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Darwin 9 26 23

Cowboy State Daily is Wyoming’s largest newspaper with Wyoming’s most experienced journalists. 

<title>Daily Darwin: Tuesday, September 26, 2023 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Oh good, we're saved. Spiderman is here...

Daily Darwin: Tuesday, September 26, 2023

 Oh good, we're saved. Spiderman is here...

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily's Feature Reporter, Andrew Rossi.

Andrew Rossi

Around Wyoming

A GMC Yukon is smashed against giant boulders in a ravine off U.S. Highway 14-16-20 between Cody and Greybull. It’s been there for two years and could be there for many years longer.

, Suzanne Marie Cole drove the 7,000-pound SUV off the highway in what she claimed was a carjacking. She was arrested on two misdemeanor charges of probation violation, as it was determined she was intoxicated at the time of the accident.

Cole’s case has long since been resolved, but her Yukon is 

. Its windows and windshield are gone, anything of value inside is long gone, and it's riddled with bullet holes.

Pere Davison saw the Yukon while hiking in the Oregon Basin this past week.

“I hike up along that ridge all the time, but I have to go down and look over an edge to see the car,” he told Cowboy State Daily. “It is hard to believe it got down to where it stopped. It had to go over some pretty big boulders.”

The Yukon is likely to become one of dozens, possibly hundreds, of vehicles left abandoned in remote, hard-to-reach areas in Wyoming. It’s just not worth the effort to recover it.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"A Fruitless Effort"}]

Zac Beardall of Zac's Towing and Recovery in Cody knows exactly where the Yukon is. After Cole’s accident, the Park County Sheriff’s Office contacted him about recovering it.

Beardall isn’t one to be intimidated by a challenging recovery. He knows he could recover the Yukon, but as a business owner practicality takes precedence.

“There's no reason for it other than it's basically a fruitless effort,” he said. “Trying to devote an entire day and an entire fleet of equipment to a non-paying job is not exactly the best business decision.”

In these incidents, the owner is usually responsible for recovery costs. According to Beardall, that wasn’t an option for Cole.

“The owner didn't really make that choice,” he said. “It's more that they had no other option because they didn’t have the money or insurance to cover the operation as it stands. It’s not like breaking down on 1000 Wyoming Street and getting towed for $100.”

Because the State of Wyoming doesn’t cover recovery expenses, Beardall would have to cover it himself. It wasn’t worth it then, and it’s even less so now.

“That Yukon will never be roadworthy again,” he said. “It launched off a cliff and bounced up three boulders. The very second it lost momentum at the bottom of that cliff, it was never going to be roadworthy again.”

Two years later, the Yukon is in ever worse condition. It’s full of holes, created by rust and dozens of bullets, indicating it’s been used for target practice more than once.

When Beardall’s on the hook for a difficult recovery, he can recoup some of the cost by scrapping the vehicle. Even then, recovering the Yukon wouldn’t be worth it.

“The recovery’s not worth the scrap value,” he said. “Even the best scrap value on it wasn't ever going to be worth the recovery effort.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Live And Let Live"}]

Given the Yukon’s location, it’s under the jurisdiction of the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). The agency might decide that recovering the vehicle is worth the expense.

But will it? Beardall thinks it’s unlikely, especially because it’s not doing any harm where it is.

“For the BLM, it falls under the same purview as trash and litter,” he said. “It's not hurting anything where it's at. It's not obstructing a roadway or hiking path, and it’s not causing some huge environmental friction. Nobody’s going to pay a huge amount of money to get a vehicle out when it’s not doing anything.”

That’s what Beardall described as something that’s “been the establishment” since the invention of motorized vehicles. Sometimes, they end up where they shouldn’t be and remain there.

“They're big chunks of steel that take a lot of effort to move,” he said. “Sometimes, they’re in an area where it’s not really worth trying to move them, so we leave them.”

That’s nothing new. Beardall knows of “about 50 different vehicles in the area” that ended up in similar predicaments and haven’t moved or been recovered since. Many of those are older than one might expect.

