One More For The Road

To make ends meet, Cowboy State Daily's Wendy Corr is now driving for Uber....

One more for 2 17 25

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

<title>One More For The Road: Monday, February 17, 2025 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

One More For The Road: Monday, February 17, 2025

 To make ends meet, Cowboy State Daily's Wendy Corr is now driving for Uber....

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

Renée Jean

Wyoming Life

CHEYENNE — In 2022, Jessica Boyd put in an offer for an older home right on the edge of what she could afford on her hospital job’s salary. 

The mother of four had second thoughts over the home’s ancient heating unit. It looked Jurassic — like something that could go extinct at any moment, leaving her holding an expensive bag.

With four children to feed and care for, how could she possibly afford to replace the furnace if it finally croaked?

“I told them, I don’t want to move in with that in there,” she said. “I wanted them to go ahead and just replace it. They wouldn’t, so I decided not to purchase it.”

Homes in Boyd’s range — around $200,000 at current interest rates — haven’t gotten any better since then. 

“The homes in that range are trailers in trailer parks,” she said. “They’re not even on a foundation or anything.”

Or they are “massive” fixer uppers, like the $180,000 home she went to see that turned out to be a burned-out shell.

“I went to see it and when I looked inside, the whole inside was burned down,” she said. “I was like, ‘You’re selling this for that much money? You can’t even live in this'. It’s just crazy. Just insane.”

. Wyoming needs 20,000 to 38,000 more homes by 2030 to keep up with demand, according to a statewide housing study commissioned by Wyoming Community Development Authority. 

That gap is continuing to widen, as housing costs continue to rise faster than median incomes. 

Boyd was never supposed to be shopping for a home as a single parent. She and her children’s father had been looking at houses together, but he died a couple years ago.

Her hospital job as a team leader in the payments division pays well, she said, but she still can’t afford anything on the market in Cheyenne.

“Prices just keep getting higher and higher,” she said. “Really, without two incomes, without two people having a decent job, you’ll just be renting the rest of your life.”

Buyers like Boyd — working families shut out of conventional starter homes even with decent, full-time paychecks — are exactly who Habitat for Humanity is working to reach with its new Pronghorn Crossing neighborhood in Cheyenne, a 12-home development reserved for buyers who make 80% or less of median incomes. 

The development on the city’s eastern edge is the largest, most ambitious project to date for Habitat for Humanity of Laramie County. 

It will ultimately have six attached twin homes, for a total of 12 in all, ranging from three to four bedrooms, with two baths. 

The homes are being built with structurally insulated panels, high-efficiency mini-split heating and cooling, tankless water heaters and solar panels, all aimed at keeping utility bills low once families move in.

There are no garages and the yards are tiny, but for working-class families trying to find that first stepping stone to financial stability, it’s a lifesaver, Boyd said. 

“I lived in a townhome before and I always said, like, ‘I will never live back in a townhome style house',” Boyd said. “And when these came up, I was like, you know what, I’m not going to argue. I’m not going to be picking about it. This is a blessing, and I’m so grateful, so happy for this.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Not A Free Home"}]

Boyd isn’t the only Pronghorn Crossing buyer who has been shut out of Cheyenne’s starter home market. Victoria Hunt is also in line for one of the twin homes. 

The mother of three is a recovering addict, working hard for a second chance at life. 

“I met someone and just kind of got into like opiates and pills and things, and it just became worse and worse,” she said. “I went through a pretty rough divorce and I was separated, living with my family.”

During that time, she learned about drugs and street life. 

“That totally changed everything for me,” she said. “And then it went downhill really, really fast.”

After an arrest, she was offered the chance to try a treatment program in Rock Springs. 

“I spent five months there, and then literally came out with just the clothes on my back,” she said. 

She’s employed full-time now, but starting from scratch with three children is not an easy road. 

The day she learned she had been selected to become one of the 12 Habitat for Humanity home owners was one of the best of her life.

“I’ve already saved and have my down payment,” she said. “And now I just have to put in the hours.”

Habitat homes are not free. Buyers like Hunt and Boyd must get mortgages and pay closing costs. They also put in hundreds of hours of “sweat equity” working on their and their neighbors’ homes, which further helps lower the costs of building the homes.

Creating this development for second chances and first-time homebuyers wasn’t an easy task. It was a jigsaw puzzle from the start, one missing a few key pieces.

Habitat for Humanity’s Daffney Sandoval told Cowboy State Daily the .93-acre lot for the project was donated to Habitat for Humanity of Laramie County six years ago by Leaning Tree Homes. 

