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

<title>Today In Office Efficiency: Friday, January 2, 2026 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

When you bring in outside consultants to help.....

Today In Office Efficiency: Friday, January 2, 2026

 When you bring in outside consultants to help.....

Zakary Sonntag

Wyoming Life

Around Wyoming

Rusty Rawson was good at asking for trouble. He wasn’t good at asking for help. That started to change one night in a desert wash on the outskirts of Las Vegas.

He was out of work, hooked on meth, and surviving by the reflexes of a gang life he thought he’d left behind.

He slept in a makeshift fort of rods and tarp. He boiled water for hygiene over an open flame and washed his clothes in a splash pad at the public park. 

To sustain his addiction, he beat up pedestrians and robbed them for cash.

Through it all, he had a partner in crime: his 11-year-old son, Sterling.

Rusty knew if they were caught by police the state would take his son. It was the outcome he feared most, and it began to feel inevitable. Then one night a thought dropped into his head.

in our little hut we built in the desert, and out of nowhere I heard something tell me, 'Ask your son what to do. He’s got the answer,'” Rusty said.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"‘Go Back To Casper'"}]

It wasn’t in his nature to take direction, but the thought wouldn’t go away. 

Finally, he turned to his son and said, “What do I need to do for you?” 

Sterling said the question caught him off guard, but the answer came to him instantly.

"I turned to him with as calm a voice as I had, and said, ‘Dad, everything will be OK if we go back to Casper,’" Sterling said. 

Three days later, they were on a bus to Wyoming, where Sterling was raised. 

Now, nearly two years after their return, father and son find themselves within sight of a future that once felt out of reach.

Their turnaround, rooted in the Wyoming Rescue Mission, stands out not just for how far they’ve come, but for the role each played in helping the other get there.

At a time when homelessness has reached record levels nationwide, and growing numbers of children experience housing instability, their story offers a rare perspective about what happens when a child becomes the steadying force in a parent's life.

“The only thing that kept me sane at that time was my son,” said Rusty. “He kept me calm. He was my peace.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Not The One To ‘Test’"}]

Rusty Rawson has a barrel chest and a bald head. 

He grows a mustache to hide his missing teeth, half of which he lost in a blow from a baseball bat. The rest fell out from decay because of meth use, a habit he picked up at the age of 12.

He fidgets with tissue to mitigate his ADHD and bounces his leg when anxious; it bounces a lot when he talks of his past.

He grew up in a trailer home in North Las Vegas. He ran with rough crowds, but he also showed promise as an athlete. 

As a freshman at Western High School, he placed second in state as a wrestler. He placed second again his sophomore year, and then took fifth place in high school wrestling nationals.

All the while his support system at home weakened due to his parents’ failing health.

His father, a Teamsters Union truck driver, was sidelined by a severe bowel condition and repeated surgeries. His mother’s life was upended by a sexual assault and later a brain tumor that led to surgically induced epilepsy.

“I had to fend for myself,” Rusty said. “I started selling drugs, and school was the best place to do that.”

He was caught with marijuana at high school his sophomore year, and administrators responded by barring him from extra-curricular activities, like wrestling. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"That’s when he dropped out."}]

He was one of the few white kids in a predominantly black neighborhood, and he said that made him a target for rigorous “testing,” street speak for measuring whether he’d fold in the face of intimidation, or if he’d fight back.

“I was a white kid in a black neighborhood, so we would get tested a lot more to see if we had the heart, to see if we were down, to see if we could scrap,” he said.

“I always — always — let them know that I wasn’t the one to test.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Life Closing In"}]

He earned respect, but rising in the gang life only put a bigger target on his back. 

His first close call with violence happened in junior high, right in front of his school locker, when a classmate rushed from behind and stabbed him with a knife in the back, narrowly missing Rusty’s spine.

The violence ramped up from there, finding him on street corners, and even at home, endangering not only himself, but his family. 

One evening he was standing in the front room when semiautomatic gunfire ripped through his family’s trailer. 

Rusty was struck in the leg. His uncle, watching television, took a bullet in the arm. His mother ducked below the kitchen counter as shards of a broken coffee pot rained down on her head.

"That’s when they kicked me out,” said Rusty, who was 15 years old at the time. “They didn't like their house getting shot up."

Even as he drifted in and out of trouble through his teens, Rusty yearned to build an honest life. 

By 20, he’d begun work as a truck driver. A few years later, he took a gig with a pipeline company in Rock Springs, Wyoming. 

