It’s time to take a look at what’s happening around Wyoming for Monday, June 23rd. I’m Wendy Corr, bringing you headlines from the Cowboy State Daily newsroom - Brought to you by the Wyoming Community Foundation, who asks you to give back to the place you call home. “5 to thrive” is YOUR opportunity to leave a legacy for generations to come. Support the community nonprofits you care about with a gift through the Wyoming Community Foundation. Visit wycf.org to learn more.
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President Donald Trump’s decision to bomb three nuclear facilities in Iran is being met with praise from Wyoming’s congressional delegation.
Rep. Harriet Hageman told Cowboy State Daily’s Matthew Christian that she’s hopeful Trump’s decision will provide security to the Middle East and the rest of the world.
“Barrasso and Lummis said that it was the right decision, and Hageman said that she was optimistic that it would result in peace in the Middle East and around the world… Barrasso and Lummis both mentioned that Iran was a major threat to the world. And Hageman also thanked the troops and said that she was glad that the troops were safe.”
Trump said on Truth Social that no American fatalities resulted from the strikes.
Read the full story HERE.
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A 22-year-old Cheyenne man with four national speech championship wins to his name was arrested Thursday in Des Moines, Iowa, on claims he caused a “disturbance” at the National Speech and Debate tournament that cleared the event venue.
Jayden Roccaforte, who attended Cheyenne East High School and Casper College, was arrested after mounting the stage of the 2025 National Speech and Debate Tournament and making unsettling gestures and statements that prompted a sudden evacuation of thousands of spectators from the venue. Cowboy State Daily’s Clair McFarland reports that Roccaforte was reported to be with Cheyenne East students and coaches throughout the day Thursday.
“You know, I live in Riverton, and the kids here have gone to speech and debate in other communities. I just hearing just around the community, yeah, this was a massive stampede… I'm hearing that some kids were trampled like some like they dropped their phones, they left their shoes, their air pods were crushed. And so it's become a lot more real to me just as I've been going through my community and hearing what some of these kids experienced… Laramie County School District… denied that he was associated with Cheyenne east, where he was a four time Speech and Debate champion in his high school years… But after that, I heard from people who were there, like no… He was riding around with the team like he was. He was very closely associated.”
The Des Moines Police Department on Thursday said Roccaforte faces one misdemeanor count of disorderly conduct and two counts of drug possession, a “serious misdemeanor."
Read the full story HERE.
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Joran Cochran was a sociable kid, sometimes too sociable for his own good. His middle school teachers moved him around like a chess piece to stop him from talking to friends during class.
But bullying, assaults and incidents of retribution in high school changed the young man, and on Feb. 3, 2023, 18-year-old Joran took his own life.
Cowboy State Daily’s Zakary Sonntag spoke to Joran’s mother, Kari, who said his experience offers a lens into some of the biggest factors driving Wyoming’s intractably high suicide rates.
“She has become a very vocal organizer around the issue of suicide prevention in Sweetwater County and elsewhere, and it's been two years, and still this is just it is such a torment for her on a daily basis… there was a slow spiral that just began from his freshman year in high school, then it just kept building and kept declining all the way through his senior year of high school, and so it's a really sad story in the sense that you look at the bookends here, and it's a kid that is just very, very happy, sociable, ambitious and outgoing, and he leaves his high school Experience totally traumatized… it's a devastating tale, and it paints a picture of just all the all the challenges that a kid like Jordan faces in school systems and the health system, and the difficulty for parents trying to get help for kids like Jordan, and it's, yeah, it's powerful. It's left a lot of our readers with strong emotions and a lot to be done, and the problem has only gotten worse.”
Cochran was one of 35 Sweetwater County residents to die by suicide in 2023, with 75% involving firearms. He was among more than a half-dozen Rock Springs teens to die by suicide between 2021 and 2024.
Read the full story HERE.
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Rural Wyoming law enforcement is under the gun.
Small budgets, vast distances and a lack of manpower in general are just a few issues common to rural law enforcement across Wyoming, the least-populated state in the union, with just over half a million residents, and yet boasting the 10th largest landmass.
And several local law enforcement officials told Cowboy State Daily’s Jen Kocher that they’re now having to figure out how to serve their residents with tighter budgets, due to a newly passed 25% property tax cut.
“I talked to Hulett. I talked to Sheriff Bakken over in Carbon County, Sheriff Blackburn up in Big Horn County, and Sheriff Russell over in Platte County… not only are some of these counties enormous, where we're talking two hours from one end to one end, but also the terrain itself is also extremely difficult. So Big Horn County, you know, they have, you know, and this is in good weather, it might take two hours to get from one end to the other. And, you know, they've all come up with ways to strategically try to attempt to deal with this by where the deputies are living and getting budgets to have some deputies on call.”
Relatively speaking, Wyoming does have one of the lowest crime rates. In 2022, Wyoming had the fifth lowest crime rate in the nation. But as crimes become more sophisticated, rural law enforcement has to adapt its skills.
Read the full story HERE.
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It’s tornado season across the Great Plains. The combination of low-hanging summer air and cooler air aloft means the atmosphere is primed to turn storms into funnels of destruction.
But when a storm chaser based in Oklahoma City set out to follow a promising pocket of weather in southwest Nebraska on Monday evening, he didn’t expect to find the tornado of a lifetime.
Jim Tang told Cowboy State Daily’s Andrew Rossi that he witnessed what he called “a once-in-a-lifetime storm” that surpassed everything he’d seen in a decade of storm chasing.