But a bare piece of land is just one piece of the puzzle. There were no streets, no sidewalks, no sewer or water lines — none of the basic infrastructure a nice neighborhood requires before even one house can go up.

“We kind of sat on it for a while because the cost of the infrastructure was going to cost over $1.8 million,” Sandoval said. “And that’s just the road, gutters, sewer, sidewalk, water stuff, the retaining walls and this detention pond.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"The math was tough for Habitat."}]

Its participants do obtain loans that help cover, on a sliding-fee scale basis, at least some of their home’s true costs. 

Each participant’s home cost is set based on their annual incomes, but if the actual cost lies too far outside what their incomes can cover, then the projects become too difficult for the nonprofit to pull off.  

So, in 2023, Habitat for Humanity decided to help advocate for a statewide Unmet Housing Needs fund in Wyoming. 

“They passed it with $10 million — $5 million from ARPA and $5 million in state funds,” Sandoval said. “And the city actually applied on our behalf to the Unmet Housing Needs fund to get the infrastructure completed here.”

That allowed the project to break ground in November 2024 to get the basic infrastructure in place.

With that in place, the homes work out to around $315,000 each, which is workable. 

Without it, the homes are closer to $375,000 — a price point that would push the homes out of reach for the very families the project is meant to serve. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"How To Turn Eight Into 12"}]

Policy changes at the local level also helped stretch the project further. 

Originally, there was only room for eight single-family dwellings on the property due to Cheyenne’s zoning and lot-size rules.

But the city has since rethought many of its ordinances around home-building, hoping to spur new construction. 

It has scrapped minimum lot sizes for residential properties, removed density caps for multi-family units, changed setbacks, and removed minimum parking requirements. 

They’ve removed luxury material requirements from multi-family building facades and display-window requirements for multi-family dwelling units.

They’ve also added cottage lots, for multiple, small, clustered houses designed to face a shared common open space. Sharing infrastructure that way helped further lower construction costs for the Habitat project, Sandoval added.

“We’ll have plenty of parking,” she said. “And we’ll do a privacy fence in the back, and we used the cottage law amendment with the city, so we have kind of shared yard spaces.”

The cottage lot option also allowed Habitat to build six twin homes for 12 units in all, instead of just eight.

Each of the homes will carry a small, forgivable second mortgage and a shared-equity clause — along with Habitat’s right of first refusal if owners ever decide to sell. That prevents quick flips, and helps ensure the units remain affordable for future working families, Sandoval said.

As big a lifesaver as the Unmet Housing Needs fund was for the Pronghorn Crossing project, the $10 million fund is barely scratching the itch that is Wyoming’s housing problem.

When the state opened applications for grants from the Unmet Housing Needs fund, communities responded with 21 separate proposals totaling roughly $51 million in requested help — more than five times what the fund could provide. 

The projects included many aimed at workforce housing, as well as senior housing, and other developments similar to Pronghorn Crossing in towns all over Wyoming. 

That has Habitat pushing for other big-picture changes at the state level — fixes that don’t necessarily require a big new pot of money but that would change how existing tools can be used.

One example Executive Director Dan Dorsch cited is the TIF district, a special taxing district that works by borrowing from future tax revenue generated by property improvements. 

Typically used for blighted or vacant properties, the structure is intended to answer the chicken-and-egg proposition for a tract of land that’s not going anywhere because the costs of cleaning it up or building infrastructure mean developments don’t pencil out.

Dorsch said he believes the same dynamic could be used for affordable-housing projects, instead of just blighted or vacant lots, to help get them off the ground.

“Affordable housing improves property taxes as well,” he said. “So the same principle would work.”

Pronghorn, for example, will generate new property tax increases totaling up to $48,000 annually.

“Nobody can build affordable housing,” he said. “So why not have that incentive there to build it?”

Habitat 20260707 110001 7 11 26

<title>Cheyenne’s Habitat Fix Turns Eight Homes Into Affordable Housing For 12 Families | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Two single moms shut out of Cheyenne’s starter-home market are among 12 families getting a chance at homeownership in a new Habitat for Humanity  neighborhood. Once set for eight houses, it grew to 12 after Cheyenne rewrote building and zoning rules.

Cheyenne’s Habitat Fix Turns Eight Homes Into Affordable Housing For 12 Families

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily reporter, Dale Killingbeck

Dale Killingbeck

Around Wyoming

A Gillette mom believes this summer and early fall likely represents the last chance she’ll have to make memories with her daughter who is battling a life-ending condition.

Plans for road trips that would allow Londen Tabor and her daughter Autumn, 20, to drive the Badlands, camp in the Black Hills, go rock hounding across the state, and travel to North Carolina to see family in their 2000 Chevy Suburban are on hold because the SUV's transmission just died.

