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Aspen Police taped off the area around the intersection of South Galena Street and East Hyman Avenue after a pedestrian-vehicle collision that killed a 5-year-old girl on March 15, 2020. (Maddie Vincent/The Aspen Times file photo)
A longtime local real estate agent pleaded guilty Tuesday to striking and killing a 5-year-old girl with her SUV in downtown Aspen more than a year ago.
And while Heidi Houston will avoid jail time as part of a plea deal, part of her sentence was to come up with a plan that honors Hannah Heusgen’s love of ballet and horses, and improves the safety of the intersection where the accident occurred in March 2020.
Aspen School District teachers wait in line for The Rolling Fork food truck on the school campus while being celebrated for teacher appreciation week on Wednesday, March 5, 2021. The food truck roundup also included refreshments from Aspen Mini Donuts. (Kelsey Brunner/The Aspen Times)
After a year of challenging pandemic changes to learning at Aspen School District, local parents decided to “go big or go home” with a food truck roundup, gift card giveaway and other happenings for Teacher Appreciation Week, event organizer Alyssa Shenk said.
“It’s always important, right?” Shenk said while setting up for Wednesday’s food truck event. “But this year, it’s 1,000 times that. It’s important to give thanks in a big way.”
Aspen Journalism
Pitkin County Open Space and Trails ranger Megan Ballard at right removes debris from the Rio Grande trail in Aspen recently. (Daniel Bayer/Aspen Journalism)
Trail use measured by Pitkin County Open Space and Trails rose sharply from 2019 to 2020, leading to land degradation and a spike in enforcement contacts for rangers working the county-managed public lands.
“OST has hosted a record number of visitors in 2020,” wrote Gary Tennenbaum in the budget supplemental request presented to the county’s board of county commissioners and OST board on March 2. Trail visitation, tracked by infrared counters, rose from 382,969 in 2019 to 551,869 in 2020 a 44% increase according to OST data shared with Aspen Journalism.
Amen Wardy
Amen Wardy, whose career in fashion and décor started in 1957 in west Texas and captured Beverly Hills before he settled into Aspen for nearly 30 years, died last week in his sleep at his Carbondale home, his family announced Monday. He was 81.
Wardy started in women’s fashion at a store his grandmother ran in El Paso, Texas, where he was born, and became well-known in the 1970s and ’80s for his southern California boutiques that drew celebrity A-list clientele. Many of those customers followed him when he launched a home décor store on Aspen’s Cooper Avenue in 1992 with his longtime spouse, Bob Hightower.