It’s time to take a look at what’s happening around Wyoming for Monday, March 2nd. I’m Mac Watson.
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Some Wyoming parents are calling for schools to dump LifeTouch photos after its parent company has an alleged link to notorious sex-trafficker Jeffery Epstein. Cowboy State Daily’s Mark Heinz reports one parent in Natrona County says the company shouldn’t be anywhere near his kid’s school.
“One of them brought it before the school board. They say, you know, get rid of this company. Let's use local photographers and put the local photographers through a full scale background check before we even let them into the school. It's become a big enough deal that Life Touch took the time to email at least one of our superintendents that I know of. They took the time to send a message directly to him, saying, ‘Please don't get caught up in this controversy.’”
In a statement emailed to Cowboy State Daily, Wyoming Superintendent of Public Instruction Megan Degenfelder said state school districts should “demand full transparency and ensure airtight privacy safeguards are in place” when it comes to children’s school photos.
Read the full story HERE.
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There was no dealing with the so-called “CheckGate” controversy at Saturday’s state GOP Central Committee meeting. Cowboy State Daily’s David Madison reports that instead, party leaders blamed the media for its coverage and redirected attention on Gov. Mark Gordon’s campaign spending.
“One surprise came from Vice Chairman Ferguson. He wanted to talk about all the spending that Governor Gordon had directed. He brought up Gordon's essentially war chest that he had raised and distributed to lawmakers, and suggested, look how big this number is. It's something like $360,000. Why isn't the media looking into that? I spoke directly to the governor's office on Saturday, and they said, ‘This is old news. They're trying to redirect attention. There's really nothing here.’”
Despite the poor optics, Vice Chair Bob Ferguson maintained the donations were legal and that the real story was the governor's far larger financial fingerprints on Wyoming elections.
Read the full story HERE.
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It’s been four years since Kenyan nursing student Irene Gakwa vanished from Gillette in February 2022, and her family fears she’s dead. Cowboy State Daily’s Jen Kocher reports that her ex-boyfriend, now out of prison for stealing her bank card, hasn’t been charged but remains a person of interest, police say.
“They found out that Nathan Heightman had actually taken Irene's money. He drained her bank account and maxed out her credit card in the amount of about $7,000. Nathan is currently still on parole. He has not been cleared as a person of interest because Irene's Missing Person case is still ongoing, so police are still investigating what happened to Irene, and until they clear that, until they find the answers, Nathan remains a person of interest in that investigation.”
In the years since her disappearance, authorities say there have been no confirmed sightings of Gakwa nor has she reached out to family or friends or left any digital footprint online.
Read the full story HERE.
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Teton County has again been named the richest county in the nation with a per capita income of $532,903. Cowboy State Daily’s Renee Jean reports that not only is it six times greater than the national average of $73,204 but beats the second-highest county by more than $250,000.
“Obviously not everybody makes anywhere close to this 532,000
figure for per capita income, but it does show how much wealth has moved into that portion of Wyoming, and it kind of helps explain, you know, some of the problems that they face there with home values just ratcheting up to the point that regular workforce has trouble finding housing. One time Teton County was not the wealthiest in Wyoming, it was a needy county so needy that they qualified for a federally subsidized loan to try to help them with economic development.”
In fact, sixty years ago, Teton County was poor enough to qualify for a federally subsidized loan meant for the nation’s neediest communities. That loan started a little place called Jackson Hole ski area. That's better known today as the world-famous Jackson Hole Mountain Resort.
Read the full story HERE.
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I’ll be back with more news from Cowboy State Daily right after this.
Cowboy State Daily news continues now…
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Beside pheasant, duck, and goose, crow hunting is a thing in Wyoming, too. Outdoors Reporter Mark Heinz reports that no license is required, and there’s no bag limit. In other words, hunters can just blast away.
“There is a season. It runs from November through February, but there's no license required and no bag limit. They're basically considered a nuisance bird in Wyoming and many other states. One of our staff members knew somebody. And so I called him the guy. ‘Oh, yeah, I love crow hunting.’ He sets out decoys and sits in a blind with a call and calls in crows.”
Dan Kinneman of Riverton has been hunting crows since he was 14. He tells Cowboy State Daily that crows are harder to hunt than ducks and geese, because they’re smarter.
Read the full story HERE.
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Wyoming's plumber shortage is about to get worse. Already creating delays for homeowners and businesses, Cowboy State Daily’s Renee Jean reports that a huge wave of data centers and mega-projects are sweeping into the state, and changing the way we think of what plumbers do.
“They've really been fighting against this idea that it's a dark, dirty, dangerous job. So you're not going to see them on TV anytime soon for claiming how dirty and dangerous the work is. This guy told me his workers, they come to work in polo shirts. They have iPads. It's high tech. It's not a dirty, grungy job anymore.”
To put the plumber shortage into perspective, Mechanical Systems Incorporated’s VP and COO Larry Fodor calculated that if every single high school graduate in Laramie County suddenly decided to become plumbers, it would still take a dozen years just to meet the demand created by recently announced data centers.
Read the full story HERE.
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Sweetheart is a longhorn cow who just gave birth to her 20th calf in 20 years. Cowboy State Daily’s Kate Meadows reports that Jeff Ketcham, a rancher near Cheyenne, says not only is Sweetheart reliable but easy to handle.
“He loved watching Longhorns at stock shows in Denver and just throughout the West, and finally decided he was going to buy a few. One of the four heifers that Ketchum purchased had a shape right in the middle of its forehead that looked like a heart, and that earned her the name sweetheart. And Ketchum told me that her disposition also matches that name. She's very easy going and just really causes no trouble. So just last week, she gave birth to her 20th calf in 20 years.”
With diverse coat colors and spectacular horns that can span more than 8 feet from tip to tip, Longhorns are known for their longevity and their ease and reliability of calving.
Read the full story HERE.
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With a terminal illness tightening its grip, Wyoming musician Michael DeGreve wants to finish his last major work before the music stops. Cowboy State Daily’s Zak Sonntag reports that even though Michael was raised in LA, he came out to Cheyenne over 30 years ago and was an icon at Cheyenne's Hitching Post for decades.
“His agent called them one day in 1977 out of the blue, and said, Hey, what are your thoughts about Cheyenne? And he goes, I don't know. Where is it went there thinking he was going to stay for two weeks. He says, agent said, ‘Yeah, we got you a two week gig. It's a little fun, little stopover. Why not?’ He said, ‘Yeah, I'll go.’ And he fell in love with the place, and he stayed on this open-ended arrangement. And it stayed open for 30 years, and he performed, and this is what's also just stunning. He performed six nights a week, for hours each night.”
Now 78-years old, you’d never guess by that gentle voice that Michael had dropped LSD with Jimi Hendrix, got drunk with Janis Joplin, or cut a record with Graham Nash.
Read the full story HERE.
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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 watching - I’m Mac Watson, for Cowboy State Daily.
