March 26, 2015 VOLU M E 2 8 | I S S UE 1 8
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Event puts focus on race issues ThunderRidge student wants to bring awareness to suburbs By Jane Reuter
jreuter @coloradocommunitymedia.com
Cindy Bakula Streater hands Bill Youmans a box of diapers March 20 from the pile her neighborhood collected for a diapers and wipes drive benefitting the Rocky Mountain Diaper Depot, a Colorado nonprofit that collects disposable diapers for families living at or below poverty in the Denver metro area. Photo by Christy Steadman
Diaper drive benefits babies Organization helps families who can’t afford the basic hygiene products By Christy Steadman
csteadman @coloradocommunitymedia.com If demand for the product gets too high, they may have to start a potty-training drive, joked Cindy Bakula Streater, but for now, they will be sticking with diapers and wipes.
From March 1-14, Streater, of Highlands Ranch, hosted a neighborhood diapers and wipes drive to benefit the Rocky Mountain Diaper Depot, a Colorado nonprofit that collects disposable diapers for families living at, or below, poverty in the Denver-metro area. “Diapers and wipes are basic needs that not everybody has heard of,” said Bill Youmans, who along with his wife, Joan, runs the Rocky Mountain Diaper Depot. “It’s like a food drive, but for diapers.” The Rocky Mountain Diaper Depot is allvolunteer, and is based in the Centennial/Lit-
tleton area but helps people organize diapers and wipes drives all over the south-metro area. In 2014, drives collected 80,342 diapers, and 1,972 packaged wipes. The organization distributes the diapers and wipes collected from the drives through Denver agencies such as The Gathering Place, a safehouse and drop-in daycare center for individuals who are experiencing poverty or homelessness, which is located in downtown Denver near Colfax and Broadway. Diapers continues on Page 20
Get to know the HRCA’s board of directors By Christy Steadman
csteadman@coloradocommunitymedia.com Highlands Ranch Community Association district delegates elected two incumbent candidates for the open positions for the board of directors. Brock Norris and Jeff Suntken assumed another two-year term on March 17. This is the third term for both men.
Brock Norris
Jeff Suntken
Norris was born in Montreal. He moved to Colorado in 2000, and has been a Highlands Ranch resident for 14 years. Norris’ favorite part of Highlands Ranch is the community spirit. At least 80 percent to 90 percent of the people love it here, he said. Norris is a self-employed engineer. He attended Algonquin College in Ottawa for survey engineering. He established his own company, Norris Instrument Inc., in 1994. Norris and his wife, Rita, have been married for 37 years. They raised one daughter, Nicole, who is 24 years old. The Norris’s have an 8-year-old Siberian husky named Kodiak. Norris is an avid skier. He was a ski instructor for 16 years at Whiteface Mountain in Wilmington, New York, which is located upstate near Lake Placid. The ski resort has hosted the Olympic Winter Games twice—once in 1932 and again in 1980. Norris also enjoys playing racquetball, a sport in which he has competed at the state level, and tennis. Norris was a Highlands Ranch district delegate for three terms, a total of six years, prior to being elected to sit on the board. Norris’ favorite part about being a board member is working on the enhancements and improvements for the HRCA’s recreation centers. He enjoys seeing them “be the best they can be,” he said.
Suntken was born in Ohio, and raised in Iowa. He earned a bachelor of business administration in management information systems from Iowa State University in 1988. He is employed as an independently contracted project manager. Suntken has lived in Highlands Ranch for 14 years, and his favorite part about Highlands Ranch is the amenities it offers, specifically the HRCA’s Backcountry Wilderness Area and recreation centers. This year will be the second year Suntken will participate in all of the HRCA’s Race Series races. He has also done two marathons, and will do another one in Denver this October. In fall 2014, Suntken checked an item off his bucket list, he said, by attending Oktoberfest in Munich, Germany. Suntken will be traveling to Guatemala during spring break for his fifth trip as part of a group from St. Luke’s United Methodist Church, through an organization called Pura Vida, which focuses on education in Guatemala. Since 2009, Suntken has sponsored the education of two brothers, one seventh-grader and one fifth-grader, who attend the John Wesley School in Santa Cruz del Quiché in Guatemala. Suntken has two daughters: Jamie, 19, a freshman at the Leed’s School of Business at the University of Colorado in Boulder; and Abby, 16, a junior at Mountain Vista High School. Suntken was a district delegate for two years before becoming a member of the board of directors. There are two things that Suntken enjoys most about being a board member: the first is improving the financial reporting and budgeting processes, and the second is ensuring the future sustainability of the operations.
A student-organized forum called “Black Lives Matter” about recent police shootings of black men and boys drew few participants but intense discussion. The March 16 event at Highlands Ranch’s Westridge Recreation Center was part of an ongoing effort to bring the issue into primarily white communities like Douglas County. The most recent census statistics show Douglas County is almost 92 percent Caucasian. Blacks represent about 1.4 percent of the county’s population. ThunderRidge High School student Max McBride organized the event, originally planned at the high school, to give people a place to engage in honest discussion. McBride, who is black, said he was aware of “the outrage across the nation” over recent police shootings. “And yet, I would come back here and not hear a word about it; it was kind of like a sheltered environment,” said McBride, who wore a black T-shirt with the words, “#I Can’t Breathe.” “I wanted to bring it to Highlands Ranch to build awareness.” The T-shirt reflects New Yorker Eric Garner’s last words. He died in July 2014 after a police officer placed him in a chokehold during an arrest. A grand jury’s decision not to indict the officer later triggered protests. McBride’s mother Saundra said the discussion is needed, regardless of the area’s demographics. “You don’t have to be a black student to be impacted,” she said. “The impact of what’s happening in this nation, these unarmed black men and boys being killed, it’s still relevant. It’s worth having some dialogue.” Saundra McBride acknowledged the slogan “black lives matter” can seem offensive. “In reality, all lives matter,” she said. “But right now, black men and boys are the ones that are being targeted.” Quincy and Shwanna Hines, directors of the nonprofit civil rights organization Shop Talk Live, were invited as speakers for Forum continues on Page 10
Thunder Ridge High School student Max McBride, with his mother Saundra at right, speaks at a March 16 Westridge Rec Center forum he organized to discuss recent police shootings. Photo by Jane Reuter