A Dateline to Remember.

June 20^th 2014

The evening started out just like any other.  A great dinner and some evening cocktails, usually wine.  After the kids were situated for the evening whether at home or at a friend’s house, our Friday nights usually consisted of watching a movie or perhaps the NBC show Dateline.  On this night Dateline won out.  A new episode was airing and it had something to do with Aspen so I was more than interested on how the press would drag Aspen through the mud once again.  They liked doing that.

Tonight’s episode, “Mystery on Sunrise Drive” was about an Arizona businessman that was blown up inside a Lincoln Continental at the La Paloma Country Club in Tucson but it had some sort of connection to Aspen.  As it turns out, it was about the murder of Gary Triano (November 1, 1996) and involved his ex-wife who was living in Aspen at the time of the murder.  So why, you might ask, is this a topic of one of my stories?  Read on and I will explain why.

Back in late 1990 my future wife, Julie and I moved back to Aspen after nearly 9 years of living in southern California.  I was able to secure a job with the Aspen Ski Company prior to arriving in Aspen doing their IT support for the Ticket Sales department as well as the newly constructed Little Nell Hotel.    As the ski season winded down there was less work for me at the Ski Company and they encouraged me to branch out to earn money in the summer months while still being on call with the Ski Company.  It seemed like a good arrangement and so, I started Accomplish(ed) Computing and let local businesses know I was available to support their IT needs.  I leased a 2-room office in the building above the Cooper Street Pier and set up shop.  Not long after that a gentleman moved into the office next to mine and soon, he became a customer and an occasional “drinking buddy.”  We actually went out for lunch on a fairly regular basis.  He was a very tall, soft spoken man who rarely had much to say.  Occasionally he would open up and I would get a small glimpse into his personal and professional life.  Turns out, according to him, he was in the business of buying bankrupt business and liquidating them for a tidy profit.  At the time he was un-winding a Carbondale business by the name of “Frozen Moments” that had been in the business of making items that looked like real food or beverages that were spilling or had made a mess.  They were very lifelike and he had many of them scattered around his office.

We continued our business and personal relationship for about 8 months until I was offered a job with a company in Durango.  We did not keep in touch after I left and I really never gave him another thought, that was until the evening of June 20th 2014.

Is that who I think it is?

The episode started out in its usual fashion with short snippets from the various characters to be interviewed throughout the next 60 minutes.  It mostly centered on Gary and his failed business dealings.  How many enemies he had accumulated and worst of all, his hostilities with his second ex-wife by the name Pamela Phillips.  Pamela was where the Aspen connection came into this story.  From the beginning she was a prime suspect in Gary’s murder but there was little evidence to prove it.  The episode went over all the people, and there were many, who would have been happy to see Gary dead.  From bankers to Tribal leaders of nearby Indian casinos and of course, his ex-wife to name a few.  Gary, it seems, was a con artist and his empire was crumbling around him.  In fact, even the Lincoln Continental he was driving at the time was not his, but loaned to him by a friend.  The episode focused for the first half on Gary’s death, the method of his death and the many suspects who could have arranged such a thing.

It was not until the second half of the episode that another character was introduced and he was the suspected hitman.  They aired a picture of him right before a commercial break.  “Holy Crap, Julie come here!” followed by “is that who I think it is?” upon backing up the ½ second clip of the show before cutting to the commercial break.

When the episode resumed the facts of the case were made clearer.  Through the efforts of the Pima County, Ariz., Sheriff’s Department with some help form the Aspen Police Department, a connection between Pamela Phillips and Ronald Young was made, both of which resided in Aspen at the time of the murder.  Ron was the man who had his office next to mine back in 1991.  The same man I had drinks with and frequently had lunches with.  The same man who had me do some computer work in his home while his daughter was there.  This mild-mannered, soft-spoken, Giant of a man was being tried for being the hitman.  And there were rumblings that it might not have been his first hit.  More on that later.  It seemed that Ron had recorded many of his conversations with Pamela Philips regarding the hit as well as her failure to pay him all of the $400,000 she owed him.  These recordings eventually landed them both securely behind bars for the rest of their lives.