“Tang was watching the storm this like the radar, making sure there was some interesting pocket of weather that he could catch. He saw something brewing in southwestern Nebraska, so he went out there, and he just happened to be in the right place at the right time to catch the perfect photo of this tornado. It wasn't especially big, wasn’t especially powerful and it… was only moving at about four miles per hour… at its widest point, it was about half the size of a football field, but just with the lighting and the lightning, and there was a rainbow in the backdrop. He said, It's a once in a lifetime kind of storm, and the kind of tornado that storm chasers dream about capturing.”
Cowboy State Daily meteorologist Don Day was in awe of the images and videos of the tornado. He commended Tang and the other storm chasers for their skill and artistry in capturing the incredible storm.
Read the full story HERE.
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You might think the oldest continuously operating Chinese restaurant in the U.S. would be in San Francisco or New York. Actually, it's in Butte, Montana. Jerry Tam is the owner of the Pekin Noodle Parlor and is the great, great grandson of the first owner - but he says he may be closing the book on this chapter of Montana history.
“A lot of forces are at play that make him consider finding a new chapter for himself and perhaps for the restaurant, it's definitely a beloved institution. His father was a legend and a really revered community member. And Jerry is facing, you know, a world where… we're spending more time at home looking at screens instead of going out and socializing. And you know, this restaurant, it was a social hub for decades, politicians made it a point to stop there and visit with Jerry's dad… I know a lot of people are rooting for the restaurant to continue, and we'll just see what happens.”
No matter what happens to the current incarnation of the Noodle Parlor, Madison says the legend of this place will live on for a very long time.
Read the full story HERE.
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Some have called him “The Voice of God.” Alan Roach, a longtime Colorado resident and the public address announcer for the major sports teams in Denver - as well as at Denver International Airport, was a guest on the Cowboy State Daily Morning Show with John Baggett last week.
Cowboy State Daily’s Justin George reports that Roach shared with listeners his journey of how he became one of the most popular public announcing voices in the nation.
“All the major pro sports teams that Wyomingites might go down to see in Colorado, Roach has been the… public announce addresser for almost all of them. He he did it for the Broncos. He was there for the Rockies. He continues to do it for the Rapids and the Avalanche… and also especially important that you recognize at the airport. He you hear his voice on the trains coming in and leaving, and has been sort of ubiquitous with the airport… he has a very special niche that he has specialized, that almost nobody else kind of has. And there are other people who do it, but no one on a professional level, on a level that's multiple, 17 Super Bowls, Olympic Games, Hall of Fame ceremonies, if you need a public announce addresser, it's going to be Alan Roach.”
Roach’s real name is Kelly James Burnham. His radio name came as a result of his brother having the nickname “Roach” in college.
Read the full story HERE.
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It’s been a difficult year for the Honey House in Dubois. That’s because the bee farm that supports the store, located in Crowheart, lost two-thirds of its colonies this year.
Cowboy State Daily’s Renee Jean reports that the loss was part of a wave of unusually large-scale honeybee losses throughout the Rocky Mountain and Midwest regions.
“There's several things that are going on for bees. Is kind of a complex thing. They call it colony collapse disorder, but it really covers so many things, like not enough nutrition in the fall going into the winter, varroa mites spreading around, diseases, pesticide exposure, not enough food in the spring, changing weather patterns… so the losses were really big. 67% of hives lost for by some operations… traditionally And historically, the European honey bees have been used for large commercial contracts the almond industry, in particular in California, bees are very important for that, and you know, they are important overall in the grand scheme of things.”
In order to make a pound of honey, bees must pollinate a million blossoms - and it takes 72 million bees to go out and collect from those millions of blooms. One beekeeper estimates that honey production potential has dropped by half for his area.
Read the full story HERE.
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At Hartville’s Kindness Ranch, former research animals get a rare second chance. But before healing can begin, labs must be convinced to release them into the ranch's care. Cowboy State Daily videographers Reilly Strand and Hannah Brock visited the facility, and their short documentary tells the stories of the animals learning to live life after the laboratory.
“So in the lab, all they know is a small area, probably concrete or linoleum or shavings when they first get here. It's kind of a mess like the first two or three days, because they're not used to going outside to go potty. They don't know what blankets are. They don't know what anything is. Actually, I live in the same house, or we call them a yurt with the dogs. My area where I live is sectioned off, and then I share the kitchen with the dogs so that they can get used to the noises that a normal house would have. So it would be easier to adopt them out.
“Each animal that kindness ranch takes in arrives with varying levels of detail about the research they were involved in, depending on what the lab is willing to share. So Bridget keeps a close eye on every dog in her care.
“We don't know what triggers them. Actually, I had an adopter. She was a high school teacher, a science teacher, and during the school year, that her dog, when she came home from work, would just bark, growl at her like kind of aggressively. And in the summer, she wouldn't, and then she figured out because she was wearing a white lab coat. So that's why there's different behavioral issues and depends on the personality of the dog.”
To learn more about these animals as well as others, you can watch the video at cowboystatedaily.com.
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And that’s today’s news. Get your free digital subscription to Wyoming's only statewide newspaper by hitting the Daily Newsletter button on Cowboy State Daily Dot Com - and you can watch this newscast every day by clicking Subscribe on our YouTube channel, or listen to us on your favorite podcast app. Thanks for tuning in - I’m Wendy Corr, for Cowboy State Daily.
