Cover Stories
Twilight has descended on the eight officers and ninety-four enlisted men of the submarine Blueback (SS-581), and on this warm Saturday evening in mid-October the waning of an era has occasioned some serious celebrating. Garbed …
Since Hartwell Ragsdale opened Anderson-Ragsdale Mortuary in 1956, he has prepared an average of 300 San Diegans for burial each year, 8400 bodies, almost all of them black. “Some streets I drive down, I see …
Phone call. Long distance. Late one night in September. “John,” said a female voice John Howard recognized as that of his ex-wife in Houston. “I’ve been having these dreams, John.” “Dreams?” “Bad dreams. Dreams that …
There was a certain kind of woman who found him irresistible: the very fat ones. They seemed to want to wrap their fleshy arms around his neck and smother him in their bosoms.
The path to glory was the same, as long as Roger Hedgecock rose and became successful, Tom Shepard would become, and his statements indicate, the premier political consultant in San Diego
On September 6 an arsonist created an East County inferno. Fighting that blaze was as risky and complicated as wartime combat. This is how it was done.
It is September on an airless Sunday morning with the mercury registering a dripping ninety-eight degrees at eleven o’clock. Adams Avenue is virtually empty except for the few hundred patrons outside the Ken Cinema. The …
Anyone who's ever thought of running a grocery store ought to know there's a way to do so without investing any money. This is possible at the Ocean Beach People’s Food Store, located just off …
On the morning of December 15, 1878 jailer George Nickel at the San Diego County Jail on Third Street inserted a key into the cell door of Jose Laguna, a.k.a. Ramon. Through the barred window …
Two hours before the fights begin, the boxing ring is a clean canvas framed by loose ropes and illuminated from above by stars of blue neon. Surrounding the ring, the wooden floor at the Palisades …
Runners stand at every base. The pitcher glances at them one by one from his vantage point on the mound, as if he is hoping they will evaporate, will reveal themselves to be characters in …
At four o'clock on a Saturday morning about the only people you will find awake in San Diego County are short-order cooks, cops, insomniacs, truck drivers, and bass fishermen. Of them all, the bass fishermen …
“In the wild,” Roocroft says, “an elephant will be moving at least eighteen hours each day. The feet, then, will take care of themselves.” But in a zoo, elephants develop overgrown toenails and overthickened foot pads.
Three-thirty Friday afternoon. Gloria, a twenty-three-year-old drug addict convicted on two counts of grand theft, appears unexpectedly to see deputy probation officer Sherri Necochea at the East County Regional Center in El Cajon. One of …
The Most Reverend Leo Thomas Maher, Roman Catholic Bishop of San Diego, wields complete authority over a diocese comprising San Diego and Imperial counties, with total assets of at least ten million dollars. The well-spring …
Last May a former El Cajon elementary school teacher placed an ad In the Personals section of the San Diego Union that read: “Lipolysis. If you have had this done, please call me,” and she …