Rocky Mountain Voice

Author: Jen Schumann

Inside the story Colorado rarely hears: Trauma, transition and the path back to truth
Rocky Mountain Voice, State, Top Stories

Inside the story Colorado rarely hears: Trauma, transition and the path back to truth

By Jen Schumann | Rocky Mountain Voice “It took me almost two decades to realize the error,” Antoinette De La Cruz told a Fort Collins audience on November 20. “Transitioning didn’t fix anything. It delayed the inevitable. Healing.” It was the first time many Coloradans had heard a detransitioner describe her path into transition, what it cost her and what brought her back. Read RMV’s reporting on the event here. Here she shared the fuller account of her story. Where it began De La Cruz said her transition began long before hormones or surgery. “I learned very young as a little girl that I was not valued as a woman, and I definitely was not safe as one,” she said. When she was seventeen she met someone who told her she could become a man. “I had no idea you could even do ...
Fort Collins event connects youth gender care concerns to upcoming Colorado ballot measures
Rocky Mountain Voice, State, Top Stories

Fort Collins event connects youth gender care concerns to upcoming Colorado ballot measures

By Jen Schumann | Rocky Mountain Voice “Is it really true that when a confused hurting kid goes to the doctor the doctor turns the knife around and puts it on them and profits from it,” Colorado physician Dr. Travis Morrell asked a Fort Collins audience on November 20. “It is true.” His remarks were part of From Heartbreak to Hope, an event hosted by Protect Kids Colorado at Dayspring Christian Church that brought together parents, detransitioners, attorneys and policy experts to examine what speakers called a growing collision between gender medicine and parental rights in Colorado. Speakers at the From Heartbreak to Hope event on November 20. Top row left to right: Dr. Travis Morrell and Dr. James Lindsay. Bottom row left to right: Antoinette De La Cruz, Erin Friday and ...
Trying to move the needle in Mesa County’s mental health crisis as leaders call the moment “historic”
Rocky Mountain Voice, Local, Top Stories

Trying to move the needle in Mesa County’s mental health crisis as leaders call the moment “historic”

By Jen Schumann | Rocky Mountain Voice “This is historic. This is transformational. This is a game changer.” Suicide now claims about 50 lives a year in Mesa County, a rate of roughly 31 deaths per 100,000 people. That’s about one and a half times Colorado’s rate and more than double the national average. At the same time, nearly 13 percent of residents who needed mental-health care last year weren’t able to get it. Those realities form the backdrop for a local effort that has taken shape inside Canyon View Vineyard Church. The program is called BeWell, and it began with a simple question: what a Jesus-centered mental health approach could look like in a county where access is limited. How the idea took shape Sondrol said the idea started forming as he watched Compassion...
The numbers didn’t match: El Paso’s canvass exposes a statewide reporting failure the state never explained
Rocky Mountain Voice, State, Top Stories

The numbers didn’t match: El Paso’s canvass exposes a statewide reporting failure the state never explained

By Jen Schumann | Rocky Mountain Voice Colorado voters expected a routine post–Election Day canvass after the November 4 coordinated election. Instead, El Paso County became ground zero for the latest crisis involving Secretary of State Jena Griswold’s office after a canvass board member noticed that the numbers on the state’s website didn’t match the county’s certified reports. The mismatch surfaced publicly after businessman and election analyst Peter Bernegger posted screenshots of the Election Night Reporting (ENR) CSV file on Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/PeterBernegger/status/1991610012989329540?s=20 What began as one discrepancy quickly revealed a statewide reporting failure. The ENR CSV file published by the Secretary of State contained contest-level totals that ...
What unfolded during the uncertified transition
Rocky Mountain Voice, Local, Top Stories

What unfolded during the uncertified transition

By Jen Schumann | Rocky Mountain Voice Actions taken before the board was sworn in Florissant’s May 2, 2023 election put five new people on the fire district board, and the change was obvious right away. The newcomers had run together as a coordinated slate. Within weeks, their actions toward Fire Chief Erik Holt sparked a sequence of events that ended with his firing, a criminal investigation left on the floor—and a lawsuit now sitting before the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals. This is what happened after the election—most of which voters never saw.  For details on the election-day conduct that triggered Holt’s report to prosecutors, see our companion investigation. A board acting before it was seated The election hadn’t been certified yet because a civil challe...
Clear on camera, dismissed on paper
Rocky Mountain Voice, Local, Top Stories

