Author: Mark Barna

UPDATE: Colorado Springs Utilities tweeted around 9:45 p.m. that power has been restored and that the outage was due to equipment failure. More than 4,500 Colorado Springs Utilities customers were in the dark Sunday night as crews worked to restore electricity to a wide swath of southwestern Colorado Springs. The power was out in an…

Tony Dal Lago works as a Department of Defense contractor in Colorado Springs. He’s a busy guy and doesn’t need to receive phones calls in the middle of the night from authorities asking him to help at a local disaster. He doesn’t need to aide injured people on a street curb, or bring dry clothes…

Susan has endured many trials over the last 18 months. In April 2010, she and her husband, Bill, lost their Security home to foreclosure. The couple had only seven years of mortgage payments remaining to make to own the house outright. The foreclosure was due to Bill’s construction business going under during the recession. In…

One night in August, Nash Lebya had a sense that something wasn’t right at his Pueblo home. He checked on his three sleeping children and discovered flames billowing from beneath his oldest daughter’s bed. Waking the family, he ushered everyone outside and tried to put out the fire. But it was too late, and soon…

Like many retired people, Lucille Rudolph relies on her monthly Social Security checks to pay her bills and other expenses. She owns her Colorado Springs house and her car, but $884 a month in Social Security only goes so far — especially when health insurance doesn’t cover all her medications. Rudolph considers herself adept at…

Many people depend on their most recent paycheck or retirement check to pay their rent so they can avoid homelessness. Franklin of Colorado Springs depends on his monthly retirement check from the Air Force to pay his rent, bills and other living costs. The 60-year-old veteran has been able to scrape by for years without…

Scott and Syleinia Summers wanted a fresh start, so they and their two girls, ages 3 and 5, moved from Conyers, Ga., to Colorado Springs a few months ago. Syleinia would be able to live near her mother, and Scott thought the altitude would help him with his multiple health problems, including severe arthritis. But…

Workitu struggles to support her four children in drought-ravaged Ethiopia by selling firewood. But her meager income barely puts a dent in her family’s devastating poverty. Her children have grown accustomed to going to bed hungry, though the youngest sometimes cry themselves to sleep because of hunger pangs. Workitu’s plight is one of a handful…

Summary: For years, the suicide rate in El Paso County has been higher than in most other counties in America, causing the issue to be spotlighted in the 2011 Quality of Life Indicators report. During the past six years, the county has averaged 18 suicides per 100,000 residents, said Dale Terry, a Quality of Life…