Pre-Des Moines Register work samples
A pregnant woman, hacksaws and hit-and-runs: The tale of the most towed parking lot in town - A small parking lot in downtown is responsible for ten percent of all the tows in the city. It's a symbol of growing pains in the city and the flaring tempers that result.
Jail crowding causes safety, staffing concerns from Fort Collins to Pueblo - Jails up and down the Rocky Mountains are overcrowded. We visited one that's at 150 percent capacity and compared it with the local jail's own seam-busting pressure.
CSU caught a professor forging an offer letter to boost his pay. They kept him another year. - Academia isn’t insulated from social and professional pressures or marital strife. It doesn’t always end up in a felony charge, however, or the defrauded organization giving cover to the perpetrator.
Here's where fed-up Millennials are thinking about putting their votes - Larimer County is a purple county in a purple state. As university town, it's also a haven for Millennials. Writing in USA TODAY, I looked at the enthusiasm gap in the second largest voting-age demographic in the 2016 presidential election.
Mental health: How a search for detox became attempted murder - An alcoholic kicked the bottle to save his marriage. When he sought professional help to detox, he was essentially told good luck and sent on his way. Soon after, in the throes of withdrawal-induced hallucinations, he cut his wife's throat. This story examines the dysfunctional behavioral health system in Northern Colorado and efforts to fix it.
Colorado State University pay equity saga - What started as a tip that the university may be systematically, if inadvertently, paying female full professors less than their male counterparts ended with pay raises for a quarter of female full professors, a university-led effort to change its campus climate, an investigation into overall inequity at CSU and a change in Colorado open records laws. (Link contains multiple stories.)
Ernest Boland: Pillar of the Athens community and alleged child rapist - A former Boy Scout troop leader faced decades of suspicion that he was a child predator, with minimal consequence. The story looks at how he operated for generations, how survivors sought peace, and what changed to ensure his monstrosity isn't repeated.
An Athens Boy Scout now grown and fighting demons of childhood victimization - A sidebar to the package detailing one man's fight to take back his life after a childhood of alleged victimization by Ernest Boland. Doing this story justice is one of the more difficult, and rewarding, things I've done in my career.