I tell this story as you can imagine the shock of watching an episode of Dateline only to see someone you knew and had business dealings with in your past.  Not something that happened every day.  It appears that Ron may be the man behind the car bomb that took the life of Aspen’s Drug Kingpin, Steven Gradow back in late 1985.  Oddly enough, Grabow was driving a borrowed Jeep at the time of his murder.  The bombs were nearly identical including how they were triggered.  Dynamite sticks with a blasting cap with the pull trigger wire on the cap wrapped around the drive shaft. As soon as the car was put in gear and set in motion the bomb would go off.

In fairness, Ron was never charged in that car bomb and much like Gary Triano, Steven Grabow had plenty of people who would be all too happy to see him gone.  Especially due to the fact that Steven was about 30-days from going on trial for drug trafficking charges and many believed he would be giving up the names of his co-conspirators in order to save himself, people like Bobby Erra, a noted Miami Gangster who had been implicated in a drug ring that was sending millions of dollars of drugs to Aspen and other places throughout the United States.

Is it ironic that the bombs were nearly identical or that they both had a connection to a particular person or people in Aspen?  You decide for yourself but as for me I hope I never see someone I know on an episode of Dateline.

You would think I would have known better than to eat raw pork but it really was not my fault.  I was only following what I saw my mom do and she was never wrong and would never lead me astray but perhaps I should have double checked that package of fresh ground meat before I proceeded to eat a handful of it. 

Let me back up to the start of the scariest day of my young life.  I was around 7 years old at the time and possessed a vivid imagination and perhaps took things a little too seriously at times.  Growing up in a family that owned a grocery store with an amazing butcher shop, we never ate any frozen or old meats, it was always as fresh as anyone could get.   Our refrigerator was always filled with butcher’s packages of fresh meats and sausages of all kinds.  My mom was particularly fond of fresh ground beef which she would roll into balls and cover them in about 2 inches of salt.  It always amazed me how she could get that much salt to stick to the balls of meat.  She would then proceed to eat them raw one after another.  At that time, I did not know that was a delicacy often referred to as, Steak Tartare.

My father always warned us not to do the same with the raw chicken, sausage or pork that was often found in the refrigerator right next to the beef.  “Don’t eat that, it will give you trick noses” (Trichinosis).  To this day I am not entirely sure what a “trick nose” is but back then he said it could kill you.  He said your body would fill up with round-worms and they will eat you from the inside.  Now that was a death, I was not willing to tempt.

Well, we all make mistakes in life and I have made more than my fair share.  But on this day, I think I found Jesus for the first of many times.  After indulging in a hefty portion of what I though was “steak Tartare” I found while wrapping up the rest of the uneaten delicacy that I had made a very bad mistake and panic set in.  My first thought was that I could already feel the worms spinning around in my stomach, in hindsight is was more likely nerves, but at that time I felt deaths door approaching.

I do a rather odd thing when faced with anxiety, fear or pain… I go on a “walk-about” and I keep walking until I am exhausted or common sense finally kicks in, which means I am usually exhausted by the end of the journey.  Now, at the time of this incident I was grounded which means I was restricted to the yard and a perimeter I could not cross even in the face of certain death.  So, I started circling the house, crying all the while.  I was facing death and was trying to outrun it to the best of my ability.  After about, what seemed like a lifetime, my mom came home.  Turns out it was more like a quick, teary eyed 10-minute walk-about but for me the grim reaper was just steps behinds all the way.

My mother informed me that I was not going to die.  She also asked why I did not force myself to throw up.  All I could think of was, I hate throwing up more than life itself (still do by the way) which is a bit ironic when you think about it.  Either way I did not die.  I never did throw up either but I now clearly understand why you should “read the package label.”

Neil & Paul Beck (1^st Cousins) delivered groceries to the elderly residents in the valley from the Beck Brother’s (Beck & Bishop in later years) Fancy Foods and Staples Grocery Store for most of their teenage years. These elderly men & woman, more often the women than men, often times placed more than one grocery delivery order per day, perhaps it was because they forgot an item or two, or maybe they learned family members were coming over for a visit on little or no warning… no, it was most often due to the fact that they were lonely and the delivery boys provided them with some company, if only for a few minutes per delivery. If they were lucky, they could squeeze in more than one delivery per day.

