The trailblazer Carrie Blumert epitomizes her life motto. “Work hard and be kind” is a simple saying she uses to help her keep fighting the good fight. With a smile on her face and pep in her step, the 31-year-old Oklahoma City-County Health Department program director has knocked on over 10 thousand doors during her […]
Nazarene Harris
Money men
The challenger Even clad in a suit and tie sans cowboy boots and speaking in a Belgian accent, Charles de Coune still oozes Oklahoma. The European-born lending manager for Oklahoma Water Resources Board moved to the Sooner State 24 years ago after spending his childhood in Belgium and four years in Kansas as a high […]
Giving tree
Nicole Lopez is no longer the perfect wife of her soon-to-be ex-husband. She no longer feels the need to rise up to his high standards of perfection with high-dollar labels, fresh haircuts and fancy cars. She is lately, she admits, a little messy and with a confession that surprises even herself, she said, she’s proud […]
Pleading the 5th
The challenger If Democrats across the nation were searching for candidates who could make a big splash in their blue wave, they got what they were looking for in Kendra Horn, the Democratic candidate for Oklahoma’s 5th congressional district. A fifth-generation Oklahoman and an Oklahoma City-based attorney, Horn decided to run for Congress after serving […]
Help wanted
Since city manager Jim Couch announced his retirement on Sept. 17, Oklahoma City Council has addressed the issue of finding a replacement in each of its public meetings. The discussions could be done in private Ward 2 councilman Ed Shadid said. An opinion issued by Oklahoma’s Attorney General, Mike Hunter, however, suggests that all hiring […]
Essential testing
Sexual assault advocates say the revelation that thousands of rape kits have been left untested in Oklahoma is serving as a catalyst for reform within a state that is finally joining a national movement towards justice for victims. Imagine being violently raped, left to pick yourself up off the ground and call the police. […]
Midtown move
The liaison Thirty-six-year-old oil-and-gas business owner Nathaniel Harding does not deny his privilege. The son of an oil-and-gas tycoon, Harding learned early in life that there are things money can buy and things that can never be paid for. Money couldn’t, Harding learned, cure his mother, Margo, of a rare brain disease that took her […]
Top job
The veteran Drew Edmondson is a happy man. He has the kind of genuine happiness, it seems, that comes from being comfortable in one’s own skin and basking in the blissful state where age meets peace of mind. His years of making thought-out and difficult but morally sound decisions have resulted in what appears to […]
Strong foundation
Mary Golda Ross Elementary School bilingual assistant Elizabeth Claudio, 26, had never met the president of The Foundation for Oklahoma City Public Schools when she received an email from her a few years ago. But the email, she said, led her to believe that the woman must be an angel. It basically asked Oklahoma City […]
Victims unite
When 45-year-old Oklahoma City mortgage loan officer Lauren Layman finally laid eyes on the man who raped and murdered her great-grandmother 35 years ago, she felt a little sorry for him. Lester Blackbear was 27 years old when he allegedly broke into 77-year-old Ola Kirk’s apartment one summer night in 1983. He was accused of […]
