The Daily Sentinel from Grand Junction, Colorado • 9

wT f'' Mr -r( 1 'fh r- Si SECTION THE CS DAILY Sentinel TELEVISION THURSDAY, JANUARY 1, 1998 Oiae mother3 love triiimohs V- 1 Joanne Pearsons relentless pursuit finally brings daughter Emilie home By DANA WINN The Daily Sentinel 1007 Phoenix, stole his then-wifes car and disappeared for 31 months. Joanne and Charlie Pearson never Emilie and media and the public from forgetting atort her little girL Tfcen, in August Hardy was found in Guadalajara, Mexico. A golf course manager who had seen a missing childrens flier that featured pictures of Hardy and Emilie recognized Hardy, an avid golfer. Hardy, a Canadian, had taken a new name and another new wife in Guadalajara. It took a while to put the pieces in CTMV Place, but cm Sept.

2, the 9 1 Hill FBI and Mexican immigration officials stormed Hardys home. Hardy and his new wife were captured but a See LOVE, page 4B Even hard-bitten cops discreetly wiped tears from the comers of their eyes when 5-year-old Emilie Pearson walked across the tarmac at Walker Field Airport on Sept 5 more than 214 years after the little girt had been abducted by her father. The petite blonde was snatched by her father, ReJean Hardy, on Jan. 29, 1995, just three weeks after her third birthday. Next week, Emilie will celebrate her sixth birthday back ajMissing Childrens Sod-home with her mother and stepfa- ety of Canada, the FBI ther, Joanne and Charlie Pearson.

Hardy had come to Grand Junction from his Phoenix home to visit Emilie. But instead of taking the girl back to her mother at the end of the visit, he took the girl flew back to gave up hope of finding bringing her home. Joanne devoted her life to the search and to the causes of finding missing children and increasing the legal penalties for parental abductions. She worked with Third District Congressman Scott Mclnnis, the and the Grand Junction Police Department She joined others who plight in a segment on that ran on a national show wan ongoing effort shared her missing children television to keep the CHRISTOPHER TOMUNSONThe Daily Sentinel JOANNE AND EMILIE PEARSON were reunited 31 months after Emilies father took her and fled to Mexico. GJ doctors avoid FTQ math Coachs actions, assault trial deeply divided town of Meeker By GARY KART, ION The Daily Sentinel 4 4 J6 i -a -i i -mt i in the Grand Valley.

The association represented more than 85 percent of the physicians in the Grand Valley when' the federal agency stepped in to say that the relationship between the asso- ciation and the HMO was too cozy. The trade commission filed suit after a year-long, intensive investigation that turned up, said Mark Whitener, deputy di rector of the agencys bureau of competition, "a monopoly that has harmed consumers by depriving them of health-care choices and The Federal Trade Commission stepped into the relationships among Grand Valley physicians, health-care insurers and patients in 1997, then settled its grievance as the year ended. The federal regulatory agency in May accused the Mesa County Physicians Independent Practice Association of pricefixing and trying to fence competitors out of the western Colorado health-insurance market' -t- The-association was founded in 1975 to represent physicians in dealing with 1 Rocky Mountain HMO, the largest health-care insurer STKHL 4 See DOCTORS, page 5B 1 Ex-trustee still under investigation -ft- 1 By HEATHER McGREGOR The Day Sentinel MEEKER1. The lid blew off Meekers champion' high school wrestling program iff January when coach Mike Tate was suspended from coaching and teaching. Tate injured a wrestler while breaking up horseplay during practice on Jaa 8.

The controversy squelched the teams winning streak, tarnished Tates reputation and thrust the town into a turmoil that hasnt yet died a aaaaaj (jOWIl. 1907 in the incident, Tate reached into apile of wrestlers and grabbed senior Steven Whalin, a former star who had lost interest in the sport, by the genitals. Tate turned the youth loose, but the youngster suffered painful swelling and now feces a risk of sterility. School officials reacted quickly, suspending Tate from coaching and placing him on paid leave from his middle school teaching job. On Jan.

22, Tate surrendered after Meeker police obtained a warrant for his arrest on a charge of second-degree assault. He remained free on bond while his lawyer, Meeker native Roberta Nieslanik, now of Grand Junction, worked the legal system on his behalf. In March, special prosecutor Paul DeRose defended her action and said she had done the same thing for employees before. She also said pub-, i lie money was not involved in. the) transactions.

,1 The police on Aug. 17 executed a late-night search- warrant' on DeRoses office, confiscating comput- ers white looking for tape-recording equipment The search was a result of a con-: vernation DeRose apparently had with Daniels subsequent to his initial -investigation During that converse tion she apparently told Daniels sire had taped two of her employees talking about her while she was not id the office. DeRose told Daniels she had The situation boiled when District Attorney Frank Daniels in mid-August issued a report recommending 10-year trustee DeRose tighten accounting procedures after an em-, ployee matte a formal- complaint about possible fraud in the office. -4 -w That employee has since retired. Daniels said he didnt believe any criminal wrongdoing had occurred.