Once the order was called in dad or Paul would put it together and set out to make their delivery, or deliveries depending upon how many lonely hearts were in need that day. They were often greeted at the door with cookies and milk to entice a longer visit and the boys were always willing to oblige as long as the cookie supply lasted. At first the deliveries were made with horse drawn carriages but by the 50’s the horses were traded in for a bright red “flatbed” Ford.

In the early years before the boys could drive a horse and wagon was their only option. Aspen was sparsely populated in those days and the deliveries were spread out all over the valley, sometimes in hard-to-reach locations on the back side of Aspen Mountain or up Smuggler Creek. Even as far out as Lenado. These remote locations afforded their customers with even less human interaction and a bigger need for an occasional visit from a “delivery boy.”

As time went on, Aspen began to lose more of these “old timers” and were replaced with the new generation growing up in the valley or moving in from the far reaches of the world. The need for deliveries got less and less as the 1960’s approached. Dad went on and started his own family and business as did Paul and the next generation was not needed for that type of work.

If you think about “small town America” a similar situation is evolving that takes you back to the days of the “delivery boys.” With on-line shopping becoming the “norm” small towns and people living in remote places now get to know their UPS Driver, Postman and even their Amazon drivers. I would hazard a guess that some of these lonely people order more frequently than they need to just to increase the chances of a quick visit form their own “delivery boy or girl.”  Sadly, these new delivery companies do not allow their drivers to linger any longer that what is absolutely necessary.

(This post pertains to the future drivers of Aspen in the 1970’s)

Getting your driver’s license is like a “rite of passage’.  Something almost every soon to be 16-year-old looks forward to.  It is the first step of many in their journey to freedom and away from the tyranny of family life under the rule of “because I said so!”  The soon to be emancipated youth of the Roaring Fork Valley were no different.  They had waited long enough to be able to drive and not rely on their siblings for rides, or even worse, their friend’s control of when and where they would take you.

Through all the joy and expectation of the approaching 16^th birthday, was the event that would change everything!  Going from a student driver to that of a bonafide licensed driver.  Well one obstacle did exist and it was not lost on any soon-to-be 16-year-old or soon-to-be licensed driver of any age, and that was Officer Mark Potter, state certified DMV inspector and savior of the pedestrians of the Roaring Fork Valley.  He loomed on the horizon like Zeus’ Fist, which is a cursed pile of rocks for those of you not into mythology, of which no new driver could avoid.

Mr. Potter was known for having a rather unpleasant disposition to put it mildly.  There was no room in his life for stupid questions (all questions asked of him were considered stupid) or dumb people.  He arrived on-time and closed on-time.  Don’t even consider asking any questions or even greeting him when he was not on duty.  And don’t even think of showing up for your driving test without an appointment. Okay, in fairness he might not have been that bad but we will never know for sure.  But what every kid that faced him for the written exam or actual driving test can confirm is that he was what nightmares were made from.

If you failed the driving test, he would find the furthest out possible appointment for your retake and would pencil you in.  Yes, pencil you in as he owned you at that point and you were at his mercy, if you want to call it that.   Those who faced the dreaded Officer Potter were probably the best drivers or at least the best educated drivers in the valley but it was not without a certain amount of anxiety along the way.

The DMV office was originally, well for my generation, in a motor home out at Sardy Field behind the Aspen Airways hanger.  By mid-1974, the DMV office was relocated to Holland Hills, just south-east of Basalt on highway 82 to make it more centrally located in the valley.   Mr. Potter moved on shortly after that and was replaced by Willie Williams.  To say they were nothing alike would be an understatement.

Mr. Williams used to love to play practical jokes on people at their most vulnerable time, taking a test, but it was all in good fun.  He was even known for giving unsuspecting test takers the written exams in one of the foreign language formats just to watch them squirm around in their chairs afraid to ask for help.

For generations families grew up in the Aspen valley not really aware of what changes were taking place elsewhere in the world.  To say we were insulated was putting it mildly.  That was until the late 40’s and early 50’s when Aspen started to attract a new kind of visitor, skiers.  With skiers came the wealthy business elite from places far and wide.  Without really knowing it, our little valley was on a fast track to prosperity and with it would come the loss of a particular identity that only the Aspenites had come to live and love. Unknowingly, many lacked the appreciation for what “daily life” was versus what it would become.