“I was driving along and thought, ‘Are you kidding me,'” Tabor said when the vehicle broke down. “The Suburban is completely out now, and it just feels like the world is against me.”

If the transmission hadn't failed, a short camping trip using the Suburban in May to an agate festival in Montana revealed that the heat, space, and mosquitos — coupled with her daughter being in the last stage of juvenile Huntington’s disease — meant taking the Suburban across the country was not going to work.

Tabor, 43, hasn’t given up on making that last road trip happen and is 

Autumn was diagnosed with the disease in 2018 at age 12, which also is the same year that her father, Justin Fender, died from the same condition at age 36. 

Tabor and Fender never married and had broken up in 2008, but Tabor said he moved to the Gillette area to be near their children, Autumn and her brother Logan. Her oldest son, Dakota, also considered him as his dad.

Tabor married her husband Chris in 2014, and he adopted Autumn.

Seeing the disease that took Fender now gripping her only daughter “breaks my heart,” Tabor said.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Disease’s Impact"}]

The website for the Huntington’s Disease Society of America says the disease affects brain cells, resulting in changes in personality, coordination, behavior, speech, or the ability to learn, according to the Huntington’s Disease Society of America.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"Tabor has witnessed all of that in Autumn."}]

Tabor said her daughter went from being a cheerleader in her freshman and sophomore years of high school to a measured decline that has brought her to a place today where she is totally dependent on Tabor for care.

Young people with the disease typically decline five times faster than adults, she said.

“It’s crazy, because you go from 2018 and then 2019 and 2020, and there are these little changes,” she said. "Up until about 2021, she could still ride a bike.

"Then we got her a three-wheel bike, but it was only a year that she was able to ride it.”

 with Autumn that was meant to share their journey with the disease and educate others. Over the years, they’ve gathered 160,000 followers.

The mother and daughter in 2023 turned a journey that included a Huntington’s Disease Association event into a 6,280-mile trip from Wyoming to Arkansas, Tennessee, the Carolinas and a stop at the White House. 

They made the trip in Tabor’s small Kia Soul, stayed in hotels, and made a couple of media appearances.

But to use the Kia now would be much more difficult. 

Tabor needs to transfer Autumn in and out of the vehicle and put her wheelchair in it.

Tabor said sometimes it’s hard to look back on her TikTok posts because they show the rapid progression of Autumn’s disease. 

But the social media platform has also forged new relationships they never would have had before.

During their 2023 trip, Autumn and her mom visited and stayed with an Arkansas woman who they had connected with over the social media platform. They hope to visit her again this year.

<blockquote class="tiktok-embed" cite="https://www.tiktok.com/@londenandautumn/video/7580103755614489886" data-video-id="7580103755614489886" style="max-width: 605px;min-width: 325px;" > <section> <a target="_blank" title="@londenandautumn" href="https://www.tiktok.com/@londenandautumn?refer=embed">@londenandautumn</a> Trying to find the light through all the darkness. :broken_heart:  <a title="juvenilehuntingtonsdisease" target="_blank" href="https://www.tiktok.com/tag/juvenilehuntingtonsdisease?refer=embed">#JuvenileHuntingtonsDisease</a> <a title="huntingtonsdisease" target="_blank" href="https://www.tiktok.com/tag/huntingtonsdisease?refer=embed">#HuntingtonsDisease</a> <a title="jhdawareness" target="_blank" href="https://www.tiktok.com/tag/jhdawareness?refer=embed">#jhdawareness</a> <a title="jhdwarrior" target="_blank" href="https://www.tiktok.com/tag/jhdwarrior?refer=embed">#jhdwarrior</a> <a title="huntingtonsdiseaseawareness:blue_heart::purple_heart:" target="_blank" href="https://www.tiktok.com/tag/huntingtonsdiseaseawareness%F0%9F%92%99%F0%9F%92%9C?refer=embed">#huntingtonsdiseaseawareness:blue_heart::purple_heart:</a> <a target="_blank" title="♬ Light of the Soul - SANTANA J.L.M" href="https://www.tiktok.com/music/Light-of-the-Soul-7398942910102865937?refer=embed">♬ Light of the Soul - SANTANA J.L.M</a> </section> </blockquote> <script async src="https://www.tiktok.com/embed.js"></script>

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"The Agenda"}]

Tabor’s initial plans were to go on a rockhounding trip across Wyoming on their way to Salt Lake City for the National Youth Alliance’s juvenile Huntington’s disease retreat later this month. 

She’s bought tickets for a Benson Boone concert in Casper in early September. Her daughter is a big fan.

