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

<title>Bonus Video 1: Friday, July 26, 2024 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Bonus Video 1: Friday, July 26, 2024

 Call me old-fashioned, but the traditional mail service was working just fine....

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

Renée Jean

Wyoming Life

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

<title>Cheyenne Woman Saving 1910-Era Grain Elevator Wants To Resurrect City’s West Side | Cowboy State Daily</title>

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.

Cheyenne Woman Saving 1910-Era Grain Elevator Wants To Resurrect City’s West Side

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."

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Impervious To Danger"}]

Lisa isn’t aware of heroin pills laced with fentanyl in Wyoming but said fentanyl is now being sold in Wyoming in a powder form, which is different.

“I never had any experience with that, but I hear it’s worse,” she said.

She also said each fentanyl pill – which can cost about $30 on the street in Wyoming versus a fraction of that cost in larger cities in Colorado and elsewhere – wildly varies from one pill to the next.

In a batch, she said you might get one that is super potent while an another can seem to contain little drug at all because they are pressed at random with no consistency.

And despite the dangers, Lisa said in her experience the drug is so addictive it’s like it takes over the body and makes you want to do anything you can to get the next dose.

“It’s one of those things that you have to have it in order not to be sick,” she said.

The withdrawal side effects feel worse than death, she said, including nausea, stomach cramps, fading in and out of vision and severe body temperature fluctuations, to name a few.

It’s worse than any other drug she’s experienced, including methamphetamine and heroin.

“When you’re coming off of it, you know it’s not going to kill you, but it’s hard to think that way when you’re going through it,” she said.

If she could say one thing to anyone thinking about trying it, it's: Don’t do it. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"It will ruin your life."}]

“Once you go down that road, it’s quick,” she said.

She’s working hard now to stay sober and attempt to repair all the damaged relationships in her life, which is a slow, uphill climb.

“It can impact anyone,” she said. “It doesn’t discriminate.”

Fentanyl addicts 8 9 26

<title>'It's A Terrible Way To Live,’ Says Former Addict About Wyoming’s Fentanyl Crisis | Cowboy State Daily</title>

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.

'It's A Terrible Way To Live,’ Says Former Addict About Wyoming’s Fentanyl Crisis

A Kinnear man has spent years helping people convicted of crimes figure out what comes next when they leave prison.

Clifford Fewel runs Stay Free Forever, providing courses for people involved in the criminal justice system in Wyoming and Colorado. 

Some are still incarcerated. Others are on probation or parole. Many are trying to find work, rebuild relationships and adjust to a life outside prison that's far more complicated than simply walking through the gates.

The name of his company comes from something Fewel used to tell inmates while working in corrections. When someone was preparing to leave prison, instead of saying, "Don't come back," he would offer a more positive sendoff: "Stay free forever."

His courses cover employment, financial skills, digital literacy, reentry and self-awareness, but Fewel said the work often goes much deeper than teaching someone how to write a résumé.

It can mean helping people understand why they keep making the same mistakes, how their upbringing shaped them and how to move past the shame that can follow incarceration.

"I'm not a therapist," Fewel said. "I'm just a coach. I'm just a mentor. I'm just a guy who provides classes."

Sometimes, he has found, the first step toward finding and keeping a job is getting someone to believe they are capable of doing it.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"An Unlikely Career"}]

[{"type":"text","text":"Fewel did not plan on a career in corrections."}]

After losing a newspaper advertising job and moving to Arizona, he needed work with benefits and reluctantly applied to the state prison system.

He knew prison guards when he was bartending in Folsom, California, and they did not exactly sell on the profession. But the prison job offered health insurance from day one, so he took it.

He worked as a corrections officer, joined the training cadre, became a programs officer and eventually moved into parole. One of his strengths, he said, was being able to relate to inmates without feeling superior to them. 

"I just don't believe that any one of us is any better than the others, despite what we may have done wrong," he said.

Working inside a prison also changed his perception of incarceration. Most days, he said, aren't filled with the violence and chaos depicted on television. Corrections officers and inmates might spend part of a shift talking about football, movies or the job market.

Fewel came to see his role differently, too. The inmates had already been judged and sentenced. His job wasn't to punish them again.

Eventually, he became increasingly interested in programs aimed at helping people succeed after release. He later moved to Colorado to provide those courses and added Wyoming to his territory after marrying and settling in Fremont County.

Fewel remembers teaching classes inside prison and asking inmates to physically choose sides of a room based on their answers to different questions.

[{"type":"text","text":"Ford or Chevy? Xbox or PlayStation? Chocolate or vanilla?"}]

[{"type":"text","text":"Then he'd ask: When I got sent to prison, did I abandon my family?"}]

[{"type":"text","text":"Most chose yes."}]

Fewel would challenge them to consider whether abandonment was actually what they'd intended. They might have intended to sell drugs, steal or engage in whatever behavior ultimately landed them in prison, but he didn't believe most woke up that morning planning to abandon their children, spouses or parents.

