Have you tried turning off your system for a few minutes and then turning it back on? If so, did you come back refreshed? I would love to hear your story at gotonorton@ gmail.com, and when we can learn to reboot when we need to, we will see that everything seems a little brighter and that will lead us to a better than good life.

Michael Norton is an author, a personal and professional coach, consultant, trainer, encourager and motivator of individuals and businesses, working with organizations and associations across multiple industries.

New cartoon, ‘Never Will I Ever,’ hits puzzle page

BY MICHAEL DE YOANNA MICHAEL@COLORADOCOMMUNITYMEDIA.COM

On the beloved puzzle page of this week’s newspaper, you find something new to give you a laugh. It’s a comic from lifelong Coloradan Marc Vargas called “Never Will I Ever.” They’re single panel comics that will run weekly and debut this week.

In one, for example, a man sits in a chair and is covered in cats.

“Never will I ever have to turn up the heat… again,” the comic reads.

Whether it be teaching a grand-

child to drive or ignoring an emergency alert on your mobile phone, Vargas’ weekly comics highlight the small disasters of daily life and outcomes that typically make us wiser the next time. Eomic is punctuated by the word, “again.”

It implies it really happened “and ended horribly wrong,” as Vargas said.

Or, in some cases, only mildly wrong, because life could be much worse than being covered in cats on a cold day.

Vargas is a longtime illustrator.

He’s put his pen to work for papers

in Denver and Boulder, the Colorado Rockies and for books and other publications.

So, where does he get his ideas?

“I’m a trained observer,” he says.

“I love to watch people interact.

I’m the guy in the back of the room watching everything happening. My ideas come from overhearing conversations, watching people do crazy stuff and my own catastrophes.

These get my brain percolating.”

Vargas got his start as a kid, admiring the likes of Charles Schultz of “Peanuts” fame. He went to Colorado State University, but also the

Joe Kubert School of Cartooning in Dover, New Jersey, which he calls a life-changer. After working for the college paper, including editorial cartoons, and receiving an honor from the Society of Professional Journalists, he got hooked.

“I hope people are entertained,” he said. “Possibly they will laugh or smile. Maybe they’ll say, ‘Yes, I remember trying to shovel snow with a crappy shovel.’ A smile, a laugh, a little seltzer down the pants (I stole that from somewhere). This is an absurd and crazy world we live in.

Laughing is our only armor.”

Denver Herald 11

February 1, 2024

BY TAYLER SHAW TSHAW@COLORADOCOMMUNITYMEDIA.COM

O

n a cold January night in a

Wheat Ridge church, a large group of people traveled back in time to the 1800s — not by using new technology, but rather musical instruments.

Brows furrowed and fingers fluttered as the Jefferson Symphony Orchestra, made up of roughly 70 volunteer musicians, perform a composition from an 1800s opera, “Carmen.”

The community orchestra is one of many in the metro Denver region that offer people an opportunity to bring their musical talents and passions to life regardless of their profession, age or background.

Despite the time and work it takes to execute exceptional performances, volunteer musicians throughout the metro region say the effort is worth it, highlighting the value of music for themselves and their communities.

Chris Loring, principal violist of the Jefferson Symphony Orchestra, said the orchestra brings together people who share the same passion that they’ve all had since first picking up their instruments.

“And now, here we are. We have this talent that we can share with each other, and that’s really fulfilling just to put it all together and be artistic and have fun,” she said. “It’s a great sense of community.”

In the southern metro region of Denver, the Littleton Symphony Orchestra shares a similar goal of upholding community, said Bill Mesa,

an assistant principal percussionist in the symphony.

“With any community orchestra, they want to be a part of the community,” Mesa said. “Not just in it.”

Compared to an organization like the Jefferson Symphony Orchestra, which dates back to the 1950s, a relatively newer community orchestra in the metro region is the Lone Tree Symphony Orchestra, founded in 2000.

Katie Smith, principal oboe of the Lone Tree symphony, underlined the importance of having an orchestra in any community, whether it be Jefferson County, Littleton or Lone Tree.

“Having arts organizations provides a more well-rounded community as a whole,” Smith said. “It creates a more pleasant community to live in when you have more opportunities for the arts.”

