This article won first place for feature writing in the 2004 New Mexico Associated Press Managing Editors competition. It was published in the Las Cruces Sun-News on Dec. 5, 2004.

Steven David Judd had been discussing his 21st birthday plans with his parents all week. It was tradition, he explained, to visit bars with his friends at midnight on the first day he could drink legally.

But Steve, as his friends and family called him, had mixed feelings about the planned bar hopping that was to take place in the early hours of Nov. 18. He told his parents that some of his Delta Chi fraternity brothers might pressure him to drink too much. He described in detail some of the drinks he might encounter. Some of the drinks included Tabasco and raw eggs, and are designed to make people throw up.

His mom, Karen, suggested that Steve celebrate by drinking one beer. He had class at 8:30 a.m., she reminded him.

“They would think I was a wimp,” Steve replied.

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Published in the Las Cruces Sun-News on Dec. 12, 2004

Former Dona Ana County Commissioner Carlos Garza recalls the first time he voted against Commissioner Gilbert Apodaca, at a meeting in 1999.

Afterward, he explained to Apodaca his disagreement on the issue.

“Don’t let it happen again,” Garza says Apodaca told him.

“He was serious,” said Garza, now a magistrate judge. “That was my awakening.”

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ARLINGTON, Virginia – Eboni Lewis wasn’t able to attend her father’s funeral at Arlington National Cemetery after he was killed last year in a helicopter accident in Vietnam.

So when she and 36 other Sierra Middle School students visited the cemetery Sunday, she hoped she would get to see her father’s grave for the first time.

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On the night of Aug. 25, Dona Ana County Magistrate Judge Reuben Galvan had sex with a woman in his red Porsche.

The two had met earlier that night at Hurricane Alley in Las Cruces. They recognized each other because the woman recently had been in Galvan’s courtroom to be married. Her husband-to-be wasn’t in the courtroom with her because he was in jail, charged with punching her. Another person stood in for him.

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A pedestrian was killed Monday during a high-speed, early morning police chase that began when a Las Cruces man with a history of mental illness assaulted a woman and stole her car.

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The state attorney general filed criminal charges Thursday against two current and three former members of the Las Cruces Public Schools Board of Education for violating the state’s open meetings law.

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