Volume 31 • Number 43 • September 19, 2013
What’s Inside LPS bond issue addresses structural problems
303-773-8313 • Published every Thursday
www.villagerpublishing.com
The blind leading the blind for 25 years
Page 2
Littleton-based center marks silver anniversary
Page 13
Step 13 honors longtime supporters Mort and Edie Marks
Page 31
Town Hall welcomes ‘Dirty Rotten Scoundrels’
Don’t Miss:
seeks suspect in • Sheriff strange ‘hit and run’ Page 4 Farm Visioning • Quincy Committee process moves ahead
Page 7
OKs distilleries and • Englewood wineries
Page 8
Index
Page 5..................................Opinion Page 8............................ Classifieds Pages 12-20........................Fleurish Pages 21-22..............................digs Pages 25-29..........................Legals
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By Peter Jones don’t drive every day,” Mark Riccobono says as he slowly makes a right turn from West Shepperd Avenue in Littleton. If it had not been for a reporter’s queries, that turn might have been a perfect maneuver through this quiet residential neighborhood. “Whoa, whoa, we’re heading right for the curb this time,” a man in the backseat quickly interjects. “That’s what I get for answering questions,” an unfazed Riccobono rejoins, as he methodically readjusts the car’s steering wheel. The man who spotted the wrong curve is not some overly critical backseat driver, but a sort of navigator who operates a sophisticated GPS system that is hooked both to the car and to the body of the driver. As two reporters take the ride with Littleton Mayor Debbie Brinkman, Riccobono takes direction from the high-tech system and winds up back where we started less than five minutes later. This has been no ordinary drive around the block. This is a smart car, to say the least. Riccobono is blind. Brenda Mosby, vocational specialist at Littleton’s Colorado Center for the Blind, is quick to welcome us back with words that say it all about this school’s approach to putting the blind in the driver’s seat – literally and figuratively. “They thought initially that we
Mark Riccobono, executive director of the Baltimore-based Jernigan Institute and a graduate of the Colorado Center for the Blind in Littleton, takes a spin through the neighborhood using a sophisticated GPS attached to both the driver and the car. Photos by Peter Jones wanted a car that would drive us,” Mosby says. “We said, no, we want a car we can drive.”
A quarter century of vision
The chance to sit behind the wheel is just one of many opportunities offered at the Center for the Blind – though most student driving is limited to closed off parking lots in cars without the
Local woman gets 28 months for tax evasion By Peter Jones An Arapahoe County businesswoman will spend more than two years in prison for failing to file $4.7 million in employment taxes. After serving her 28-month sentence, Beth Ann Pettyjohn, 61, will spend three years on supervised release. She was also ordered to pay $4.7 million in restitution and a $25,000 fine. According to the indictment, Pettyjohn, the co-owner and vice president of Overhead Door Company, stopped submitting the taxes withheld from her employees’ wages to the Internal Revenue Service for a six-year period beginning in September 2003.
Pettyjohn, who has a bachelor’s degree in accounting and an inactive license as a certified public accountant, later told an IRS agent she did not pay the taxes “because the IRS was not beating down her door.” During the period in question, Pettyjohn and her husband lived in a home valued at more than $1 million. Special IRS agent Stephen Boyd said employers who fail to remit such taxes are victimizing legitimate businesses by creating an unfair advantage. “As this sentence demonstrates, there are real consequences for committing employment tax fraud,” he said.
specially developed GPS. Last week, the school celebrated its first 25 years of helping the blind become self-sufficient in ways that have turned a condition once perceived as debilitating into more of an inconvenience than a disability. Julie Deden, the center’s longtime executive director, says one of perks of her job is witnessing that
transformation happen again and again. “When students start at the center, they don’t really have any confidence and they’re not prepared to work,” she said. “But when they leave, they can do anything.” In teaching students, the center Continued on page 17
County inspector arrested for burglary Woman wakes to find man in her bedroom
access to workers while the basement was being remodeled. On the morning By Peter Jones of Sept. 12 while the An Arapahoe woman was in bed, County building she saw a man enter inspector is facing the room and begin burglary charges af- Lambert Iringan opening drawers. As ter allegedly trying he pulled out an unto steal items from a home he had dergarment, the woman confrontbeen sent to inspect. ed Iringan, who then fled from the Lambert Leon Iringan, 65, room. of Centennial who was arrested Iringan has been a county emlast week, was being held in the ployee since 1998. Per county county jail on a $200,000 bond policies, he was placed on paid after the home’s owner said she administrative leave pending the caught him ruffling through her outcome of the matter. bedroom’s dresser drawers. Anyone else who believes According to the report from they may have experienced any the sheriff’s office, a basement unusual or suspicious behavior door in the woman’s home in un- on the part of Iringan is asked incorporated Arapahoe County to call the sheriff’s office at 303had been left unlocked to provide 795-4711.