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Darwin 6 15 24

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

<title>Daily Darwin: Saturday, June 15, 2024 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Put this game in the Hall of Fame now!

Daily Darwin: Saturday, June 15, 2024

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

Jen Kocher - Headshot CSD

Jen Kocher

Kolby fedore

Kolby Fedore

Crime & Courts

Public Safety

The last thing she remembered was walking into circuit court. To numb the dread, Lisa had smoked fentanyl and swallowed a couple more pills before the hearing.

How do you explain turning to the very thing that’s killing you? For her, it was her daughter’s face: The look in her eyes as she realized, even before the judge spoke, that her mother wasn’t coming home. 

That look broke something nothing could repair for Lisa, a woman in her 30s from southeastern Wyoming who asked to remain anonymous.

“It’s insane,” Lisa said four years later. “The thing that was wrecking me was the only thing I trusted to make the pain stop.”

Her memory of that day broke into pieces: Shaking in front of the bench, the van ride to jail, then strangers leaning over her, pounding her chest. She woke in a hospital with a naloxone drip in her arm. 

They told her later about the Narcan shots and the deputy who’d refused to give up on her.

That was what finally scared her sober. That, and the silence from her daughter, her family — the relationships she’s spent years trying to mend.

“Fentanyl isn’t a high. It’s a terrible way to live,” Lisa said. “Worse than anything else.”

She started because people around her said it was cheaper and didn’t show up on probation drug tests. But once you’re hooked, the sickness that follows keeps you coming back — even if it wrecks your life. 

[{"type":"text","text":"Even if it kills you."}]

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Wyomingites Dying From It"}]

For years, fentanyl has dominated America's overdose crisis. The powerful synthetic opioid has largely replaced heroin in many illegal drug markets and has been found disguised as prescription painkillers, hidden in counterfeit Xanax tablets and mixed into cocaine and methamphetamine.

It’s also costing a lot of lives in Wyoming and elsewhere.

 provided by the Wyoming Department of Health, around 350 Wyoming residents died of an opioid-related overdose. Of these, more than 90% were unintentional.

The demographic hardest hit during this five-year period was men and women ages 35 to 39, which accounted for about 60 of those deaths, followed by those between the ages of 25 and 29 equaling about 42 overdose deaths.

The bulk of these overdoses occurred in Sweetwater County at about 29.4 deaths per 100,000 residents, or an estimated 61 lives lost due to opioid overdoses. This was followed by Fremont County at 18.2 deaths per 100,000 residents.

That number appears to be growing in 2026, with the Cheyenne Police Department issuing  a warning in April of an uptick in overdoses, including five in less than a week. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"Two were fatal."}]

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"New Danger Hitting Rockies"}]

Now, federal investigators say they've encountered another unusual combination.

The DEA's Rocky Mountain Laboratory recently identified pills containing both fentanyl and heroin during drug seizures in Colorado and Utah.

The pills have not been found in Wyoming, but officials say that's no reason for Wyomingites to let down their guard.

When Ryan Cox, Wyoming Division of Criminal Investigation commander, heard the DEA had identified pills containing both fentanyl and heroin in neighboring states, he wanted to know which drug was being added to which.

"The fentanyl is more potent than the heroin," Cox said. "Heroin laced with fentanyl is more dangerous."

That distinction matters, Cox said, because someone who believes they're buying heroin but unknowingly consumes fentanyl faces a dramatically greater overdose risk.

Someone intentionally seeking fentanyl who unknowingly ingests heroin is still in danger, he said, but the heroin doesn't substantially increase the threat posed by fentanyl.

"The fact that they're adding a lesser substance into a more dangerous substance doesn't cause me as much concern as vice versa," he said.

Cox stressed that either combination can be deadly.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"An Unusual Discovery"}]

Another reason the discovery caught investigators' attention: Heroin rarely comes in pill form.

Steffan Tubbs, a DEA Rocky Mountain Division spokesman, said the DEA routinely sends seized drugs to its laboratory for analysis, but this time chemists identified tablets containing both heroin and fentanyl.

In some cases, they also detected carfentanil — an extremely powerful synthetic opioid originally developed for large animals that is about 100 times more potent than fentanyl.

"It's highly unusual to see heroin mixed in pill form, and then you combo that with fentanyl," Tubbs said. "It is definitely concerning."

The DEA declined to discuss the specific investigations or how many pills were recovered.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Wyoming Drug Hubs"}]

Investigators say geography makes Wyoming vulnerable if the trend spreads.

According to Cox, Wyoming's illicit drug market is heavily supplied through larger distribution hubs in neighboring states.

"Most of our state, our drug traffickers, either travel from Denver or it's locals that travel down to the Denver region ... to obtain drugs that are brought back into Wyoming," Cox said.

Meanwhile, traffickers serving southwest Wyoming frequently obtain drugs from the Salt Lake City area before redistributing them around the state.

In other words, when a new drug trend appears in Denver or Salt Lake City, Wyoming law enforcement pays attention.

The state might be sparsely populated, but its highways are not.

Interstates 80 and 25 remain major transportation corridors connecting drug markets across the West.

"If it's not something that is getting locally done," Cox said, adding as his voice trailed off: "If this is a trend that's coming right from the major distributors ..."

Given Wyoming's close ties to the Denver and Salt Lake City drug markets, Cox said it's exactly the kind of trend investigators will be watching closely.

"Don't think you're immune just because you're in the state of Wyoming," Tubbs said. "The cartels do not care what state you're in. If they can make money and they kill someone, that's the cost of doing business."

Waking up in a hospital with a naloxone drip in her arm after an overdose finally scared Lisa sober, and she's now warning people about the growing access to fentanyl in Wyoming. "It's a terrible way to live, worse than anything else," she says.

Daily Darwin: Saturday, June 15, 2024

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