In Rock Springs, he met a woman and had a son — Sterling.

Sterling Rawson has a long mop of curly hair, reminiscent of a younger Weird Al Yankovic, a stark contrast to his father’s hairless head. 

But they have far more in common than not, beginning with an unwavering loyalty to one another.

Sterling’s first 10 years were relatively stable. He lived with both parents for a while and had good friends at Cottonwood Elementary. 

When his parents separated, Rusty became Sterling’s primary, and then sole, caregiver.

They lived together at the Aspen Trailer Court in Casper until 2023, when a redevelopment project forced them out. That’s when Rusty decided to move back to Vegas to take a job driving dirt trucks.

Once there, it didn’t take long for his old habits to find him again.

“I was clean for four and a half years. But the people that I knew from before, I ran into instantly,” Rusty said. “About 24 hours after being back in Vegas, I started getting high.”

Within a year, meth use caused Rusty to lose his job as well as their rental home. Sterling didn't finish sixth grade. Instead, he got an education on how to survive on the street.

Sterling described homeless life as a grinding, joyless routine.

Every night they set up a shelter. Every morning, they took it down. They dove dumpsters for food, collected empty cans and bottles to redeem for cash. 

On some occasions, they walked as many as 20 miles in a day. They cooled off in the fountains at the city park.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"‘Death, Rape, Murder'"}]

Sterling talks about this life in a calm, even tone, as if it were merely an unglamorous summer job. 

“There wasn’t anything really fun about it,” said Sterling. “It was just surviving.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"His father spoke of it more cynically."}]

“Death, rape, murder,” said Rusty, listing the dangers prevalent in the encampment. “And I’m out there with my son, trying to protect him while being homeless.”

His father carried the fear for both of them.

“I knew my dad would protect me. I know that I was safe with him. I know what he can do. I wasn’t scared.” Sterling said, offering an example of how his father had fought off thieves in the wash. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"Although, there was an exception."}]

“The only time I felt scared was when my dad was getting high; anytime my dad was on drugs,” he said.

As Rusty fell into a state despair, Sterling kept his cool, which is why his father eventually followed the silent prompt he felt that night in the wash. 

Sterling didn’t see the responsibility coming, but he was ready for it.

“When he turned and looked at me and asked me with a kind of a shaky voice (what to do), I just knew that going back to Casper was the only right choice,” Sterling said. 

“It was the best decision we made so far,” he added.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Back To Casper"}]

For a week, they lived out of an SUV parked in the back of a Pilot truck stop in Casper. Then the truck stop clerk told them where they could get a free plate of hot food: Wyoming Rescue Mission.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"They got more than a hot meal."}]

For the last 18 months, Rusty and Sterling have been staying in beds at the Mission, where Rusty has joined its Discipleship Program, a Bible-based recovery program he said has helped him come to terms with his struggle.

When he talked about that day’s program lesson on the letters of Paul, his eyes lit up. His leg stopped bouncing, too. 

“I think there was something divine talking to me in the desert that day, telling me to look towards my son for the answer,” he said. “God, Jesus, the Holy Trinity, however you want to look at it, but that's what it is to me.”

It’s also given his son the stability needed to go back to school. 

If Sterling comes across like a world-wise adult when discussing life on the street, he sounds more his age, now 14, when the topic turns to favorite subjects in school.

He grins while showing off an assignment from wood shop, a “tire thumper” used by truck drivers to get a quick read of air pressure. He made it for his dad. 

Yet living on the street forced Sterling to grow up quickly, and he sometimes feels disconnected from a cohort of classmates his age whose drama strikes him as trivial.

“They all were immature compared to what I've been through. They all acted so immature that it was hard to be friends with them," he said, explaining that he now gravitates toward older company. “Most of my new friends I have are either seniors, juniors, or sophomores.”

He’s taken a special interest in the subjects of culinary arts and mathematics, and despite missing two years of school, this week he finished his freshman year from Kelly Walsh High School with a 3.8 GPA.

This summer he’s going to wrestling camp. Next year he plans to join the JROTC. 

When they first arrived in Wyoming, the father and son were sharing two pairs of shorts and three T-shirts between them. They now have independent wardrobes.

Last week, Sterling’s friend gave him his first pair of Air Jordans. Next week, Rusty will start the process of having new teeth implanted with help from the Mission.

What hasn’t changed is the thing that got them through.