DeRose had apparently cashed some two-party checks for a friend using money from the office safe. The checks were at least two years old and amounted to about 5300.,, e- By C. PATRICK CLEARY The Daily Sentinel Candace DeRose watched her reputation crumble this summer as she eventually resigned as Mesa County Public Trustee because of possible felony eavesdropping charges. The case of an office gone awry remains in limbo. The Grand Junction police are still investigating her actions while current Public Trustee Gena Harrison has put everything inboxes mid has stored them awaiting any word from the myriad of authorities involved in the case.

CHRISTOPHER TOMUNSONThe Daily Sentinel FORMER MEEKER WRESTUNG COACH MIKE TATE and his attorney Roberta Nieslanik celebrate after Tate was found innocent of assault coach in Colorado was tuned to the case. In the fell, a slate of pro-Tate residents announced they would run for the Meeker School Board. But in the Nov. 4 election, the slate felled and school board incumbents were reflected. And in October, the Moore and Whalin families filed federal civil-rights lawsuits against Tate and the See COACH, page 5B McLimans of Hot Sulphur Springs was assigned the case after Christy Moore, the secretary in the Meeker district attorneys office, filed a notice of her intent to sue Tate and the school district over a separate incident At a hearing June 13, Nieslaniks effort to get the charge dismissed under a teacher immunity provision in state law failed.

A trial was set to begin Oct 28. By then, nearly every teacher and See EX, page 5B i As 1997 closes memories come to Christensens family said Alexander ought not dount on their support for his reelection and surely some Democrat cant wait for the opportunity to make Alexander remembered as the senator who put i ex in excrement In the meantime. credit forDeRose made her admission to the attorney who would normally prosecute a charge of eavesdropping, but who also was the attorney for her office and a potential witness in any case against her. DeRose is now out of the job and Mesa County Treasurer Gena Harrison, who wanted the trustee- ship when DeRose got it a decade ago, has it and the GJPD is digging into the files. 1 And that leaves us with Jim Baughman.

When the Grand Junction city council came to him and said, with Doralyn Genovand Kathy Hall singing backup, Let my city grow, BaiUghman said, I dunno The council of which Baughman is a former mem-' ber, and the Mesa County Commissioners, of which Baughman now makes up a third, spent to bring in a mediator and then spent hours in one anothers company, working out a way to live with the sewer system that both governments own and which both want to run for their political benefit by controlling the way the city grows. Genova and Hall, neither a stranger to annexation battles, wanted out from between the city and county residents none too pleased to be annexed. The city wanted room to grow in a kinder, gentler way. And with agreement in the offing, would Baughmans star go dim without some government to bash? a missing-childrens organization and directed authorities onto the path that led eventually to Emilies recovery and return to Grand Junction. When Emilie was found last year, she had spent the greater portion of her life on file run.

While Joanne and Emilie put back together a relationship, Emilies father, ReJean Hardy, is out of jail and out of trouble with little more to do than practice his golf swing down south of the border. But if he ever returns to the United States, were assured, hell be out of bounds and appropriately penalized two strokes with a super-juiced cattle prod or a round with OJ. while wearing Simpson's girlfriends glasses. Now Candace DeRose had the acumen for the world of spies and intrigue displayed by Joanne i Pearson, wed never have known how little feith we should have placed in the hands of the Mesa County Public Trustee. Grand' Junction police still are investigating, but this much is known as much as $4,900 in funds from the trustees office remain unaccounted for and DeRose, under whose watch the money disappeared, told District Attorney Frank Daniels that she had eavesdropped on goings-on at the trustees office by surreptitiously placing a tape recorder under a desk.

Perhaps more Candy Galore than she was given It wasnt the best of yearsJt wasnt the worst of years. Like most of its was a regular year some heroism, some heartbreak, mostly a lot of foolishness and vanity. And, like most of those years, 1997 was a good year for watching people at their best and at their worst Whitesome plumbed the depth of human experience, others just dumbed the human experience nearly to death. The leader of the latter pack? Not just anybody is capable of prompting newspa- i statewide into using the word well most said s-" but one man stood alone in that re-1 state Sen. Ben Alexander, R-Montrose.

No one quoted him completely accurately, Jut no one left much to doubt, either, when they quoted him as angrily deriding a high school student as a worthless piece of s- (as though fertilizer grew on trees) after discussing the students writing gifts, or lack thereof! Alexander apologized, of course, and promptly creased the candlepower of the spotlight of criticism focused on himself, even when he said that honor student Earl Christensens characterization of the Founding Fathers as hypocritical pot-smoking idealists suggested that Christensen wasnt getting the full benefit of American history in school Kay, tell Ben that its fashion, not passion, ttiat communicates. Going from the pro- fane to the sublime takes us to Joanne Pearson. No one can trash motherhood after hear-about Joanne Pearsoa When her ex-husband left Grand Junction with Emilie on Jan. 29, 1995, he did mpre than steal her child, he transformed Joanne from waitress into mistress of international intrigue, working with U.S. and other law-enforcement agencies and any number of child-find organizations to hunt down her ex and retrieve her child.

It was in Guadalajara, Mexico, that Joanne found her blonde-haired, 5-year-old needle in a hemispherical haystack. Seemed that a golf course manager identified the errant father from a flier distributed by.