The start of lifelong musical careers

For both Loring and Smith, their musical careers started at a young age with playing the piano.

Loring, a 42-year-old pet photographer and private music teacher who lives in Jefferson County, said that in sixth grade, she joined the student orchestra.

Out of the roughly 25 students there, no one had signed up to play viola, a string instrument that is slightly larger than a violin and has a deeper sound. The teacher asked who in the room wanted to play viola, leading to an awkward silence, Loring recalled.

“This cute boy next to me grabbed my hand, raised it up in the air, and the rest is history,” she said. “From

that point forward, I really fell in love with the instrument.”

She went on to the University of Northern Colorado and studied viola performance, and today, she helps teach young musicians.

“I love teaching for a couple of reasons. No. 1, I can have a hand in developing musicians that are going to come behind me,” Loring said. “These orchestras don’t fill up unless we have students that are learning and growing and developing a passion for something that some people might consider dorky or weird — but these kids are really, really excited about it.”

Smith, a 50-year-old Highlands Ranch resident who does project work with Cigna Healthcare as her day job, said her mom was a church musician.

“She started me on piano at 5 (years old) and then I apparently kept asking … what instrument I should play if I wanted to play in church,” Smith said. “She said, ‘Please play the oboe.’”

Playing the oboe, a woodwind instrument, as a young child would have been a tall task, Smith said, so she initially started by playing the flute. By the end of fifth grade, however, she started the oboe.

“I took to the oboe like a duck to water,” she said.

Smith got her undergraduate degree in music from the University of Denver, she said. Although she had always intended to be a professional musician, when she got into college, she was encouraged to double major “so that I would at least have

something to eat,” she said with a laugh.

She got a minor in business and realized she did not want to pursue a professional music career, she said.

“I think since I don’t do it as my primary profession, I get more enjoyment out of it as an avocation than a vocation,” Smith said.

For Mesa, a 57-year-old Centennial resident, his music career started as a young boy playing drums on coffee cans that his mom discarded, he said. He recalled listening to his dad’s vinyl records that featured lots of percussion, drawing him to the drums.

“The clincher is when I first saw ‘Star Wars,’ and the music just blew me away,” Mesa said. “I thought, ‘Wow. Hear all those drums.’”

Eventually, he picked up drums through public schooling and performed through college. However, he did not major in music performance.

Rather, he found an interest in accounting and is now an accounting professor at Metropolitan State University of Denver. Highlighting the ability of community orchestras to connect people, he said some of his former students will attend the Littleton Symphony Orchestra’s concerts and come up to him afterward to catch up.

“Those are all community factors.

There doesn’t have to be anonymity,” he said about local performances.

SEE MUSIC, P12

12 Denver Herald

February 1, 2024

Violinists in the Jefferson Symphony Orchestra rehearsing on Jan. 8, 2024.

PHOTOS BY TAYLER SHAW

MUSIC FROM PAGE 11

Discovering community orchestras

From seeing an advertisement to getting a phone call about an opening, the process of getting involved in a community orchestra can look different for everyone.

Loring said she first learned about the Jefferson Symphony Orchestra when she moved to Golden around 2008, saying she saw an advertisement for it. She had been looking for an orchestra to join and had heard great things about it, she said.

“It’s been around for decades, and many of the people who play in this orchestra have been here for decades,” she said. “When I joined, this was known as one of … the premier orchestras in terms of community orchestras for this area.”

The orchestra, which musicians have to audition to get into, is made up of roughly 70 people ranging from college-age to post-retirement age, she said.

“It’s a really great orchestra full of some insanely talented musicians. We have played repertoire that you hear from the professional symphony,” she said.

Smith got involved in the Lone Tree Symphony Orchestra around 2006 after hearing about it through a friend. When she started playing with the orchestra, they performed in a church, she recalled. Now, they perform in the Lone Tree Arts Center, which she said is an amazing opportunity that not every community orchestra has.

She estimated roughly 60 musicians are in the orchestra, which requires an audition to join.

“We provide excellent entertainment for the community and it’s done in a manner where it isn’t haughty,” she said. “It’s presented in a way that people really feel encouraged to go and I think they really enjoy the opportunity and they enjoy the performance.”