Sometimes seven or eight out of 10 would eventually stand up and move to the other side of the room.

[{"type":"text","text":"\"Self-forgiveness is huge,\" Fewel said."}]

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"A Job Is A Job"}]

The former tribal judge was convicted on federal drug charges and served six months in federal prison. When she was released in June 2021, she returned to Wyoming through a halfway house in Casper.

Her sister picked her up at the airport, helped her get clothes and supported her while she worked to get back on her feet.

[{"type":"text","text":"One of Smith's requirements after prison was taking a course from Fewel."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"Another was finding a job."}]

Smith had bachelor's and law degrees, but her first job after prison was housekeeping at a Casper hotel. She remembers making about $10.25 an hour.

"It was very humbling," Smith said. "It was the hardest I've ever worked for a job for the least amount of pay, but it was great."

The experience now informs what she tells other people leaving prison: "A job is a job."

For people whose criminal behavior was connected to substance use, Smith said employment provides more than a paycheck. It provides structure.

"If you have all this time on your hands, you're gonna go start using or start doing things you used to do before," she said.

Having somewhere to be every day gives people money, responsibility and routine.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"'Tripwires All Over The Place'"}]

[{"type":"text","text":"Leaving prison doesn't necessarily mean unrestricted freedom."}]

People on probation or parole may still have rules about where they can go, what they can do and whom they must report to.

"There's freedom, yes, but not freedom like you and I enjoy," Fewel said. "There are tripwires all over the place."

For people who have spent decades behind bars, another challenge can be simply learning how the modern world works.

Fewel has worked with people who went to prison when phones were still attached to landlines or when mobile phones were bulky devices with antennas, only to emerge into a world run through smartphones and apps.

"Now they're flat-screen mobile computing units with television and movies and sports 24/7," Fewel said.

Learning to navigate everyday technology is a big piece of reentry, which is why digital literacy is among the courses he offers.

Plenty of hurdles await in the real world, Fewel said, and even with preparation and support, not everyone is guaranteed success.

Fewel still thinks about a former inmate named Cody who worked as a porter in the programs office at the Arizona prison. He remembers him as clean-cut, hardworking and creative.

Cody once led a group of inmates in building a detailed three-quarter-scale replica of a 1936 Ford pickup entirely from cardboard, complete with a stick shift, working gas cap and removable dipstick. The truck went on to win first place in a Fourth of July parade.

[{"type":"text","text":"\"He was a dynamo,\" Fewel said."}]

When Cody left prison, he planned to work as a diesel mechanic, but Fewel said a local restriction prevented him from doing so because of his felony record. He took another mechanic job instead, got married and initially seemed to be doing well.

About a year later, Fewel called to check on him and learned Cody had started drinking again, left his wife and moved away. She didn't know where he was.

[{"type":"text","text":"\"It was heartbreaking,\" Fewel said. "}]

Fewel said many offenders benefit from the structure and "guardrails" of prison. Outside, "old instincts, old patterns" can take over. 

Smith has seen those setbacks, too, but she doesn't necessarily consider them the end.

One client she worked with returned to custody three times before joining her program and trying again. On his fourth attempt, Smith said, he began working and earned his commercial learner's permit.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Words Of Encouragement"}]

Today, Smith is the administrator of the Northern Arapaho Reentry Agency, a Wind River Reservation program that helps people returning from prison find employment, housing, treatment and other services needed to rebuild their lives.

She helps people find jobs, complete applications, prepare résumés and get to interviews.

[{"type":"text","text":"Her work has also brought her relationship with Fewel full circle."}]

Smith knew Fewel when she worked as a tribal judge. After prison, she became one of his students.

Now, some of Smith's clients on federal probation are required to take Stay Free Forever courses, and when they do, Smith may serve as their life coach.

[{"type":"text","text":"She now considers Fewel a friend."}]

Smith said her own experience is valuable when she's sitting across from someone who feels hopeless.

She can tell them she, too, has been to prison. She has struggled with addiction and had to rebuild her own working life from the bottom.

[{"type":"text","text":"Then she can point to others who have done it."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"\"I know you can get a job,\" she tells them."}]

That kind of encouragement may be something some of her clients have rarely received, she explains.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Staying Free"}]

Fewel wants people to find work, but he doesn't want them to stop dreaming once they get their first paycheck.

One man he worked with loved motorcycles and told Fewel he wanted to own a Harley-Davidson dealership.

Eventually, he landed an entry-level position polishing bikes, which led to mechanical work and, later, a position as an assistant general manager.

Finding a job after prison is hard, and keeping it is harder, says one Wyoming man who knows the corrections system and helps felons get jobs. Clifford Fewel says new freedom has a lot of tripwires and his goal is to help these people "stay free forever."

Bonus Video 1: Friday, July 26, 2024

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