Showing posts with label Colorado. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Colorado. Show all posts
Saturday, December 14, 2013
INKSPOT NEWS - December 14, 2013
Monday, March 11, 2013
How a Rural Colorado Sheriff’s Office Works
by Beth Groundwater
The first two books in my RM Outdoor Adventures mystery series, Deadly Currents and Wicked Eddies (both shown above), take place in rural Chaffee County, situated in the upper Arkansas River valley in central Colorado.
The county has about 17,000 residents in the winter. Most of them live in the small city of Salida, where my whitewater river ranger Mandy Tanner lives, and in the two towns of Buena Vista to the north and Poncha Springs to the west, at the base of the Monarch Mountain ski area, where Mandy works as a ski patroller in the winter. The Arkansas Headwaters Recreation Area (AHRA) headquarters building, where Mandy works spring through fall, is in downtown Salida, one block from the river.
The county population doubles in the summer when tourists and part-timers flood in. They scamper around the county, engaging in whitewater rafting, mountain biking, hiking, climbing, fly fishing, off-roading, birding, horseback riding, antiquing and all the other warm weather activities the valley offers.
One fourth of Colorado’s 54 “fourteeners”, mountain peaks measuring over 14,000 feet in altitude, are located in the Chaffee County. One of those, Mt. Shavano appears on the patch of the Chaffee County Sheriff’s office (in the photo below). The patch shows the “Angel of Shavano,” an angel-shaped area of snow that appears on Mt. Shavano each June as snows melt (see second photo).
To learn how the Chaffee County Sheriff’s Office operates, I interviewed Undersheriff Keith Pinkston, who is their lead detective. He is in charge of two other detectives in their small Investigations Division. He educated me on how their procedures differ from those I learned in El Paso County Sheriff’s Citizen’s Academy, where I used to live. Because the Chaffee County Sheriff’s Office has only three detectives, patrol officers conduct their own investigations of crimes, except when the crimes are major, such as murder.
Chaffee County averages about one murder case a year, though the detectives need to investigate many more unintended deaths, fatal accidents, and suicides to rule out murder. Their (imaginary) murder rate has soared with the releases of Deadly Currents and Wicked Eddies!
Since the Chaffee County Sheriff’s Office is small, they request outside help for many of the tasks associated with a murder investigation, and they are adept at coordinating with outsiders. They rely on the Colorado Bureau of Investigation to process much of the forensic evidence they collect at crime scenes. They may call in the investigator from the District Attorney’s Office to help. And, they may request officers from the Colorado State Patrol to work with their detectives to solve major cases.
While the county has an elected coroner, he is not a forensic pathologist. So, if an autopsy is needed, the body is sent outside the county to the Pueblo County Coroner’s Office located in the city of Pueblo, Colorado. This is what happens to the body of Tom King, the person Mandy Tanner pulls out of the Arkansas River in Deadly Currents, who dies on the river bank.
Keith Pinkston also explained how the Chaffee County Sheriff’s Office works with river rangers like Mandy who discover dead bodies in or alongside the Arkansas River, or who pull people out of the river who later die. While the Sheriff’s Office is responsible for investigating deaths, the river ranger(s) who are the “first responders” are a part of the investigative team. The river rangers’ primary responsibility is extracting the body from the river, but they also share information with the detectives about what they found, and they may testify in court.
Mandy Tanner has a personal stake in the murder cases she becomes involved in the two books because they affect people she is very close to. Therefore, she gets tangled up in the investigations much more than river rangers usually do. Victor Quintana, the detective assigned to both cases (and Keith Pinkston's fictional counterpart), is willing to share information with her, because in Chaffee County, as in many rural counties, all of the law enforcement and fire/rescue personnel work and train together on search and rescue teams and become a close-knit community.
The vehicles the Chaffee County Sheriff’s Office use are 4-wheel drive Ford Broncos (for frequent snowy or muddy road conditions) and Crown Victoria patrol cars. Every vehicle contains a rifle, a 12-gauge shotgun with lethal ammunition, and another one with non-lethal ammunition, all stored in brackets. Each deputy has their own patrol car.
Like many rural Sheriff’s Offices, Chaffee County’s constantly could use more funding. Only some of the deputies have Kevlar helmets and vests. And, the deputies are responsible for supplying their own sidearm, so there’s quite a variety. They also carry shoulder radios, handcuffs, pepper spray, and either an ASP tactical baton or a TASER.
The Chaffee County Sheriff’s Office may be small, and on a tight budget, but the deputies I met there had a friendly, professional attitude and took their assignments seriously. They were also very willing to help this mystery author with her research. What interactions have you had with your local sheriff's office or police department? What is your impression of them? If you'd like to learn more, you should see if they offer a citizen's academy like the one I attended in El Paso County.