Smith described making music with others in the symphony as both beautiful and challenging, especially if the musicians have different

Arturo González, music director and conductor of the Jefferson Symphony Orchestra, giving directions to musicians on Jan. 8, 2024, at the Wheat Ridge United Methodist Church.

skill sets.

“You have to be patient,” she said.

Mesa got connected to the Littleton Symphony Orchestra when he got a phone call from the then-principal percussionist asking if he would be interested in filling in because the orchestra needed an extra person. Some time afterward, Mesa auditioned and became a regular member of the symphony about 17 years ago.

“It challenged me more. It upped my game and playing because the players in the orchestra are remarkable, high caliber,” he said. “You can get some exceptional performances from the com-

COVER PHOTO: The Jefferson Symphony Orchestra is made up of roughly 70 volunteer musicians.

munity orchestras in the Denver metro area that you live by, and you’re supporting the community.”

The vision of the Littleton Symphony Orchestra, which is made up of about 50 musicians ranging in age from early 20s to upper 70s, is to provide performances that elevate the human spirit, Mesa said.

“We pursue that relentlessly, knowing it’s something we’ll never accomplish,” he said.

“That’s what drew me into the orchestra.”

SEE MUSIC, P13

Denver Herald 13

February 1, 2024

MUSIC FROM PAGE 12

The value of music and community

Although volunteering in the symphony orchestra requires hours of practice and rehearsal, one of the most rewarding factors is making music with friends, Mesa said.

“There’s nothing quite like that type of effort when you have this number of people and when (a) performance pops and it sparks.

And you can feel that from the audience because there is some communication between the orchestra and the audience,” he said. “It’s the best. You can’t replace it.”

Community orchestras are valuable because they provide a music outlet for residents who may not have the budget to pay the higherpriced tickets to see a professional orchestra, Mesa said.

“Just give the orchestra a chance,” he said. “It’s fun, and it’s live music … something we’re, I think, missing nowadays.”

Smith said the Lone Tree Symphony Orchestra is fortunate because it has had the support of the city since the very beginning.

Similar to Mesa, Smith said being a part of any orchestra is a unique, special experience.

“I think the most rewarding part of any performance is knowing that you’ve provided not only (an) escape in what you’re doing and what you’re creating — you’re also creating an experience for somebody else,” Smith said.

“I think the most important thing for folks to know is that we’re here,” she added. “You don’t necessarily have to go downtown to hear the symphony.”

The most challenging part about being in a community orchestra is that the volunteer musicians have busy lives, Loring said. Yet, the time and effort is worth it.

“As a musician, the thing that I love about working in a group like this and performing is that this is the only way we get to bring to life some of the art that’s been given to this world,” Loring said. “With classical music, we have composers who wrote these incredible manuscripts, and they wrote these ideas and these concepts and these stories in notes.

“And it’s up to us to translate that, and to create a story and to tell that through our music using our talents. And that, to me, is the coolest part,” she added.

Community orchestras are important to the local community for a number of reasons, Loring said.

One of them is that the orchestras provide activities for residents to enjoy. Another is the opportunity the orchestra provides to the volunteers, giving musicians a chance to continue to play their instrument when maybe they otherwise would not have.

“How many people stop playing because they don’t have those opportunities?” Loring said. “Orchestras, like the Jefferson Symphony Orchestra, give that to people. And that’s really, really important for the community.”

Musician in the Jefferson Symphony Orchestra plays their string instrument during a Jan. 8, 2024, rehearsal.

PHOTOS BY TAYLER SHAW

Music stands were placed throughout the Wheat Ridge United Methodist Church as the Jefferson Symphony Orchestra rehearsed PHOTOS BY TAYLER SHAW on Jan. 8, 2024.

WAIT, THERE’S MORE!

For more photos and an additional audio portion of this story, visit coloradocommunitymedia.com/2024/01/22/local-orchestra-volunteers-music-community-symphony.

14 Denver Herald

February 1, 2024

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PUBLIC NOTICES

Public Notices call 303-566-4123 Legals Notice to Creditors Public Notice NOTICE TO CREDITORS Estate of Bartholomew Joseph Connolly V, a/k/a Bartholomew J. Connolly, a/ka Bart J. Connolly, a/k/a Bart J. Connolly, aka B.J. Connolly, Deceased Case Number: 2023 PR 31549 All persons having claims against the above-named estate are required to present them to the personal representative or to Denver Probate Court of the City and County of Denver, Colorado on or before June 1, 2024, or the claims may be forever barred.

