If you want to hide out in Trinidad, stay away from the Hot Spot at the Savoy. Every single customer — and there were more than a dozen — who stepped into the long, narrow downtown diner during a recent lunch hour was greeted by name or back-slapped or fussed over by somebody already inside.

Everybody knew somebody in the diner. And they were well aware that the town’s marquee personality, gender-reassignment surgeon Dr. Marci Bowers, had left for good.

“And everybody has an opinion about it,” said Hot Spot owner Diana Velarde.

“I think it’s too bad,” said Mike Gerardo, one of Velarde’s customers, who sat in overalls polishing off a plate of spaghetti. A former coal miner, Gerardo knows about the impact of a business shutting down.

“She brought a lot of money into the community,” Gerardo said.

Hot Spot owner Diana Velarde says the town respected the privacy of gender-reassignment patients. “Generations grew up knowing that’s just what happens in Trinidad,” she said. Photo by HYOUNG CHANG, THE DENVER POST

THE DENVER POST