“We’re best friends. We always have been,” said Rusty, turning to his son. “I love you, bro.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"“I love you, too,” said Sterling. "}]

Editor’s Note: Interviews with Sterling and Rusty were conducted independently, as well as together.

Rusty and Sterling Rawson IMG 7504 5 31 26

<title>How A Casper Father And Son Saved Each Other From Lives Of Gangs And Drugs | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Living homeless in a Las Vegas wash, hooked on meth, and surviving by the reflexes of his past gang life, Rusty Rawson turned to his adolescent son for guidance. The answer brought them back to Casper and toward a life that seemed out of reach.

How A Casper Father And Son Saved Each Other From Lives Of Gangs And Drugs

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily reporter, Jackie Dorothy.

Jackie Dorothy

John “Josh” Deane was 16 years old when he left his home in Phoenixville, Pennsylvania, for the Wild West in 1872, lured there by the adventures he had read about in the 10-cent novels of his day. 

Instead of the excitement he dreamed of, the teenager found life a struggle just to survive.

Deane eventually took a job for $75 a month driving freight, a profession known as "bull whacking." 

By 1876, Deane was 20 years old and landed an opportunity that he considered an advancement in life. 

He was hired as a government dispatch carrier at the princely sum of $125 a month. 

In 1928, Deane told his story to a biographer about he carried one especially important dispatch, related in his own words in the book “The Mayor of Meeteetse.” 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Rumors Of A Fight"}]

Deane had arrived at Fort Brown in the middle of June 1876 and was told by Col. Julius Mason to remain a few days. 

Mason had just arrived himself from Fort Riley, Kansas, and was concerned because there were rumors of a fight with the Indians in the Rosebud country. 

“A little later, he decided to send me to the camp of Custer and Reno and told me to select an Indian to accompany me,” Deane said. “I picked Niogen Doget, a Shoshone, and we started out on the morning of June 24, with our saddle horses and one pack horse.”

The two men had orders to reach their destination as quickly as possible, so they traveled fast and light. 

Crossing Cottonwood Creek, they made our way up the slope of the Owl Creek Range. 

On the summit of the mountains, Deane described pausing to look down for the first time into the Big Horn Basin which would one day be his future home. 

“From my point of vantage, I could see the Big Horn River and could trace its course for many miles, by the line of cottonwood timber along its banks,” Deane said. “Not a human being, nor a sign of human habitation, was visible in all the valley.”

As Deane and Niogen Doget took in the view, they were unaware of the danger that Custer, Reno and the others would be facing the next day along the Little Bighorn River.

Deane said that the Pryor Mountains were dimly visible, and the Big Horn Range, with snow-capped Cloud’s Peak, rising in its midst, was easily discerned. 

Only a few miles beyond the smooth northern slope of the range on which they stood, the men could see the peculiar, brick-red, conical hills of the hot springs region, in which the town of Thermopolis would later spring up. 

They descended the northern slope of the mountains, passing close to the spot where Col. Torrey’s Embar Ranch would soon to be situated, the same ranch that Butch Cassidy and others of the Hole-in-the-Wall gang would be working on in the 1890s. 

He forged unnamed creeks and swam rivers in his haste to reach the camps. 

As the two men traveled with the dispatch from Fort Brown on June 25 and 26, they were completely unaware that the Battle of the Little Bighorn, known as the Battle of the Greasy Grass by the Lakota Sioux, Northern Cheyenne, and Arapaho tribes, was being fought. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Reno Sick in Tent"}]

On June 27, Deane said that he and Niogen Doget reached the head of what is now called Reno Creek. 

They followed down a long bench, hunting the camp of Custer and Reno. 

“As we drew near the camp, which was on the bank of the Little Big Horn River, I could see dead horses and other traces of a fight,” Deane said years later in 1928. “Sergeant Ned Bowling, whose widow is still living in Lander, Wyoming, greeted me and pointed out Reno’s tent.”

Deane said he hurried over to the tent but was surprised when Reno’s orderly would not let him inside. 

Deane was told that Reno was ill and unable to receive dispatches. 

“I was sent to the second in command to whom I handed over the small locked pouch, used by the government for secret messages, and the sealed envelope containing the key,” Deane said. “As he tore open the envelope, I remarked that I would look around a little and return later.”

Deane was ordered instead to wait while the officer prepared dispatches about the battle to send back to Fort Brown. Deane was then told to start back with the messages at once. 

“My curiosity was now thoroughly aroused, as well as some resentment,” Deane said. “When a man has just covered 170 miles, in two days, it must be a very urgent matter which sends him back over the same route, without at least, one night’s rest for himself and his horse.”