Case Number: 2023 PR 31352 All persons having claims against the above-named estate are required to present them to the personal representative or to Denver Probate Court of the City and County of Denver, Colorado on or before May 25, 2024, or the claims may be forever barred.

Sarah Pheral P.O. Box 229 Hygiene, CO 80533 Legal Notice No. DHD238 First Publication: January 25, 2024 Last Publication: February 8, 2024 Publisher: Denver Herald-Dispatch Public Notice NOTICE TO CREDITORS Estate of MARGIE M. DUFF, Deceased Case Number: 2023 PR 31513

Bartholomew Joseph Connolly IV a/k/a Bart Connolly Personal Representative c/o Katherine K. Fontenot, Esq., Attorney for Personal Representative Robinson & Henry, P.C. 7555 E. Hampden Ave. Suite 600 Denver, CO 80231

All persons having claims against the above-named estate are required to present them to the personal representative or to Denver Probate Court of the City and County of Denver, Colorado on or before May 25, 2024, or the claims may be forever barred.

Legal Notice No. DHD246 First Publication: February 1, 2024 Last Publication: February 15, 2024 Publisher: Denver Herald-Dispatch

Patrick H. Duff Personal Representative 19365 Cypress Ridge Terrace, Unit 916 Leesburg, Virginia 20176

Public Notice NOTICE TO CREDITORS Estate of Brian William Mindnich, A/K/A Brian Mindnich, A/K/A Brian W. Mindnich, Deceased Case Number: 2023 PR 31536 All persons having claims against the above-named estate are required to present them to the personal representative or to Denver Probate Court of the City and County of Denver, Colorado on or before May 18, 2024, or the claims may be forever barred.

Bob Mindnich Personal Representative 3501 S. Dawson Street Aurora, CO 80014 Legal Notice No. DHD231 First Publication: January 18, 2024 Last Publication: February 1, 2024 Publisher: Denver Herald-Dispatch Public Notice NOTICE TO CREDITORS Estate of JAMES RYAN WILSON, Deceased

Legal Notice No. DHD244 First Publication: January 25, 2024 Last Publication: February 8, 2024 Publisher: Denver Herald-Dispatch Public Notice NOTICE TO CREDITORS Estate of Vicki Lynn Manton a/k/a Vicki L. Manton a/k/a Vicki Manton, Deceased Case Number: 2023 PR 031618 All persons having claims against the above-named estate are required to present them to the personal representative or to Denver Probate Court of the City and County of Denver, Colorado on or before June 1, 2024, or the claims may be forever barred.

William Allen Steckler Personal Representative c/o Michael P. Miller Miller & Steiert, P.C. 1901 W. Littleton Blvd.

Littleton, CO 80120 Legal Notice No. DHD250 First Publication: February 1, 2024 Last Publication: February 15, 2024

legals2@coloradocommunitymedia.com

Publisher: Denver Herald-Dispatch Public Notice NOTICE TO CREDITORS Estate of CAROLYN RUTH REED, Deceased Case Number: 2023 PR 31417 All persons having claims against the above-named estate are required to present them to the personal representative or to Denver Probate Court of the City and County of Denver, Colorado on or before May 18, 2024, or the claims may be forever barred.

Dwight C. Reed Personal Representative 1045 Highway 120 Big Rock, Tennessee 37023 Legal Notice No. DHD223 First Publication: January 18, 2024 Last Publication: February 1, 2024 Publisher: Denver Herald-Dispatch Public Notice District Court, 2nd Judicial District, County of Denver, Colorado 1437 Bannock Street, Room 230 Denver, Colorado 80202 In the Matter of the Estate of: BRUCE EDWARD LONGO, a/k/a BRUCE E. LONGO, a/k/a BRUCE LONGO, Deceased.

Case Number: 2023 PR 31603 NOTICE OF HEARING BY PUBLICATION PURSUANT TO§ 15-10-401, C.R.S. To: Longo, Unknown Heirs Last Known Address, Unknown, c/o Attorney General Phil Weiser, 1300 Broadway, 10th Floor, Denver, Colorado 80203 A hearing on Amended Petition for Formal Probate of Will and Formal Appointment of Personal Representative for the Estate of Bruce Edward Longo, Deceased will be held at the following time and location.