The first two books in my RM Outdoor Adventures mystery series, Deadly Currents and Wicked Eddies (both shown above), take place in rural Chaffee County, situated in the upper Arkansas River valley in central Colorado.
The county has about 17,000 residents in the winter. Most of them live in the small city of Salida, where my whitewater river ranger Mandy Tanner lives, and in the two towns of Buena Vista to the north and Poncha Springs to the west, at the base of the Monarch Mountain ski area, where Mandy works as a ski patroller in the winter. The Arkansas Headwaters Recreation Area (AHRA) headquarters building, where Mandy works spring through fall, is in downtown Salida, one block from the river.
The county population doubles in the summer when tourists and part-timers flood in. They scamper around the county, engaging in whitewater rafting, mountain biking, hiking, climbing, fly fishing, off-roading, birding, horseback riding, antiquing and all the other warm weather activities the valley offers.
One fourth of Colorado’s 54 “fourteeners”, mountain peaks measuring over 14,000 feet in altitude, are located in the Chaffee County. One of those, Mt. Shavano appears on the patch of the Chaffee County Sheriff’s office (in the photo below). The patch shows the “Angel of Shavano,” an angel-shaped area of snow that appears on Mt. Shavano each June as snows melt (see second photo).
To learn how the Chaffee County Sheriff’s Office operates, I interviewed Undersheriff Keith Pinkston, who is their lead detective. He is in charge of two other detectives in their small Investigations Division. He educated me on how their procedures differ from those I learned in El Paso County Sheriff’s Citizen’s Academy, where I used to live. Because the Chaffee County Sheriff’s Office has only three detectives, patrol officers conduct their own investigations of crimes, except when the crimes are major, such as murder.
Chaffee County averages about one murder case a year, though the detectives need to investigate many more unintended deaths, fatal accidents, and suicides to rule out murder. Their (imaginary) murder rate has soared with the releases of Deadly Currents and Wicked Eddies!
Since the Chaffee County Sheriff’s Office is small, they request outside help for many of the tasks associated with a murder investigation, and they are adept at coordinating with outsiders. They rely on the Colorado Bureau of Investigation to process much of the forensic evidence they collect at crime scenes. They may call in the investigator from the District Attorney’s Office to help. And, they may request officers from the Colorado State Patrol to work with their detectives to solve major cases.
While the county has an elected coroner, he is not a forensic pathologist. So, if an autopsy is needed, the body is sent outside the county to the Pueblo County Coroner’s Office located in the city of Pueblo, Colorado. This is what happens to the body of Tom King, the person Mandy Tanner pulls out of the Arkansas River in Deadly Currents, who dies on the river bank.
Keith Pinkston also explained how the Chaffee County Sheriff’s Office works with river rangers like Mandy who discover dead bodies in or alongside the Arkansas River, or who pull people out of the river who later die. While the Sheriff’s Office is responsible for investigating deaths, the river ranger(s) who are the “first responders” are a part of the investigative team. The river rangers’ primary responsibility is extracting the body from the river, but they also share information with the detectives about what they found, and they may testify in court.
Mandy Tanner has a personal stake in the murder cases she becomes involved in the two books because they affect people she is very close to. Therefore, she gets tangled up in the investigations much more than river rangers usually do. Victor Quintana, the detective assigned to both cases (and Keith Pinkston's fictional counterpart), is willing to share information with her, because in Chaffee County, as in many rural counties, all of the law enforcement and fire/rescue personnel work and train together on search and rescue teams and become a close-knit community.
The vehicles the Chaffee County Sheriff’s Office use are 4-wheel drive Ford Broncos (for frequent snowy or muddy road conditions) and Crown Victoria patrol cars. Every vehicle contains a rifle, a 12-gauge shotgun with lethal ammunition, and another one with non-lethal ammunition, all stored in brackets. Each deputy has their own patrol car.
Like many rural Sheriff’s Offices, Chaffee County’s constantly could use more funding. Only some of the deputies have Kevlar helmets and vests. And, the deputies are responsible for supplying their own sidearm, so there’s quite a variety. They also carry shoulder radios, handcuffs, pepper spray, and either an ASP tactical baton or a TASER.
The Chaffee County Sheriff’s Office may be small, and on a tight budget, but the deputies I met there had a friendly, professional attitude and took their assignments seriously. They were also very willing to help this mystery author with her research. What interactions have you had with your local sheriff's office or police department? What is your impression of them? If you'd like to learn more, you should see if they offer a citizen's academy like the one I attended in El Paso County.