Clear on camera, dismissed on paper

By Jen Schumann | Rocky Mountain Voice Inside the election case DA investigators said showed “clear violations”—and why the same office that prosecuted election fraud refused to touch it A fire chief knows what a five-alarm emergency looks like. When something is burning, he responds. He doesn’t wait for someone else to handle it. That was the mindset Erik Holt carried in 2023 when the security cameras inside his fire station began showing behavior that made him stop, rewind the footage, and stare. He believed he had uncovered an emergency worth reporting. He did not know that the alarm he pulled would be the only one the system refused to answer. The fire chief who didn’t look away Before Teller County voters ever heard his name, Holt was a fireman and a father. A caree...
SBA brings disaster loan support to counties hit hardest by Elk and Lee fires
Rocky Mountain Voice, State, Top Stories

SBA brings disaster loan support to counties hit hardest by Elk and Lee fires

By Jen Schumann | Rocky Mountain Voice Small businesses on the Western Slope are still digging out from the economic fallout of the Lee and Elk Fires—and the mudslides and debris flows that followed in August. The Lee Fire grew at a pace that stunned fire officials, blowing past 100,000 acres in about a week and briefly becoming the fourth-largest wildfire in Colorado history before later mapping placed it as the fifth-largest. Federal disaster loans are now available to help cover those losses, and the declaration extends across Garfield, Moffat, Rio Blanco and Routt counties, plus Utah’s Uintah County. Rio Blanco County—where the SBA will place its Business Recovery Center—has some of the highest exposure in the region. Local officials estimate more than 80 percent of the county...
Faith and friction: A nursing student’s stand at Regis University
Rocky Mountain Voice, Local, Top Stories

Faith and friction: A nursing student’s stand at Regis University

By Jen Schumann | Rocky Mountain Voice Student John Scarboro and his pastor say they were only sharing their faith on campus while Regis leadership officials cite concern for inclusivity and compliance with university policy John Scarboro thought the meeting would be simple—just a quick talk with ministry leaders at Regis about forming a student group. It didn’t start that way. The 32-year-old nursing major and new father met with university staff on September 12 after campus security stopped him for talking about Jesus with students. Kyle Turner, Director of University Ministry, framed the university’s concern around student wellbeing. “If you engage a Muslim student and make them feel uncomfortable about their own lived faith, that becomes a problem,” he said during the meet...
A mother, a signature and a shutdown: The Waltmans’ five-year battle for answers
Rocky Mountain Voice, State, Top Stories

A mother, a signature and a shutdown: The Waltmans’ five-year battle for answers

By Jen Schumann | Rocky Mountain Voice In the photo Vira Waltman is 91, holding her great-granddaughter Everly. “She was joyful and funny,” said her granddaughter Lauren Tacheny. “She was teasing Everly about touching her Shirley Temple doll—that was her personality: protective, spunky and sharp-witted.” Vira Jean Waltman with her great-granddaughter Everly, weeks before Colorado’s COVID-19 lockdown. Up until the year before she died, Vira was still playing piano and organ at the All Saints Lutheran Church chapel in Brush every Christmas Eve service. “Music was everything to her,” said her grandson Ian Waltman. A law that disappeared behind glass For years, her son John Waltman carried his mother’s notarized Medical Durable Power of Attorney. “It was supp...
Mesa County sheriff appeals budget constraints that could cut 28 deputies
Rocky Mountain Voice, Local, Top Stories

Mesa County sheriff appeals budget constraints that could cut 28 deputies

By Jen Schumann | Rocky Mountain Voice Mesa County Sheriff Todd Rowell appeared before the Board of County Commissioners on Nov. 6, 2025, to warn that this year’s budget proposal could undo nearly a decade of progress under the 2017 voter-approved 0.37% public-safety sales tax. The budget appeal on the third floor of the county administration building doubled as a press conference, drawing commissioners, staff and reporters eager to see what “doing more with less” means for Mesa County public safety. Sheriff Todd Rowell, right, speaks with Commissioner Bobbie Daniel and Undersheriff Matt King during the Nov. 6 budget appeal in Grand Junction. Rowell said the math no longer works. “I gave up five deputies to submit a flat budget… 13 more were defunded… $980,000 in line-item...

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