Date: February 22, 2024 Time: 8:00 AM Room 230 Address: Denver Probate Court, 1437 Bannock Street, Denver, Colorado 80202 Ronald W. Servis, Esq. attorney for Dustin Parsons 11616 Shaffer Place, Unit S-102 Littleton, Colorado 80127 303-237-5020

Legal Notice No. DHD243 First Publication: January 25, 2024 Last Publication: February 8, 2024 Publisher: Denver Herald-Dispatch Public Notice NOTICE TO CREDITORS Estate of ALLAN JULIUS GALONSKY, aka ALLAN J. GALONSKY, aka ALLAN GALONSKY, Deceased Case Number: 2023 PR 31484 All persons having claims against the above-named estate are required to present them to the personal representative or to Denver Probate Court of the City and County of Denver, Colorado on or before May 18, 2024, or the claims may be forever barred.

Robert S. Galonsky Personal Representative c/o 5347 S. Valentia Way, Ste. 335 Greenwood Village, CO 80111 Legal Notice No. DHD228 First Publication: January 18, 2024 Last Publication: February 1, 2024 Publisher: Denver Herald-Dispatch Public Notice NOTICE TO CREDITORS Estate of MARK RICHARD CAMERON, aka MARK R. CAMERON, aka MARK CAMERON, Deceased Case Number: 2023 PR 31539 All persons having claims against the above-named estate are required to present them to the personal representative or to Denver Probate Court of the City and County of Denver, Colorado on or before June 1, 2024, or the claims may be forever barred.

Carole L Cameron Personal Representative c/o Matthew P. Zanotelli 5347 S. Valentia Way, Ste. 335 Greenwood Village, CO 80111 Legal Notice No. DHD245 First Publication: February 1, 2024 Last Publication: February 15, 2024 Publisher: Denver Herald-Dispatch Public Notice NOTICE TO CREDITORS Estate of Diane J. Hammerberg, aka Diane D. Hammerberg, Deceased Case Number: 2023 PR 31552 All persons having claims against the above-named estate are required to present them to the personal representative or to Denver Probate Court of the City

Denver Herald Dispatch February 1, 2024 * 1

18 Denver Herald

February 1, 2024

Public Notices

and County of Denver, Colorado on or before May 18, 2024, or the claims may be forever barred.

Eric Kuno Hammerberg Personal Representative 401 N. High Street Denver, Colorado 80218 Legal Notice No. DHD230 First Publication: January 18, 2024 Last Publication: February 1, 2024 Publisher: Denver Herald-Dispatch Public Notice NOTICE TO CREDITORS Estate of RONALD K. SCHIFF, a/k/a RONALD KAY SCHIFF, a/k/a RON SCHIFF, Deceased Case Number: 2023 PR 31533

All persons having claims against the above-named estate are required to present them to the personal representative or to Denver Probate Court of the City and County of Denver, Colorado on or before May 25, 2024, or the claims may be forever barred.

Michael W. Reagor, Atty. For Personal Representative 8400 E. Prentice Ave., Suite 1040 Greenwood Village, CO 80111 Legal Notice No. DHD240 First Publication: January 25, 2024 Last Publication: February 8, 2024 Publisher: Denver Herald-Dispatch Public Notice NOTICE TO CREDITORS Estate of Kenneth Grimes, Deceased Case Number: 2023 PR 611 All persons having claims against the above-named estate are required to present them to the personal representative or to Denver Probate Court of the City and County of Denver, Colorado on or before June 1, 2024, or the claims may be forever barred.

Troy Grimes Personal Representative 374 Nome St Aurora, CO 80010 Legal Notice No. DHD248 First Publication: February 1, 2024 Last Publication: February 15, 2024 Publisher: Denver Herald-Dispatch Public Notice NOTICE TO CREDITORS Estate of CYNTHIA L. HUTCHINSON a/k/a CYNTHIA LEW HUTCHINSON, Deceased Case Number: 2023 PR 31322 All persons having claims against the above-named estate are required to present them to the personal representative or to Denver Probate Court of the City and County of Denver, Colorado on or before May 18, 2024, or the claims may be forever barred.