Monday, August 20, 2012
Editing a Manuscript -- and a Body
By Beth Groundwater
This month I'm in the throes of trying to reshape two things: the manuscript for my third RM Outdoor Adventures mystery titled Fatal Descent and ... my body. I've noticed some interesting parallels between the two efforts, and I'm wondering if I can apply any of the techniques I'm using for one effort to the other. Also, I'm looking for advice, especially for the body editing effort! The manuscript is shaping up much better that the old bod is.
Trimming the Fat
For my body, I'm cutting out most sweets, sodas, alcohol, and fatty foods and eating lots and lots of fresh organic fruits and vegetables to replace those foods. I'm trying to whittle away the gradual weight gain I experienced over the past few years that has added an expanded tummy I don't need and a pair of thick thighs to go with it. I want to get back into my "skinny me" clothes!
I'm also trying to carve away the fat in my manuscript--the long, overblown descriptions that bore the reader, the excessive whitewater rafting terminology that may confuse the reader, the thoughts that repeat what is already said better in dialogue, gestures, or facial expressions, and so on. The goal is to make the book skinny (lean and mean), so that it contains just what it needs to tell an engaging story and no more.
Adding Muscle
For my manuscript, this means making sure there's sufficient conflict and emotion on the page to provide a meaty and satisfying experience for the reader. it also means making sure that conflicts and emotions are conveyed clearly. In body building, people talk about how "cut" a person is, meaning how well-defined the lines that outline their muscles appear when striking various poses. To have a lean, cut physique, you must have fully developed muscles and minimal fat that softens and hides the shapes of those muscles. Similarly, in my manuscript, I want large, muscular conflict, but if it's hidden in the fat of verbosity, then it's harder for a reader to see and feel that conflict and those strong emotions.
For my body, I'm working on weight-lifting and outdoor exercises such as hiking and biking to build up my muscle volume while at the same time I'm hopefully reducing the fat volume. I want to be stronger, to be able to hike or bike farther and longer and to be able to lift and move with less pain and more agility. I want to be efficient and effective in my movements and to improve my balance. In neither my own body or the manuscript do I want to overly bulk out. I want a natural look--and read--that's pleasing to the eye and is strong enough to get the work done, be it gardening for me or making the reader turn the page for the manuscript.
Increasing Fitness
For my body, this means working on those numbers: keeping blood pressure down, HDL (the good cholesterol) up, and LDL (the bad cholesterol) down. It means avoiding the need to take medications to maintain those numbers. Nutrition, exercise, and stress reduction are all tools for maintaining a healthy body that feels good and goes the distance.
Similarly, I want my manuscript to go the distance, to engage the reader all the way to those two words "The End" and for the reader to come away from the book reading experience feeling good--and satisfied. The numbers to watch here are characters, clues, red herrings, plot twists, etc. I need to have the right amount of each.
Small, Incremental Changes Lead to Big Results
Both of the processes of editing a manuscript and editing a body entail making a small number of tiny changes per day over many, many days to create a meaningful change. They're both tedious processes that can be draining and demotivating--especially when the pounds still aren't coming off or the fight scene is still ponderous. I try to set small, achievable goals for both. When I achieve one, I can celebrate. When I don't, I try to shake it off and try again the next week.
So, readers, what dieting and editing advice do you have for me? How can I add muscle, cut the fat, and increase the fitness of both my body and the manuscript for Fatal Descent?
This month I'm in the throes of trying to reshape two things: the manuscript for my third RM Outdoor Adventures mystery titled Fatal Descent and ... my body. I've noticed some interesting parallels between the two efforts, and I'm wondering if I can apply any of the techniques I'm using for one effort to the other. Also, I'm looking for advice, especially for the body editing effort! The manuscript is shaping up much better that the old bod is.
Trimming the Fat
For my body, I'm cutting out most sweets, sodas, alcohol, and fatty foods and eating lots and lots of fresh organic fruits and vegetables to replace those foods. I'm trying to whittle away the gradual weight gain I experienced over the past few years that has added an expanded tummy I don't need and a pair of thick thighs to go with it. I want to get back into my "skinny me" clothes!
I'm also trying to carve away the fat in my manuscript--the long, overblown descriptions that bore the reader, the excessive whitewater rafting terminology that may confuse the reader, the thoughts that repeat what is already said better in dialogue, gestures, or facial expressions, and so on. The goal is to make the book skinny (lean and mean), so that it contains just what it needs to tell an engaging story and no more.
