Local News

  A South Jeffco Walmart employee was seriously injured Aug. 20 in what police are calling an unusually vicious attack during a shoplifting incident.

The employee was attempting to stop three men suspected of shoplifting as they exited the building at 13240 W. Coal Mine Ave. One of the men allegedly punched the employee, knocking his face into the shopping cart, before he fell to the ground.

Though two of the suspects, Jose Cruz and Joe Lucero, were arrested, a third man remains unidentified.

South Jeffco Democratic candidate Steve Harvey is very much aware of the slim odds of his unseating state House District 28 incumbent Jim Kerr.

But Harvey, a globally traveled intellectual who earned a law degree at age 50, has used his campaign to make a mark on the local community, regardless, he says, of the 2010 election’s outcome.

  State Rep. Jim Kerr calls his path to politics a chance event, one he did not foresee during his lengthy career in the automotive service industry. The House District 28 incumbent is up for re-election this year, and he says he holds an edge over Democratic challenger Steve Harvey, citing his voting history as a “common sense” legislator.

Kerr, 66, who was initially appointed by a vacancy committee to replace outgoing Rep. Don Lee in 2005, said he developed a taste for local politics after attending a caucus.

Some 1,120 riders took to the windy mountain roads of Conifer, Evergreen and Kittredge early Sunday as the inaugural Deer Creek Challenge bike ride got rolling at 5:30 a.m.

The riders were greeted civilly, if not happily, by local residents, with few outward signs of the contentious, longstanding battle between motorists and bicyclists over use of narrow foothills roads. But the controversy was never far below the surface.