Jennifer Merer Personal Representative c/o Keith L. Davis, JD Davis Schilken, PC Blvd., Ste. 200 Lakewood, CO 80401

be forever barred.

1658 Cole

Legal Notice No. DHD234 First Publication: January 18, 2024 Last Publication: February 1, 2024 Publisher: Denver Herald-Dispatch Public Notice

Ilka Poncelet Personal Representative 785 S. Alton Way, 9A Denver, CO 80247 Legal Notice No. DHD239 First Publication: January 25, 2024 Last Publication: February 8, 2024 Publisher: Denver Herald-Dispatch Public Notice

NOTICE TO CREDITORS Estate of Sherry Lea Garcia, aka Sherry L. Garcia, aka Sherry Garcia, Deceased Case Number: 2023 PR 31609

NOTICE TO CREDITORS Estate of Richard N. Bernhardt, a/k/a Richard Neil Bernhardt, a/k/a Dr. Richard N. Bernhardt, Deceased Case Number: 2023 PR 31419

All persons having claims against the above-named estate are required to present them to the personal representative or to Denver Probate Court of the City and County of Denver, Colorado on or before May 18, 2024, or the claims may be forever barred.

All persons having claims against the above-named estate are required to present them to the personal representative or to Denver Probate Court of the City and County of Denver, Colorado on or before June 1, 2024, or the claims may be forever barred.

Tori Lynne Garcia Personal Representative 32186 Castle Court, Ste 301 Evergreen, CO 80439

Shirley A. Bernhardt Personal Representative c/o Linda Sommers, Esq. Sommers Law Group 390 Union Blvd., #280, Lakewood, CO 80228

Legal Notice No. DHD235 First Publication: January 18, 2024 Last Publication: February 1, 2024 Publisher: Denver Herald-Dispatch Public Notice NOTICE TO CREDITORS Estate of KATHLEEN CLAIRE GIDEROFF, a.k.a. KATHLEEN C. GIDEROFF, a.k.a. KATHLEEN GIDEROFF, Deceased Case Number: 2023 PR 31542 All persons having claims against the above-named estate are required to present them to the personal representative or to Denver Probate Court of the City and County of Denver, Colorado on or before May 20, 2024, or the claims may be forever barred.

MICHAEL SCOTT GIDEROFF and MARK STEVEN GIDEROFF Co-Personal Representative 1386 S. Newport Street Denver, Colorado 80224 Telephone: 303-918-0413 Legal Notice No. DHD225 First Publication: January 18, 2024 Last Publication: February 1, 2024 Publisher: Denver Herald-Dispatch

Legal Notice No. DHD249 First Publication: February 1, 2024 Last Publication: February 15, 2024 Publisher: Denver Herald-Dispatch Public Notice NOTICE TO CREDITORS Estate of Lorena Elaine Woltemath, aka Lorena E. Woltemath and Lorie Woltemath, Deceased Case Number: 2023 PR 31345 All persons having claims against the above-named estate are required to present them to the personal representative or to Denver Probate Court of the City and County of Denver, Colorado on or before May 18, 2024, or the claims may be forever barred.

Shari D. Caton Attorney for Robert J. Woltemath Caton Law, LLC 7887 E. Belleview Ave., Suite 1100 Englewood, CO 80111 Legal Notice No. DHD229 First Publication: January 18, 2024 Last Publication: February 1, 2024 Publisher: Denver Herald-Dispatch

Public Notice

Public Notice

NOTICE TO CREDITORS Estate of Vera P. Gasch, Deceased Case Number: 2023 PR 31541

NOTICE TO CREDITORS Estate of WENDELIN MAE MARTIN, a/k/a WENDELIN M. MARTIN, and WENDELIN MARTIN, Deceased Case Number: 2023 PR 31475

All persons having claims against the above-named estate are required to present them to the personal representative or to Denver Probate Court of the City and County of Denver, Colorado on or before May 28, 2024, or the claims may

All persons having claims against the above-named estate are required to present them to the personal representative or to Denver Probate Court of the City

and County of Denver, Colorado on or before May 18, 2024, or the claims may be forever barred.