“I can take you out to places where there's Model A’s in canals,” he said. “They’ve been there since they went there, and nobody's moved them in the last 100 years.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Like, Share, Subscribe?"}]

Unless the BLM decides to pay Zac’s Towing and Recovery or some other company to get the Yukon out of the ravine, Beardall expects that it’ll stay where it is. It’s so far away from U.S. Highway 14-16-20 that it can’t even be seen from the road.

There was only one scenario where Beardall might find the Yukon worth the time, effort, and expense. That would require more social media savvy.

“I could be like some of the YouTube guys and publicize the effort to make money off it,” he said. “Maybe one day I'll have a YouTube channel set up, where we're getting paid for views recovering vehicles from canyons and sinkholes, but that’s the only way it would make any sense, financially.”

If that ever happens, Beardall doesn’t anticipate becoming a social media star anytime soon. Business is busy enough without the extra clout.

“At this time of year, especially, we're ‘all hands on deck’ trying to operate and pick up cars, motorists, and anybody else who might be stranded, broken down, or wrecked,” he said. “Taking a full day to recover that Yukon just isn’t worth it.”

SUV off cliff for 2 years 8 6 26

<title>SUV That Went Off Wyoming Cliff 2 Years Ago Still There With No Plans To Recover | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Two years ago, a GMC Yukon flew off a highway in Park County and bounced off giant boulders in Wyoming's Oregon Basin. It's still there and likely there to stay because recovering it would be a fruitless effort, said the owner of a local tow company.

SUV That Went Off Wyoming Cliff 2 Years Ago Still There With No Plans To Recover

Employee kate meadows cropped

Kate Meadows

Wyoming Life

[{"type":"text","text":"For years, Milanii Engavo Sojos knew how to fight."}]

She fought in school hallways, locker rooms, buses and even the counselor’s office. She fought behind the mall and in alleys. Eventually, she fought in boxing competitions, winning a national title belt and earning an invitation to compete in the Junior Olympics.

Now, at 23, Sojos is on a dramatically different path dedicated to helping people — not hurting them.

The Eastern Shoshone tribal member recently was the first in her class to earn her certified nursing assistant (CNA) certification and continues to work toward a nursing degree. She is preparing to study criminal justice at Gillette College this fall.

[{"type":"text","text":"The path between those two lives has been anything but straight."}]

Sojos dropped out of Fort Washakie High School as a teenager, became a mother at 17, endured an abusive relationship and spent years caught in a cycle of fighting and drinking.

Today, she sees her future in a combination of two fields — caring for people and understanding the justice system.

“Growing up on the reservation, the systems have always been corrupt,” Sojos said. “Why can’t I be the one to change it?”

Ariel Sheinberg, a coordinator with consulting firm Clyde US who learned about Sojos through the online college program she attends, said Sojos is driven by a desire to help others who have faced challenges similar to her own.

That desire, Sojos said, is rooted in where she came from — not simply a desire to leave it behind.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"A Childhood Between Two Worlds"}]

Sojos grew up spending summers with her Grandma Thelma on the Wind River Reservation. She remembers swimming in the Little Wind River, coming home caked with sand, losing shoes along the way.

A pack of reservation dogs accompanied her, and together, they’d look out for snakes.

[{"type":"text","text":"“It was pretty cool, now that I look back on it,” Sojos said."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"She and her cousins went hunting, fishing, camping and horn hunting."}]

Her grandma taught her how to bead and sew. Together, they made fancy dresses for pow-wows.

Her grandmother provided a sense of stability in an otherwise unsettled childhood. Sojos had cousins, but few friends.

Sojos’ mother was working and attending college, and the family moved frequently. She spent much of her middle-school years in Billings, Montana.

[{"type":"text","text":"Her mother also left a strong impression."}]

Sojos said she remembers hearing people talk about her with a mixture of respect and caution.

“Don’t mess with that lady,” they would say. “She’s really educated.”

But her mother was often away working or attending school, and Sojos struggled with the fractured nature of her family, she said. Her stepfather was rarely around and her brother was becoming involved with drugs and alcohol.

[{"type":"text","text":"Her brother also taught her how to fight."}]

“He somewhat made me an aggressive player in anything I ever did,” she said.

[{"type":"text","text":"Sojos discovered she was good at it."}]

“I was always fighting,” she said. “I’d go to the park or meet up with someone behind the mall or in the alleyway.”

