Cover Stories
Why go to heaven? When you consider the popular “Family Circus” image — sitting on clouds, playing harps, singing hymns, and watching the doings on earth as if they were some reality-based TV show — …
“I’m sorry, sir, I can’t give any information.” Speaking from his Coronado Cays home, Miguel Crespo sounds tired and shaken. His wife, Georgina, was kidnapped over a month ago. “All the family are concerned about …
I don’t know how in the first months of 1955 Frank Bompensiero managed to get himself out of bed to face the day. I don’t know how he slept at night. Frank and Thelma and …
When 44-year-old Frank Bompensiero awakened at 5878 Estelle Street on the first morning of a new decade, he must have felt optimistic. He must have felt hopeful. He padded on his bare size-ten feet into …
“They’re like squiggles with different colors.” Anita, from Nashville Tennessee, is squinting into the middle distance of Horton Plaza trying to summon an image of exactly what was hanging on the wall of her room …
José Castrillón Henao was said to have cut a dashing figure on the streets of downtown San Diego. Partial to expensive Armani suits and accompanied by a flashy girlfriend, the Colombian native — who said …
Frank Bompensiero jumped off a freight train in San Diego in the early 1920s. He was 16 or 17 or perhaps even 18 years old. He was five feet, six inches tall. He had hazel …
Some evening soon, drive out to Pacific Beach. Be there about 8:15. The sun will have been down several hours. Across the sky every last orange and violet streak will be gone. Take a jacket. …
On the coffee table in front of the fireplace the maid set out Earl Grey tea and thick slices of Christmas cake. A German shepherd dozed on the Oriental rug near the crackling, popping fire. …
Things we’ve saved and saved and SAVED. For all the stupid reasons you or I or anybody saves things. You can’t take them “with you,” not all, not any, but chances are what’s left is …
The drummer wears a puffy red cap over his dreadlocks, and dangling behind his head from a nail in the wall of the garage is a squashed red, yellow, and blue Sesame Street ball, so …
On the track in front of the home stands, cheerleaders arrange their hand-painted mega phones and pom-poms. The Helix mascot, a bipedal Scottish terrier, “Scottie,” wearing a Helix jersey, #00, cavorts with the crowd.
By any standards, 1998 was a seminal year for San Diego. In just one year, the city s one-time pro-environment, managed growth, fiscally conservative electorate heeded the calls by its establishment leaders — Susan Golding, …
When the first hard contraction hit my wife Deirdre, buckling her at her middle and squeezing from her lungs a shocked cry, her first thought was, “I don’t know if I can do this without …
Loren McCannon stands, faces the frigid autumn wind blowing across the border at Otay Mesa, and sees the ghosts of crimes past. McCannon, now 75, suffering from diabetes, and survivor of a heart attack, can …
This is the fifth child that death has snatched from us. I am a Christian and I have a great deal of respect for Divine Decrees and God being omnipotent. At times I despair. I blame God.