Carol Frances Helstosky Personal Representative 2249 Hudson Street Denver, CO 80207 Legal Notice No. DHD222 First Publication: January 18, 2024 Last Publication: February 1, 2024 Publisher: Denver Herald-Dispatch Public Notice NOTICE TO CREDITORS Estate of Carol A. March, Deceased Case Number: 2023 PR 31563 All persons having claims against the above-named estate are required to present them to the personal representative or to Denver Probate Court of the City and County of Denver, Colorado on or before June 1, 2024, or the claims may be forever barred.

Joshua Wilmsmeyer Personal Representative c/o M. Carl Glatstein, Esq. Glatstein & O’Brien, LLP 2696 S. Colorado Blvd., Suite 350 Denver, Colorado 80222

“Trust Us!”

Legal Notice No. DHD251 First Publication: February 1, 2024 Last Publication: February 15, 2024 Publisher: Denver Herald-Dispatch Public Notice

NOTICE TO CREDITORS Estate of Antonio Felipe Salazar, a/k/a Tony Phillip Salazar, a/k/a Tony P. Salazar, a/k/a Tony Salazar, Deceased Case Number: 2023 PR 30040

Without public notices, the government wouldn’t All persons having claims against the have to say anything else. above-named estate are required to present them to the personal representative or Public to Denver Court ofwindow the City noticesProbate are a community’s and County of Denver, Colorado on or into the government.

From zoning before June 1, 2024, or the claims may regulations to local budgets, governments be have forever usedbarred. local newspapers to inform citizens of its actions as an essential part John G. Salazar of your right to know. You know where to Personal Representative look, when to look and what to look for to 1526 S. Sherman St. be involved a citizen. Local newspapers Denver, CO as80210 provide you with the information you needNotice to get involved.

Legal No. DHD247 First Publication: February 1, 2024 Last Publication: February 2024 Notices are meant to be15, noticed.

Publisher: Denver Herald-Dispatch

Read your public notices and get involved!

Public Notice

NOTICE TO CREDITORS Estate of CHRISTOPHER A. GRAY, also known as CHRISTOPHER AMES GRAY, CHRISTOPHER GRAY, CHRIS GRAY and CHRIS A. GRAY, Deceased Case Number: 2023 PR 031587 All persons having claims against the above-named estate are required to present them to the personal representative

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February 1, 2024

Public Notices

or to Denver Probate Court of the City and County of Denver, Colorado on or before May 18, 2024, or the claims may be forever barred.

Tamra A. Palmer c/o 6060 Greenwood Plaza Blvd., #200 Greenwood Village, CO 80111

Personal Representative 2479 S. Clermont #422 Denver, Colorado 80222

Helen L. Gray Personal Representative 375 S. Emerson Street Denver, CO 80209

Legal Notice No. DHD252 First Publication: February 1, 2024 Last Publication: February 15, 2024 Publisher: Denver Herald-Dispatch

Legal Notice No. DHD253 First Publication: February 1, 2024 Last Publication: February 15, 2024 Publisher: Denver Herald-Dispatch

Legal Notice No. DHD232 First Publication: January 18, 2024 Last Publication: February 1, 2024 Publisher: Denver Herald-Dispatch Public Notice NOTICE TO CREDITORS Estate of RICHARD WILLIAM REED, SR., Deceased Case Number: 2023 PR 31416 All persons having claims against the above-named estate are required to present them to the personal representative or to Denver Probate Court of the City and County of Denver, Colorado on or before May 18, 2024, or the claims may be forever barred.

Dwight C. Reed Personal Representative 1045 Highway 120 Big Rock, Tennessee 37023 Legal Notice No. DHD224 First Publication: January 18, 2024 Last Publication: February 1, 2024 Publisher: Denver Herald-Dispatch Public Notice NOTICE TO CREDITORS Estate of Anna Kay Duer, a/k/a A. Kay Duer, a/k/a Kay Duer, Deceased Case Number: 2023 PR 31518 All persons having claims against the above-named estate are required to present them to the personal representative or to Denver Probate Court of the City and County of Denver, Colorado on or before May 25, 2024, or the claims may be forever barred.