Deane could see that “serious things had been happening.” 

He described how the faces of the officers were grim and haggard; there were dead horses and bandaged men, and Reno was evidently seriously wounded. 

He pulled his friend Bowling to one side while waiting for the dispatches and asked what had happened. 

Bowling told Deane that Custer and Reno had quarreled at Rosebud, and Custer, impetuous and hot-headed, had taken a small group and gone ahead to attack the Indians, without waiting for Reno’s support. 

Deane learned that Custer and his men had ridden forth upon a rolling ridge and were going so fast that the ammunition wagon and Gatling gun could not keep up. Indians, outnumbering his forces 10-1, were in ambush in the timber along the Little Big Horn River, which paralleled the ridge. 

Bowling said that Indians had pushed upon Custer’s little group, taking them by surprise, cutting them off from the retreat and from their ammunition, and had them at their mercy. 

The soldiers had put up a brave resistance, but when their ammunition was gone, they were helpless and were slaughtered without quarter by the furious Sioux.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Battle Scene"}]

Deane said that Reno, coming along later in the day, had a skirmish with the Indians, in which he lost a great number of men. 

The rest of the soldiers were so exhausted that no attempt had as yet been made to bury the dead from the Custer massacre. 

“As a matter of fact, except for a thin layer of soil thrown over the bodies where they lay, they were left untouched for many months and then buried in one huge pit, above which stands the Custer monument bearing their names,” Deane said.

According to Deane’s account, small stones were set up at the spot where each man fell, and where he lay before each soldier was given a permanent resting place. 

Custer, alone of the victims of that day’s slaughter, is not buried on the field, Deane said. His body was removed to the East.

“Orders or no orders, I could not go back to Fort Brown without a glimpse of that battlefield,” Deane said. 

When his dispatches were ready; instead of starting back, Bowling and Deane slipped away to the spot, only a short distance from the camp, where the soldiers lay dead. 

“As we approached the scene of the massacre, we saw a horse quietly grazing on the hill side, apparently the sole survivor of the recent battle,” Deane said. “He had a bullet wound in his neck, but was not seriously hurt, and as I happen to know, died many years later, of old age.”

The scene that Deane observed before him was one that remained with him for the rest of his life. 

He described how men and horses were lying where they had fallen, scattered singly or in groups of twos or threes, on both slopes of the ridge and on its summit. 

“Most of the bodies were fairly close together, but occasionally we noticed small groups or individuals at some distance from the rest,” Deane said. “Piles of empty shells could be seen everywhere.”

As Deane walked among the battlefield, he said that none of the soldiers appeared to have more than two or three cartridges left. 

The whole field, as indicated by the positions of the dead, was about a square mile. 

He said that the bodies of the men were all on this unsheltered ridge, where sagebrush was the only vegetation, but dead horses were scattered through the timber close to the river. 

There were no dead Indians to be seen, though they must have lost at least as many men as the whites. 

They had evidently paused long enough after the fight to gather up their own dead, as well as to take the scalps of a good many of their victims. 

“We came upon General Custer lying across the neck of his horse, a pistol in his hand,” Deane said. “The Indians must have respected his rank for he still wore his scalp. 

“I remember noting that he had yellow hair, a fact which I have since had to dispute with several people who have insisted that Custer was dark.”

The scene Deane described decades after the fact matched that of Captain Frederick Benteen, battalion leader of Companies D, H and K who walked the battlefield on the same day. 

“The only approach to a line was where five or six horses found at equal distances,” Benteen reported. “Ahead of those horses there were five or six men at about the same distances, showing that the horses were killed and the riders jumped off and were all heading to get where General Custer was.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Delivered Dispatch"}]

After walking the battlefield, Deane and Niogen Doget reached Fort Brown late in the evening of the second day. Deane went immediately to Mason and handed him the envelope and dispatch pouch.

“Huh! Hell of a note! Did you hear the details?” Mason said after reading the dispatch. 

Deane repeated to him what Bowling had told me of the cause of the affair and described the battlefield as he had seen it. 

Mason appeared disturbed but made no further comment, except to wonder if the news had been dispatched to other quarters. 

Deane told him that dispatch carriers had been sent to Helena. 

“I should have reached my destination, however, before they did theirs,” Deane said. “There was no telegraph line at Fort Brown so we were unable to pass the news along before it had reached the world through other channels.”