Some of the people arrived as “ski bums” but stayed to have families of their own and became long-time residents, although they lacked the ability to be known as “natives”.  That moniker was reserved for an unknown date decades before because, as we “natives” know, our families had to arrive from elsewhere too but that arbitrary date gave us the added title of an “Aspen Native” that not even the wealthy could buy. The only other option to being a legitimate native was to be born there.

The 1960’s, 70’s and early 80’s brought a new “lifestyle” that many of the “Old Timers” lamented while the new-comers” relished.  Aspen had become a very tolerant party town.  Our parades lacked decorum, our “Winterskol” celebration took on an awkward debauchery theme that got progressively more risqué as each year passed.  The one thing Aspen never lost back then was a willingness by all of her residents, new and old alike, to get along and try to go with the flow.  In those same decades, more and more people moved to the valley.  Some were here on a shoestring and a prayer while others came with an overloaded bank account in tow.  For some this was not going to be their hometown, it was a second home or perhaps a 3^rd, 4^th or more.  First it was the dreaded “Texans” buying everything up and the locals used to love to complain about them, but behind the scenes it really was not the Texans we should have worried about.  It was everyone else from everywhere else. 

Not all the newcomers liked Aspen’s party lifestyle with all the drugs, booze and parties.  It was even one of the first communities to have an established and very vocal gay community when that kind of thing was kept in the shadows.  Yup, Aspen was becoming a very cosmopolitan town whether we pretended to think so or not.  Our little community was changing before our very eyes.

Some of the biggest changes in the mid-80’s into the 90’s was not the continued rise in housing prices or the fact that little jets at Sardy Field were being replaced by bigger and bigger jets, or even the fact that Aspen’s working class was moving “down valley” to places like Basalt, Carbondale, Glenwood Springs and even Rifle, all places that were wholly unthinkable and downright sacrilege decades earlier.  Some found it less expensive to raise a family and others “cashed out” on their small homes or trailers for bigger digs further out of town.  Aspen’s biggest change that no one saw coming or those that did, tried to deny it, was the simple fact that our partiers, like all the members of The Aspen State Teacher’s College and the “experimental apothecary” crowd were growing older.  They had kids now and as much as they loved their party years, that was not something they wanted their kids to do.  Yup, the parties as we knew it were over.  As more time went by, these very same people found themselves moving out of the area entirely.  All replaced by part time residents or people who would never have to work a day in their lives.

So now it is time for the “Little Perspective” this story is really about.

What very few of us stop long enough to think back on is that Aspen was always changing.  We were just lucky enough to live though some of the best of changes and see what our little town would become.  Aspen showed a willingness to change, a process that had to take place or the town would perish and all our memories would be about a time long ago where no one can go back to.  Sure, a lot of us resisted these changes when we took a moment to see them actually taking place.  We still lament about them today, perhaps more than ever, but we are all better people because of those changes.  Just think, if Aspen never changed what would we have to talk about?  What would our younger years have been like?  Would we be talking about them today like we do?  And what about Aspen?  There is a good comparison I like to draw to better highlight what Aspen could have been if none of this had happened.  Some of you may know Lake City, Colorado.  In fact, I suspect many of you have been there or will go some day.  If you go back to Aspen’s origin and compare it to Lake City, they are virtually identical.  They both came to life in the Silver Boom and they both died because of it too.  The difference is, Aspen found a new life a few decades later while Lake City remained a quiet little Colorado mining community surviving on what small ranching revenue brought in as well as the hunters and “Jeepers” who paid it an occasional visit.  It has only one other claim to fame and that is that Alferd “Alfred” Packer had dinner with a few acquaintances during the winter of 1874 just outside of what would become Lake City’s town limits.

So, if you think about it, Aspen would have been just another Lake City if it were not for the original ski bums and “Texans” who put her on the map.  Which caused Walter Paepcke to take notice and come initiate a steady stream of changes that are still going on to this day.

Interestingly enough, Lake City, although decades later, is going through its own renaissance today.  Property values are skyrocketing and the second homes or hunting cabins are becoming more normal.  It will most likely never be another Aspen, but it will also never be the same “old” Lake City it was just a few decades ago.

“Without change you have nothing but history” – Douglas Beck