Cover Stories
Suzanne Jessup Staton
Published on Jun 13th, 2002
0 comments Suzanne Jessup Staton, 49Executive vice president, Pepsi-Cola Bottling Co. of Central Virginia Suzanne Staton got into the family business of bottling soft drinks through her father. Same with the...
Suzanne Jessup Staton
Published on Jun 13th, 2002
0 comments Suzanne Jessup Staton, 49Executive vice president, Pepsi-Cola Bottling Co. of Central Virginia Suzanne Staton got into the family business of bottling soft drinks through her father. Same with the...
Amy Griffith
Published on Jun 13th, 2002
0 comments Amy Griffith, 40Owner/manager, Van on the Go When Amy Griffith was working part time at a hotel, people were always asking if there was a shuttle to get to the airport. After seeing poor grad...
Kandi Kessler Comer
Published on Jun 13th, 2002
0 comments Kandi Kessler Comer, 39Director of golf, Glenmore A typical day for golf pro Kandi Comer could include teaching lessons, meeting with the golf course supervisor, running tournaments, or anything else...
Ann Taylor
Published on Jun 13th, 2002
0 comments Ann Taylor, 43COO, Gold Violin One of the things Ann Taylor likes best about her job is working with her little sister, Connie, who came up with the idea of selling useful, high-quality items...
Cheri Lewis
Published on Jun 13th, 2002
0 comments Cheri Lewis, 40President and founder, The Closing Company Attorney Cheri Lewis had an idea: you shouldn’t have to hire an expensive lawyer to do real estate closings. She didn’t think attorneys were...
Joan Schatzman
Published on Jun 13th, 2002
0 comments Joan Schatzman, 50Owner, Joan Schatzman Painting When Joan Schatzman sold Muldowney’s Pub in 1985 (it’s now Club 216), she needed a job and couldn’t afford a traditional female job. She knew how to...
Blair Williamson
Published on Jun 13th, 2002
0 comments Blair Williamson, 36Vice President, S.L. Williamson How does a woman end up running a paving company?  “It’s a family business.  I think that’s the only way someone gets into paving,” says...
Greer Wilson
Published on Jun 13th, 2002
0 comments Greer Wilson, 59President, Greer and Company Ask Greer Wilson if she’s ever been discriminated against. “Oh God, yeah, everyday,” she responds. “It’s either gender or race.”Of course, Wilson is in...
Cracking the glass ceiling
Published on Jun 13th, 2002
0 comments You’ve come a long way, baby– at least since Virginia Slims built an ad campaign around the notion that having their own brand of cigarettes gave women a step toward equality with men. True,...
Who's watching the kids?
Published on Jun 6th, 2002
0 comments The blonde, blue-eyed middle school student arrives home from school, says hi to her mom, and then disappears in front of the computer.She seems like a typical 14-year-old who likes ‘N Sync and 98...
Track marks: These lines change lives
Published on May 30th, 2002
0 comments By Wesley Hottot It is an atypically warm spring afternoon on Water Street downtown. Noise hums from the C&O Restaurant in front of the old C&O line, now part of the CSX train empire. For...
Lie down: Expert reluctantly offers safety tip
Published on May 30th, 2002
0 comments You're not supposed to walk on railroad tracks, but if you’re on a high bridge and you're about to get hit by a train, safety expert Danny Gilbert advises lying very low between the rails. "It's not...
Rocky road in the valley of the bomb pop
Published on May 23rd, 2002
0 comments By Eddie Dean I was coughing up dust, and so was my truck as we climbed the long gravel driveway to the sturdy white frame house high on a hill in Greene County. We had traveled many miles to get...
How'd a Dem lose? Searls speaks out
Published on May 16th, 2002
0 comments Within hours of the Democrats’ first City Council defeat in 16 years, a lot of finger-pointing, self-flagellation, and speculation was going on. So why was Alexandria Searls the first local Democrat...
Did the Progress Cheat? Critics blame paper for Schilling victory
Published on May 16th, 2002
0 comments Can a single newspaper article swing an entire election?Yes, according to some local critics who blame an election-day piece for Republican Rob Schilling’s City Council victory. A May 7 Daily...
Surprise indeed
Published on May 16th, 2002
0 comments On election day, Republican Rob Schilling found himself getting support from unexpected quarters.As he worked the polls, a 60-something male supporter came up to him and stuffed a check in his hand,...
Kathy & Meghan Bambrey
Published on May 9th, 2002
0 comments “I spent eight or nine years grieving,” says Kathy Bambrey, recalling the period following her 18-month-old daughter Meghan’s diagnosis with mental retardation. It wasn’t until doctors finally...
Jackie Shifflett & Brian Edwards
Published on May 9th, 2002
0 comments It was a parent’s worst nightmare. Jackie Shifflett got up early one morning and went in to wake her six-month-old son, Brian. But she could not rouse him.“I was in total denial,” Shifflett recalls...
Emily Dreyfus & Max Walters
Published on May 9th, 2002
0 comments It’s 11:30am on a recent Friday, and the tables in the Venable Elementary School cafeteria are packed tight with kindergartners having lunch. Sitting amid the happy chaos, a small brown-eyed blonde...
Farewell to furry friends
Published on Apr 25th, 2002
0 comments The idea struck Melba Atkinson in 1998, when it came time to euthanize her 15-year-old Yellow Lab, Daisy. “It was our second pet to die in a year, and we had three more that were coming along,”...
Confessions of a law-abiding dog owner
Published on Apr 25th, 2002
0 comments I’ll admit it: when the city passed a leash law, I was as frustrated as all the other dog owners who’d enjoyed regular off-leash walks or runs down the Rivanna Greenbelt. Taking a well-behaved but...
Snack attack
Published on Apr 25th, 2002
0 comments Local dogs have never had it so good when it comes to dining. Sammy Snacks, a natural pet food and biscuit company run by Pamela Peterson since 1999, operates right here in town in a six-month-old...
All things pawssible
Published on Apr 25th, 2002
0 comments When Ann Suddarth adopted her dog Zoe from the SPCA last summer, she had no idea the trial she was in for.    “She’s the most difficult dog I’ve ever had,” Suddarth says of the 50-...
New leash on life
Published on Apr 25th, 2002
0 comments The issue was almost too hot for local authorities to handle, pitting neighbor against neighbor and drawing throngs of angry citizens to City Council meetings. What had people so fired up? Taxes?...
New leash on life: Dog walkers learn to live with the law
Published on Apr 25th, 2002
0 comments PHOTO BY JEN FARIELLO The issue was almost too hot for local authorities to handle, pitting neighbor against neighbor and drawing throngs of angry citizens to City Council meetings. What had people...
Explosive words
Published on Apr 18th, 2002
0 comments By Hawes Spencer and Barbara Nordin When the indictment was handed down last week by a Charlottesville grand jury in the 1996 murders of two women in Shenandoah National Park, a fearful period in...
Spinning trouble
Published on Apr 11th, 2002
0 comments By Bill Ramsey Try to remember a time when commercial radio stations didn’t sound the same, from town to town, up and down the dial. If you long for the days when deejays played requests and when...
Waiting for Bodo
Published on Mar 28th, 2002
0 comments 1995 was a big year for Charlottesville. Emily Couric won her first State Senate election. Christopher Reeve became UVA Hospital’s star patient. Our beloved Wahoos toppled #2 Florida State in an epic...
FICTION WINNER- 'Neighbors'
Published on Mar 21st, 2002
1 comments By Murray Dunlap The apartment door clicking shut wakes me.  Charlotte walks in, smoking. She drops her cigarette into a beer bottle on the nightstand and lifts her gray sweater up and over her...