[{"type":"text","text":"Other kids knew her reputation."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"“She’s cool, but don’t piss her off,” they would say."}]

Then a friend’s uncle, who owned a boxing gym, heard about Sojos’ fighting ability and invited her to train.

[{"type":"text","text":"She quickly proved she had a talent for boxing."}]

Sojos began competing and practicing regularly, sometimes lying to her mother about where she was going. She would tell her she was spending time at a friend’s house, then walk around the corner to the gym before returning in time to be picked up.

[{"type":"text","text":"Eventually, her mother figured it out."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"To Sojos’ surprise, she supported her daughter."}]

“I wasn’t scared of my mom, but I didn’t know how she was going to react,” Sojos said. “She has a very straight face. I don’t know how to read her at all.”

Sojos won a national title belt and was invited to compete in the Junior Olympics in Las Vegas.

[{"type":"text","text":"But by then, her grandmother was getting sick."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"And Sojos was facing a choice that would change the course of her life."}]

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"'You Have To Figure It Out'"}]

At 14, Sojos faced a consequential choice. She could pursue boxing and potentially work her way toward a professional career.

Or she could move to the Wind River Reservation and live with her grandmother.

[{"type":"text","text":"She chose her grandmother."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"“I was trying to leave the fighting behind me,” Sojos said."}]

At the same time, she was increasingly curious about her Indigenous heritage and wanted to know more about the culture she had only experienced during summers.

[{"type":"text","text":"“I thought I still had time,” she said."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"She moved to the reservation and enrolled at Fort Washakie High School."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"At first, she relished being home with her grandmother."}]

She peppered her with questions about sewing — how to make a particular stitch, how to pull thread through the machine, how to fix her mistakes.

When Sojos tangled the thread, her grandmother would untangle it and hand it back.

[{"type":"text","text":"Sojos would make the same mistake again."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"“Can’t you just do this for me?” she would ask."}]

“No,” her grandmother told her. “You have to figure it out. I won’t always be there.”

It was a lesson Sojos would carry with her, even when she didn't yet understand how much she would need it.

[{"type":"text","text":"Life at school was another matter."}]

Sojos had grown accustomed to being singled out as a Native student in schools outside the reservation. On the reservation, she felt like an outsider for a different reason.

She isn't full-blooded Eastern Shoshone, and other students sometimes viewed her as white.

“People thought I was the white girl,” she said. “Nobody knew me.”

Instead of backing away, Sojos returned to the thing she knew best: fighting.

[{"type":"text","text":"“I was very vocal, hard-headed,” she said. “I had no filter.”"}]

[{"type":"text","text":"Soon, fights became routine."}]

“We’re scrapping in the locker room, we’re scrapping outside, on the bus, in the counselor’s office,” she said. “It felt like it was me versus the whole rez.”

[{"type":"text","text":"Her grandmother saw what was happening."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"“This isn’t what you’re here for,” she would tell her."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"But Sojos didn't yet know what she was there for."}]

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"The Downward Spiral"}]

[{"type":"text","text":"During her sophomore year, Sojos began dating a boy."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"They started drinking and partying together."}]

“I got that sense of love and clung to him,” she said. “Trauma bonding, I guess you could say.”

[{"type":"text","text":"For Sojos, drinking became another way to cope with loneliness and pain."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"“I thought it was the cool life,” she said."}]

Soon, she and her boyfriend were spending their time trying to find enough money for their next bottle.

[{"type":"text","text":"The relationship became abusive, Sojos said."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"Her life narrowed."}]

She dropped out of school. She left her grandmother. She became pregnant, broke up with her boyfriend and reconciled with him repeatedly.

[{"type":"text","text":"The partying continued."}]

By the time her grandmother died, Sojos was pregnant with her second daughter and still caught in a dangerous cycle.

[{"type":"text","text":"“I was not doing anything with my life,” she said."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"Then came an unexpected opening."}]

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Learning To Help"}]

Sojos was invited to participate in EMT training in Jackson through a buffalo incubation program on the Wind River Reservation.

The program was working to restore reservation land for buffalo by opening previously fenced parcels. Tribal members and scientists used the headquarters to discuss land restoration and cultural revitalization.

Sojos worked on the project, including cutting fence and helping manage the land.