Robert Hall, the telegraph operator at Fort Stambaugh, about 50 miles south of Fort Brown, had the distinction of first wiring the news to the headquarters department at Omaha. 

General Crook at Fort Rosebud had dispatched Shoshone Indian runners to Fort Stambaugh, as soon as he heard of the catastrophe. 

Stambaugh had a telegraph line, but there was a break in the wire, just then, which had not yet been located. 

The commanding officer had relays of horses sent out along the telegraph route and gave Hall the dispatches with instructions to ride along the route until he found the break in the wire. 

He found it at a point about 50 miles from the Fort, and from there he sent his news to Omaha.

“Nothing more that was exciting or worthy of special notice occurred during my career as a government dispatch carrier,” Deane said. “I made only the usual routine trips from one fort to another.”

A year later, Deane had not saved much of his money and had grown weary of the monotony of the long, lonely rides over the hills. He quit the job of delivering messages for the military and headed to Green River.

Eventually, Deane returned to the Big Horn Basin during a more peaceful era and settled in Meeteetse where he was appointed mayor. 

There, he lived his last years as an old timer of the region and became famous for his barbecues.

Custers last stand Getty Images 514887526 5 30 26

<title>Wyoming History: The Courier Who Carried First Dispatch From Custer’s Last Stand | Cowboy State Daily</title>

John “Josh” Deane came West looking for adventure — and got more than he bargained for when he took a job as a military dispatch rider. It was 150 years ago that he found himself carrying the first message about Custer’s last stand to Wyoming’s Fort Brown.  

Wyoming History: The Courier Who Carried First Dispatch From Custer’s Last Stand

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily reporter, Dale Killingbeck

Dale Killingbeck

Wyoming’s oil, gas, coal, uranium and other minerals were not its only buried wealth from August 1933 through at least several months of 1934.

There was also a good portion of $90,000 in $20 bills buried somewhere near Cheyenne, part of a ransom payment in the July 22, 1933, kidnapping of an Oklahoma oilman.

Nearly a century later, it’s still not known for sure of all of that money has ever been found and there’s still loot still buried somewhere in Cheyenne.

The kidnappers were Machine Gun Kelly and Albert Bates, and the Cheyenne money represented Bates’ cut of the loot. 

It was buried by Bates’ wife of three months and her 21-year-old son. 

FBI documents from the time are not clear about whether all of that money was removed or recovered; however, a 1934 Oklahoma newspaper article seems to indicate the money was eventually dug up and taken to Oregon.

Regardless, the ground somewhere around the Wyoming Capitol in those months played a part in one of that decade’s notorious gangster sagas.

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

One year after Congress passed the “Lindbergh Law” making kidnapping a federal offense if the victim is transported across state lines, Bates and Kelly went to the Oklahoma City home of Charles Urschel.

With his wife, Urschel was playing cards on a screened porch with Walter Jarrett and his wife. The Urschels represented millions of dollars in oil wealth.

Two masked men, one with a machine gun and one with a pistol, opened the door at 11:15 p.m. on Saturday, July 22, according to FBI documents dated Oct. 15, 1935. 

The men asked Urschel to identify himself. When there was no response, they took both men.

“After warning the women against calling for help, they marched Urschel and Jarrett to where they had driven their car, put them into the back of the Chevrolet sedan and drove them away,” the FBI file states. 

“Mrs. Urschel, in accordance with the (U.S.) Attorney General’s advice to the public, immediately telephoned J. Edgar Hoover,” the documents continue. "Special agents were sent to Oklahoma City where an extensive investigation commenced.”

Jarrett was released by the kidnappers 12 miles outside the city after they had identified him through his wallet and robbed him of $50.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"$200,000 Demand"}]

The FBI initially let the ransom process play out. 

Another Oklahoma oilman friend was contacted days later through a Western Union package with a letter from Urschel detailing how the kidnappers wanted $200,000 and asking him to be an intermediary.

An elaborate scheme involving a newspaper ad, post office box, and train trip by Urschel’s friend carrying a new suitcase full of the cash in $20 bills was outlined by the kidnappers. 

The FBI’s policy at the time was to try and ensure the safety of the victim.

When it came time to provide the money, the family, with counsel from the FBI, went to the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City and got $200,000 in $20 bills. 

FBI files from 1933 reveal that $90,000 in ransom loot from a Machine Gun Kelly kidnapping scheme ended up buried somewhere around Cheyenne. Whether all the loot was ever recovered remains a question with about $25,000 still unaccounted for.

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