Later in September, the plan called for a monthlong road trip to the East Coast to visit her sons and Autumn’s brothers in North Carolina, Tabor’s family in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, a stop at the Omaha zoo in Nebraska, and the drive to Arkansas.

“This is like the last chance I have to do this with my daughter,” Tabor said. “I just want a couple of months with my daughter (where) I don’t have to worry and I have a climate-controlled vehicle that I could pull over and feed her.”

In the meantime, Autumn’s decline continues. Now, she's finding it harder to swallow.

to rent a camping van from late this month through October for the trips was difficult.

She did not want to have to ask for help from others, but it seemed like the only viable solution.

“I know what this disease does. I know how fast it progresses,” she said. “I know where we are at, and it’s not looking good.”

The trips are not about a “luxury vacation” on wheels, but an attempt to provide a safe environment and allow her daughter to “get out there and live life to the fullest while she still can,” Tabor wrote in her GoFundMe post.

She appreciates those who have already responded, which as of Saturday is at $3,327 of a $9,000 goal.

Tabor, who for a couple of years experienced her own health issues and had to leave a position taking care of finances at a dental clinic, stays home and looks after Autumn. 

Her daughter goes to a “day-hab” a few days a week with others who have disabilities, she said.

The hardest thing for Tabor remains thinking back to Autumn’s “normal years” before the diagnosis and having to watch her transformation under the disease.

“I don’t know what’s worse, just having something you have to face your whole life or to have this beautiful, amazing child, and then all of a sudden have her just start to be ripped away from you,” Tabor said. “To be ripped away slowly and slowly until there is nothing left and to know what she could have had.”

Contact Dale Killingbeck at dale@cowboystatedaily.com

Last trip Mother Daughter 7 11 26

<title>Last Road Trip For Gillette Mom And Dying Daughter Derailed By Broken-Down SUV | Cowboy State Daily</title>

A Gillette woman's plans for one last summer road trip with her dying daughter have been derailed by a failed transmission in their 26-year-old SUV. But she's not giving up hope. “This is the last chance I have to do this with my daughter,” Londen Tabor said.

Last Road Trip For Gillette Mom And Dying Daughter Derailed By Broken-Down SUV

Employee kate meadows cropped

Kate Meadows

Entertainment

[{"type":"text","text":"It started with a selfie."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"That's the funny part of the story, said Bradlee Skinner."}]

The remarkable part came years earlier, when the former Wyoming high school English teacher was homeless, delivering pizzas and wondering how his life had unraveled.

Today, Skinner spends his weekends DJ'ing in front of tens of thousands of screaming fans for the Savannah Bananas, the wildly popular baseball entertainment phenomenon that has become one of the hottest tickets in sports.

[{"type":"text","text":"\"It's been amazing,\" Skinner told Cowboy State Daily."}]

The job has taken him from Wyoming classrooms to iconic ballparks such as Coors Field in Denver and soon Wrigley Field in Chicago, where he rubs shoulders with performers and entertainers he once showed his students as examples of creative excellence.

It's a journey Skinner never could have imagined when life hit rock bottom more than a decade ago.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"From Rock Bottom To The Classroom"}]

In 2013, Skinner had lost nearly everything. 

He had quit a teaching job, saying, "I reached a point where if I didn't end it, it was going to end me." 

But he said his mental health was unstable then, and he found he could not land another job. 

[{"type":"text","text":"Soon, the money ran out."}]

"I had lost my job, lost my house, lost a lot of my self-identity," he said. "I was in a really, really dark place."

While delivering pizzas and doing anything he could to earn a buck, Skinner said he hadn't yet learned the importance of caring for his mental health as much as his physical health.

[{"type":"text","text":"The people around him carried him through."}]

"I could either be humiliated that I was dancing on a street corner, or I could be humbled that people cared enough to reach out," he told Cowboy State Daily.

A former student even offered him and his wife, Melissa, a place to live.  

[{"type":"text","text":"Those moments changed Skinner’s perspective."}]

Later, when he interviewed for a teaching position at Rock Springs High School, then principal Darrin Peppard recognized Skinner as someone who needed an opportunity.

"I was more than happy to give him that opportunity," Peppard said. "Almost immediately I noticed, once the school year began, he's just a kid magnet. Students are just drawn to him."

Skinner spent three years teaching in Rock Springs before moving to Green River High School, where over the next nine years he taught English while building the school's theater program.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Baseball Meets Broadway"}]

[{"type":"text","text":"Outside the classroom, Skinner had another passion."}]

He DJ'ed weddings, school dances and corporate events with Melissa through their Wyoming entertainment company, Phony Stark Industries.

