On February 20, 2008 at 1:15 AM, Shannon Helmlinger, age 37 of Boulder, Colorado was seriously injured when walking eastbound on the north frontage road of Highway 14 in Larimer County. An unknown vehicle was westbound on the north frontage road of Highway 14 east of the intersection with Summit View Drive when it collided with Helmlinger. Helmlinger was thrown for an unknown distance and landed in the ditch, north of the frontage road. The vehicle fled the scene.

Helmlinger was transported to Poudre Valley Hospital in Fort Collins with serious injuries and remains in the hospital on this date.

Alcohol or drugs are being investigated as contributing factors.

The crash remains under investigation.

Anyone who may have witnessed this incident or has any information that will lead to the arrest of the driver that was involved is encouraged to contact the Colorado State Patrol at 303-239-4501.

A will. This document states how your assets should be distributed after death. Without a valid will, everything usually goes to your surviving spouse, children or other relatives, while friends, charities or other organizations will get nothing. Basically, the state will decide, despite your preferences.

Do-it-yourself will kits are available, though if trusts, complex estates or large amounts of money are involved, consider using an attorney who specializes in estate law to draw up the will.

Still owned by the Air Force, the Buckley Annex parcel will be sold to an unnamed developer late in 2008 or early in 2009, for an amount that has never been disclosed. In a bid to make the parcel more attractive for development, original plans for the site included twelve-story, 180-foot buildings. After round condemnation from neighbors of the site and demands that the site be developed within the widely-acclaimed Lowry redevelopment guidelines, new plans were presented with four 100-foot high seven-story buildings and two 90-foot high six story-buildings. Comprising some 800 residential units, this plan was unveiled at what was to be the final public comment meeting on November 14.

This reduction in size and scale did little to quite neighborhood concerns - and Crestmoor neighbors overwhelmingly voted against the condo towers. At the public hearing, more than 300 neighbors filled the gymnasium at Montclair Academy, and around 35 of them spoke at the meeting’s close - mostly against the proposal.

Too big? That same logic is now being applied to the United States. The combination of sub-prime mortgage market disaster, and the dollar's weakness against foreign currencies, put the world's economy at grave risk. Renowned money-man Jim Cramer, who likened the foreclosure mess to the Great Depression on Tim Russert's show on MSNBC, is one the few commentators in major media to tell the truth about the risk to the U.S. economy, and frankly, your household. Cramer said that he expected mortgage foreclosures to top two million. Two million empty homes, two million displaced families. That's the entire population of the Denver metro area.

Too big? It seems that way, as the European Central Bank has injected $501 billion to ease credit and liquidity problems (week of December 17).

As development north of I-70 in Stapleton continues apace, the urgency to get deals done so environmental mitigation can begin grows.

Mayors from three metro Denver communities have urged the Shell Oil Company to quickly finalize settlement negotiations with the State of Colorado regarding compensation for natural resource damage at the Rocky Mountain Arsenal, so that restoration efforts may begin.

The action follows the release late last month of a State report detailing environmental damage at the Arsenal. That report, the Natural Resource Damage Assessment Plan (NRDA), describes significant harm to environmental resources on and off the Arsenal site, most notably contaminated groundwater, injured wildlife, and depleted habitat. The assessment plan was issued Oct. 29 by Colorado Attorney General John Suthers and Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment (CDPHE) Executive Director Jim Martin. The plan is available online at www.cdphe.state.co.us/hm/rmaplan.htm.

SUN/CAB Communications Committee

One of the impediments to influencing the decision-making process at Stapleton is figuring out who makes the decisions and how. Thanks to the Herculean efforts of Mike King, SUN's immediate past-President, Bev Haddon and the Stapleton Foundation, Dick Anderson and SDC, Tom Gleason and Forest City and all around good neighbor Jake Calabrese, a new joint SUN/CAB Communications Committee will soon publish a series of flow charts that will explain the who and how of decision-making at Stapleton in manner that we can all understand.

The cost of oil has nearly doubled since last year.

Oil production world wide has been essentially flat since January 2005, hovering between 83 and 85 million barrels a day.

Since 2002, the price of oil has increased nearly five times. The dollar has fallen 50% versus the euro in the period, and now is at a 20-year low.

Global demand for oil has not slackened in the face of ever-higher prices.

And while the amount of energy used per unit of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) has improved in the United States (meaning that we are more economically productive and efficient for the energy we use), it is difficult to imagine our economy not being limited in some respect by limited sources of energy.

The former head of Saudi oil production, Sadad Al-Husseini, and Texas oil billionaire T. Boone Pickens, both stated in November that they believed that world oil production has peaked, essentially that, globally, the world will never produce more oil than it does today.

There are approximately 350,000 species of beetles on Earth, and probably millions more yet to be discovered, accounting for about 25 per cent of all known life forms on the planet. The reason for this large number of beetle species has been debated by scientists for many years, but never resolved.

Now a team of scientists has shown that large numbers of modern-day beetle lineages evolved very soon after the first beetles originated, and have persisted ever since. Many modern-day lineages first appeared during the Jurassic period, when the major groups of dinosaurs appeared too.

Lead scientist on the study, Professor Alfried Vogler from Imperial College London's Department of Life Sciences and the Natural History Museum's Department of Entomology, explains: "The large number of beetle species existing today could very well be a direct result of this early evolution and the fact that there has been a very high rate of survival and continuous diversification of many lineages since then."

Inside the home, delights are beyond all wild imaginings. Every window is adorned with elaborate stained glass murals. The walls are covered with the works of some of Denver’s most famous Chicano artists and even the furniture is hand-crafted work of art. Welcome to Casa de Cel Roybal, master craftsman. He is a painter, a sculptor and most notably one of the finest stained glass window makers in the Southwest.

Roybal at 60 something years old, comes by his talent naturally. The son of farmers from the San Luis Valley in southern Colorado, he grew up surrounded in the wealth of a people who valued the richness of the earth’s bounty, the warmth of sunshine on your face and the cacophony of nature’s palate.

“My mother and father raised seven children and were starkly aware of economic hardship. They were from the era of the Great Depression. If we wanted something we could not buy, we made it,” said Roybal. “We were not rich but we were loved and we were encouraged to read about the world.”

Marian (Jean) Webster, 75, lost her husband to cancer in 1997 after 46 years together. And yet despite the grief that still washes over on anniversaries and when memories flood in, she thrives in the midst of it with vivaciousness and optimism.

This month, why don’t you pour yourself a steaming cup of coffee or tea, relax in your most comfortable chair and listen to the words of wisdom of someone who understands what you are going through?

“First and foremost,” Jean says, “I recognize that for approximately the first year of widowhood [or without your loved one] you walk in a foggy mist. But as you resolve to move forward, you will walk out from that mist.

“Allow yourself to grieve but don’t allow yourself to let it take over your life. Get angry—at yourself—at what you are allowing the situation to do to you. Then take steps toward positive action. For as long as you need to, allow yourself a time to grieve, on a Sunday afternoon or whatever seems to be your time to do so—let it all wash over you, feel the pain of your loss, then pick your mangled pieces up, open the drapes or blinds, let the outside world come in, and look out upon a world that still holds adventures for you.”