[{"type":"text","text":"Then she took the EMT course and became certified as a first responder."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"“I loved it so much,” she said."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"The training didn't instantly change her life."}]

Her final wake-up call came later, when she ended up in jail after another fight and was charged with disturbing the peace.

[{"type":"text","text":"But the EMT experience had planted something new."}]

For the first time, Sojos had found something she was good at that wasn't about fighting.

[{"type":"text","text":"It was about helping."}]

She also reconnected with an old acquaintance from high school who had recently been released from prison.

The two eventually decided they needed to change the direction of their lives.

[{"type":"text","text":"He offered to pay the $1,600 Sojos needed to earn her GED."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"She worked nights at the Shoshone Rose hotel and studied for the test."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"Less than a month later, she had her GED."}]

While she was working at the Shoshone Rose, she heard about another young woman like herself who was attending college to become a medical assistant.

Sojos enrolled at Penn Foster, an online education provider offering career training and college programs.

In May, she became the first student in her class to earn her Certified Nursing Assistant certification.

Rez nurse Milanii at work 5 8 9 26

<title>Eastern Shoshone Boxing Champ Used To Fight Everyone. Now She’s A Healer | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Milanii Sojos dropped out of high school, became a mother at 17, endured abuse and spent years caught in a cycle of fighting and drinking. Today, she sees her future in a combination of two fields — caring for people and understanding the justice system.

Eastern Shoshone Boxing Champ Used To Fight Everyone. Now She’s A Healer

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily's business and tourism reporter, Renée Jean

Renée Jean

CHEYENNE — “Potential” is the word T-Joe’s Steakhouse owner Sherrie Lyle thought of the first time she saw the quirky cluster of 1910-era buildings slowly but surely giving way to time and the elements on the city's distressed west side. 

“It’s just these historic, colorful buildings,” she told Cowboy State Daily. “A quirky space. I like it.”

The property was owned by someone else the first time Lyle noticed it, but after those plans fell through Lyle and her children Molly and Jason decided to place an $850,000 bet on the “Ful-O-Pep” grain elevator corner. They believe they can transform it into a cool new destination for Cheyenne.

“It will take a little work,” Lyle acknowledged. “But it won’t take very long.”

Lyle is no stranger to running successful businesses. Her T-Joe’s Steakhouse is a busy restaurant that’s been voted “best steak” a time or two in Laramie County. 

Lyle is confident in this project because she’s already lined up a bakery shop owner who wants to lease the red mini-Victorian home once it’s fixed up. 

She also already has a jewelry shop owner interested in the little green cottage and an antique dealer who wants to turn the carriage house — now just storage — into a shop.

The Blossom Yoga Studio and a neighboring dress shop will stay put and keep operating. Together they’re already covering a substantial portion of the mortgage payment, Lyle said.  

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Liquor-License Bust"}]

The only building with an undecided fate is the 1912 “Ful-O-Pep” grain elevator, which once anchored a redevelopment attempt called the Old Cheyenne Elevator. 

“They had a beautiful idea for a restaurant here,” Lyle said, referring to the former owners. “But they didn’t get the liquor license, so that’s why they sold the place.”

That earlier group, operating as Ful-O-Pep LLC, envisioned a private dining room inside the elevator with a bar out front and a drive-through food-truck court. But their concept required a coveted full retail liquor license. 

They were up against 11 competitors for a single available license, and they ultimately lost. 

Ful-O-Pep’s owners did look at alternative liquor licenses, including the more attainable bar and grill license. But that option mandates a permanent commercial kitchen as well as food sales that are at least 70% of total revenue. 

Retrofitting a 110-year-old elevator with a modern commercial kitchen would have been dramatically more expensive than their original plan, which relied on rotating food trucks instead, so the dream stalled. The property went back on the market, until Lyle stepped in.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"A Non-Chain Sandwich Shop"}]

Lyle’s first priority is the red mini-Victorian, a place she said has caught people’s eyes for years. 

It’s always been a residence, never a business, but with the mixed-use zoning for the area, it can become a bakery. 

Inside, the walls and floors are in rough shape, with layers of “landlord fixes” meant to disguise problems instead of fixing them. 