[{"type":"text","text":"The name came out of the blue, courtesy of one of his students."}]

One day in class, a student remarked that Skinner resembled Tony Stark from the 

Another student sitting in the back of the classroom immediately replied, "It's more like Phony Stark."

[{"type":"text","text":"The name stuck."}]

Melissa also played an unexpected role in launching Skinner's DJ career. While in college, he enrolled in a radio broadcasting class, he jokes, because "there was this really cute girl who ran the radio show."

[{"type":"text","text":"That girl was Melissa."}]

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Discovering Banana Ball"}]

[{"type":"text","text":"Skinner first heard about the Savannah Bananas in 2022."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"\"I was like, 'This is weird',\" he said."}]

Founded by Jesse and Emily Cole, the Bananas were created with one goal: make baseball fun again.

The organization transformed the traditional game into "Banana Ball," a fast-paced version with a two-hour time limit, no bunts, no walks and fans catching foul balls for outs. Baseball is only part of the show.

Players, all in bright yellow uniforms, dance between innings. A senior-citizen dance troupe called the Banana Nanas performs alongside the Man-Nanas, a dad-bod cheerleading squad. Even the first-base coach breakdances. Team owner Jesse Cole famously wears a bright yellow tuxedo.

The result has become one of the biggest sensations in sports entertainment.

"I think it's easier to get tickets to see Taylor Swift than see the Bananas right now," Peppard said.

As someone with backgrounds in both theater and entertainment, Skinner was fascinated.

"The preshow, the postgame party – everything is a theatrical performance," he said.

In 2024, he brought a group of Green River High theater students to Salt Lake City to watch the Bananas play the Party Animals. By then, he was teaching English and building the theater program.

He said he wanted his students to see how theatrical skills translate far beyond the stage.

“Students see you can be involved in theatre and the skills you can learn don’t always have to be on the stage,” he said.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"One Selfie Changed Everything"}]

[{"type":"text","text":"Before the game, players mingled with fans outside the stadium."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"Skinner heard music and immediately knew there had to be a DJ nearby."}]

While his students posed for pictures with players, Skinner wandered over and snapped a selfie with the DJ in the background.

[{"type":"text","text":"The DJ noticed."}]

The two struck up a conversation about their work, exchanged contact information and stayed in touch.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"No Pressure — Just 50,000 People"}]

Early in 2025, the Bananas' DJ contacted Skinner and encouraged him to audition for a DJ slot. They were adding more teams, and auditions for new DJs were being scheduled.

[{"type":"text","text":"Skinner quickly submitted a demo reel."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"Interview after interview followed."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"Eventually, he received a phone call inviting him to audition in person."}]

He assumed the tryout would happen at the team's home stadium in Savannah, Georgia, or perhaps another minor league ballpark.

[{"type":"text","text":"Instead, they invited him to Coors Field."}]

"Oh yeah, sure," he remembers thinking. "I'll DJ in front of 50,000 people. No pressure."

[{"type":"text","text":"The audition worked."}]

Skinner joined the organization for the 2026 season, performing with both the Bananas and one of the league's newer teams, the Texas Tailgaters.

“The opportunity just became too big and it’s too exciting (to pass up),” he said.

He resigned from his teaching post in Green River at the end of the school year.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"'He's Living His Best Life'"}]

[{"type":"text","text":"When Skinner shared the news with his students, many were stunned."}]

“It was like this big ahhh moment, like, that’s pretty crazy,” former student Jeremy Neher said. “He told us with a smile on his face. He seemed to be ecstatic.”

Fellow English teacher Victoria Hemphill told Cowboy State Daily she saw the struggle Skinner had in leaving the school.

[{"type":"text","text":"“He knew he was impacting kids,” she said."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"She called the move to DJ brave."}]

“The selfish side of me says, yes, I would love to have Brad back in the school,” she said. “But seeing him see so brave, I can say, ‘Hey, I know that guy'.”

[{"type":"text","text":"Peppard said he wasn't surprised by the career move."}]

"My reaction was, obviously I am so excited for him, but in part I'm not surprised at all," he said. "He's living his best life."

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Never Too Old To Chase A Dream"}]

During the baseball offseason, Skinner plans to continue DJ'ing weddings and corporate events while growing an educational speaking and consulting business.

[{"type":"text","text":"He also said he believes he'll return to teaching someday."}]

Green River's Bradlee Skinner was homeless, delivering pizzas and wondering how his life had unraveled. Now he performs before sold-out crowds with the Savannah Bananas, baseball's wildly popular entertainment phenomenon. And it all started with a selfie.

One More For The Road: Monday, February 17, 2025

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