Adding Muscle
For my manuscript, this means making sure there's sufficient conflict and emotion on the page to provide a meaty and satisfying experience for the reader. it also means making sure that conflicts and emotions are conveyed clearly. In body building, people talk about how "cut" a person is, meaning how well-defined the lines that outline their muscles appear when striking various poses. To have a lean, cut physique, you must have fully developed muscles and minimal fat that softens and hides the shapes of those muscles. Similarly, in my manuscript, I want large, muscular conflict, but if it's hidden in the fat of verbosity, then it's harder for a reader to see and feel that conflict and those strong emotions.
For my body, I'm working on weight-lifting and outdoor exercises such as hiking and biking to build up my muscle volume while at the same time I'm hopefully reducing the fat volume. I want to be stronger, to be able to hike or bike farther and longer and to be able to lift and move with less pain and more agility. I want to be efficient and effective in my movements and to improve my balance. In neither my own body or the manuscript do I want to overly bulk out. I want a natural look--and read--that's pleasing to the eye and is strong enough to get the work done, be it gardening for me or making the reader turn the page for the manuscript.
Increasing Fitness
For my body, this means working on those numbers: keeping blood pressure down, HDL (the good cholesterol) up, and LDL (the bad cholesterol) down. It means avoiding the need to take medications to maintain those numbers. Nutrition, exercise, and stress reduction are all tools for maintaining a healthy body that feels good and goes the distance.
Similarly, I want my manuscript to go the distance, to engage the reader all the way to those two words "The End" and for the reader to come away from the book reading experience feeling good--and satisfied. The numbers to watch here are characters, clues, red herrings, plot twists, etc. I need to have the right amount of each.
Small, Incremental Changes Lead to Big Results
Both of the processes of editing a manuscript and editing a body entail making a small number of tiny changes per day over many, many days to create a meaningful change. They're both tedious processes that can be draining and demotivating--especially when the pounds still aren't coming off or the fight scene is still ponderous. I try to set small, achievable goals for both. When I achieve one, I can celebrate. When I don't, I try to shake it off and try again the next week.
So, readers, what dieting and editing advice do you have for me? How can I add muscle, cut the fat, and increase the fitness of both my body and the manuscript for Fatal Descent?
Friday, February 18, 2011
A Very Cold Week in Steamboat Springs
I just love living in Colorado! Along with whitewater rafting, hiking, and biking in the summer, I enjoy skiing in the winter. And, I get to write about those activities in my mysteries (skiing is in To Hell in a Handbasket). Recently my husband and I spent a week in Steamboat Springs with another couple who are long-term, close friends and avid skiers like ourselves. Here, Neil (in the beard) and I flank our friends.
We had great conditions the first two days, Sunday and Monday. We even found some fresh powder to track up and did some tree skiing. We took an excellent free tour of the mountain on Sunday with our ski ambassador, Don, to get oriented.
Then the temperatures plunged below zero, which is my lower limit for when I'll go out skiing. So, Tuesday, when it was below -20, we all stayed inside in the condo, and I stayed in Wednesday also. The other three ventured out Wednesday afternoon when the thermometer inched above -10 degrees. During the time I stayed in, I was able to write some of the posts for my Virtual Book Tour for Deadly Currents, which will take place in March.
By Thursday, it had warmed up to above zero and we were all out on the slopes again. That day, Billy Kidd (in red below), a former Olympic medal winner and director of skiing at Steamboat Springs, taught a clinic, and we listened in. We finished off our last day of skiing on Friday with a stroll through town that evening to see the exhibits featured in the First Friday Art Walk. We sampled the food, beer & wine, too!
It was a great week and great fun. Where was your most recent vacation? Would you recommend it? During these doldrums of winter, let's share stories of fun and/or sunny places!
We had great conditions the first two days, Sunday and Monday. We even found some fresh powder to track up and did some tree skiing. We took an excellent free tour of the mountain on Sunday with our ski ambassador, Don, to get oriented.
Then the temperatures plunged below zero, which is my lower limit for when I'll go out skiing. So, Tuesday, when it was below -20, we all stayed inside in the condo, and I stayed in Wednesday also. The other three ventured out Wednesday afternoon when the thermometer inched above -10 degrees. During the time I stayed in, I was able to write some of the posts for my Virtual Book Tour for Deadly Currents, which will take place in March.
By Thursday, it had warmed up to above zero and we were all out on the slopes again. That day, Billy Kidd (in red below), a former Olympic medal winner and director of skiing at Steamboat Springs, taught a clinic, and we listened in. We finished off our last day of skiing on Friday with a stroll through town that evening to see the exhibits featured in the First Friday Art Walk. We sampled the food, beer & wine, too!
It was a great week and great fun. Where was your most recent vacation? Would you recommend it? During these doldrums of winter, let's share stories of fun and/or sunny places!
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