It’s being stripped back to the studs and will be rebuilt with better spacing for a coffee shop bakery/deli. Lyle, who grew up in New Jersey, said she’s dreaming of real deli sandwiches — Cubans, thick pastrami, and maybe even her favorite: liverwurst on rye.

“There isn’t a non-chain sandwich shop in town,” she said. “So we can do something that feels different here.”

Next door, the green cottage, which looks small and quaint from the front, will become a jewelry shop. 

Its tiny front is a bit of an optical illusion. The sides are long, giving it 1,000 square feet of overall space — enough, perhaps for an art studio.

In the midst of all that, there’s the carriage house, now serving as storage, which Lyle believes will be just right for an antique shop.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"A Train Should Go There"}]

The elevator, a wild card right now, will be the last building Lyle and her family work on. 

But it was the first building that caught her attention because of the unused railroad spur along the edge of the property. 

“I saw this and I saw these little train tracks, which are obviously not being used,” she said. “And I said, ‘That’s where I’m putting a train car, right there.’”

Since then, she’s learned the property line doesn’t include the track. But she’s hoping to work something out with the railroad company, because she wants to have a railroad coffeeshop there, similar to one she’s seen in Nederland, Colorado.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Railroad Agreement Pending"}]

Mayor Patrick Collins and City Councilman Pete Laybourne are among city officials excited about what Lyle is doing on Cheyenne’s west side. 

For years, the city has been working on this area, which is part of the Reed Avenue Corridor, hoping to turn a dusty industrial strip with decaying, empty buildings into a greenway-style promenade where people can walk, bike, shop, and dine among repurposed, revitalized, historic warehouses.

“The dirt road that has a railroad track running down the middle of it is eventually going to become a promenade, like a greenway-type trail,” Collins told Cowboy State Daily. “We’re really hoping to bring a lot of those old buildings along there back to life.’

The city has been chipping away at that idea ever since voters approved a sixth-penny tax in 2017. Now there is federal rail money on the table, as well as a critical agreement with the BNSF pending. They own the rights of way.

“I just met with them, and we had a great meeting in my office,” Collins said. “And they really have shared that they’re 100% with us on this. All we’ve got to do is get the final plans to them, so they can sign off that they agree.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"A Passion Project"}]

Laybourn told Cowboy State Daily that Reed Avenue Corridor is a “passion project” for him and said Lyle’s purchase helps show how committed people in Cheyenne are to improving that area of town.

“I grew up over on Warren,” he said. “I used to ride my bike down here and go down to the creek where we began the greenway right here at Martin Luther King Park.”

Laybourn said Cheyenne has been trying to revitalize the area for 50 to 60 years. 

The city’s present project took so long, he added, because there was a misunderstanding about who owned the right of way. 

“I wasn’t on the council when they did that,” he said. “I’m not one of the visionaries who had that idea. But I’m one of the people who has to make it work, and we’re getting a lot closer.”

Inside the elevator, Lyle’s eyes light up when she talks about saving old buildings the “right” way.

She plans to preserve as much of the original hardware and textures as she can — the old grain scale, wooden beams, carved initials from the 1960s, and even the boxcar boards that railcar restorer Mike Pannell has pointed out to her. 

Lyle jokes that “all the kids’ college money” is tied up in this bet on the West Side, but she’s only half-kidding. It’s a serious investment, and serious vote of confidence, in a part of town that’s been in danger of seeing more demolition than dreams in recent times. 

“I’d like to see this renovated and a really pretty space,” she said. “And it’s always fun to be doing something.”

If the vision pans out, it will be a place where people can buy a New Jersey-style deli sandwich in a charming restored red Victorian house, pick out a ring in a little green cottage, browse antiques in a carriage house, take a yoga class, and maybe, someday, sip coffee in a railroad car parked beside a freshly repainted “Ful-O-Pep” grain elevator. 

Then Lyle will be able to say the corner once stalled by liquor laws and bad timing is living up to the word that first came to her mind when she saw it — potential.

West side 20260804 105521 8 9 26

The owner of T-Joe’s Steakhouse in Cheyenne just spent $850,000 on a cluster of 1910-era buildings that includes the old Ful-O-Pep grain elevator to resurrect the city’s west side. “It will take a little work, but it won’t take very long,” she said.

Daily Darwin: Tuesday, September 26, 2023

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