Beth A. Hessel-Kirkman Personal Representative c/o Carleton H. Hutchins 1999 Broadway, Suite 1400 Denver, CO 80202 Legal Notice No. DHD236 First Publication: January 25, 2024 Last Publication: February 8, 2024 Publisher: Denver Herald-Dispatch Public Notice NOTICE TO CREDITORS Estate of Mark Lloyd Huisinger aka Mark L. Huisinger, Deceased Case Number: 2024 PR 030079 All persons having claims against the above-named estate are required to present them to the personal representative or to Denver Probate Court of the City and County of Denver, Colorado on or before June 1, 2024, or the claims may be forever barred.

Public Notice NOTICE TO CREDITORS Estate of FRANCES LUCILLE CILIBERTI, a/k/a FRANCES L. CILIBERTI, a/k/a FRANCES CILIBERTI, Deceased Case Number: 2023 PR 577 All persons having claims against the above-named estate are required to present them to the personal representative or to Denver Probate Court of the City and County of Denver, Colorado on or before May 25, 2024, or the claims may be forever barred.

Baysore & Christian Fiduciary Services, LLC Personal Representative 7000 E Belleview Ave., Suite 150 Greenwood Village, CO 80111 Legal Notice No. DHD237 First Publication: January 25, 2024 Last Publication: February 8, 2024 Publisher: Denver Herald-Dispatch Public Notice NOTICE TO CREDITORS Estate of DONNA C. KETTENBACH, Deceased Case Number: 2023 PR 31573 All persons having claims against the above-named estate are required to present them to the personal representative or to Denver Probate Court of the City and County of Denver, Colorado on or before May 27, 2024, or the claims may be forever barred.

Daniel Chapman Attorney for Personal Representative 7900 East Union Avenue, Suite 1100 Denver, CO 80237 Legal Notice No. DHD242 First Publication: January 25, 2024 Last Publication: February 8, 2024 Publisher: Denver Herald-Dispatch Public Notice NOTICE TO CREDITORS Estate of Kenneth Ivan Wynkoop, a/k/a Kenneth I. Wynkoop, a/k/a Ken Wynkoop, a/k/a Kenneth Wynkoop, Deceased Case Number: 2023 PR 31580 All persons having claims against the above-named estate are required to present them to the personal representative or to Denver Probate Court of the City and County of Denver, Colorado on or before June 1, 2024, or the claims may be forever barred.

Marlene Wynkoop

Street,

Children Services (Adoption/Guardian/Other) Public Notice Denver County Probate Court Address: 1437 Bannock Street, Rm. 230 Denver, CO 80202 (303) 606-2303

Last Publication: February 8, 2024 Publisher: Denver Herald-Dispatch ###

Have you seen how Classifieds can work for you?

In the Interest of: Michael Enrique MENJIVAR RIVERA Respondent/Minor Case Number: 23PR31510 Division: 1 Courtroom: 300 Attorney for Petitioner: Kathleen M. Glynn, #39115 Grob and Eirich, LLC 12596 W. Bayaud Ave., #390 Lakewood, CO 80228 Phone Number: 303-679-8266 E-mail: katie@grobeirich.com FAX Number: 303-679-8960 Cell Number: 720-255-6383 NOTICE OF HEARING BY PUBLICATION PURSUANT TO § 15-10-401, C.R.S. To: Oscar Antonio Menjivar Herrera A hearing on the Petition for Appointment of Guardian for Minor will be held at the following time and location or at a later date to which the hearing may be continued: Date: March 5, 2024 Time: 3p.m. Courtroom: 300 Division: 1 Address: 1437 Bannock Street, Denver, CO 80202 The hearing will take approximately 60 minutes PLEASE NOTE: This hearing will take place remotely via the Webex videoconferencing platform.

To join the Virtual Courtroom via Web (from a cell phone or computer), download Cisco Webex, and then enter the following link at 3:00p.m. on March 5, 2024: https://judicial.webex.com/join/ courtroom300 To join the Virtual Courtroom via Phone at 3:00p.m. on March 5, 2024, call 720-650-7664, then enter meeting number/access code 920 159 400, then push # and # again.

Kathleen M. Glynn 12596 W. Bayaud Ave., Suite 390 Lakewood, CO 80228 Legal Notice No. DHD241 First Publication: January 25, 2024

Denver Herald Dispatch February 1, 2024 * 3

20 Denver Herald

February 1, 2024

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