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[{"type":"text","text":"Top notch customer service, as narrated by MMA announcer Steve Inman...."}]

Inman 1 4 25

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

<title>One More For The Road: Saturday, January 4, 2025 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Top notch customer service, as narrated by MMA announcer Steve Inman....

One More For The Road: Saturday, January 4, 2025

 Top notch customer service, as narrated by MMA announcer Steve Inman....

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

<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

Kolby fedore

Kolby Fedore

Crime & Courts

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.

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."

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