A place for grief

JUDI’S HOUSE MOVES TO AURORA WITH AN EYE ON HELPING MORE FAMILIES

BY CARINA JULIG Sentinel Staff Writer

Individual and group therapy rooms. A big lawn. An art room. In-house office space.

Those are some of the amenities of the new Judi’s House location in Aurora, which held its grand opening in August.

The facility was founded by former NFL player Brian Griese, and his wife, Brook Griese, in honor of Brian’s late mother, Judi, who died of breast cancer when he was 12. Judi’s House works with bereaved children and their families in the Denver metro area, along with conducting research and training on grief support.

According to the organization, one in 13 children will experience the death of a parent or sibling before they turn 18, totaling 5.6 million children overall. Parental loss has gained renewed attention during the coronavirus pandemic, which according to a study published this month has robbed 10.5 million children worldwide of a parent or caregiver.

“For those of us in the bereavement field, there is some hope, in that bereavement has come out of the shadows in many ways,” Judi’s House chief clinical officer Micki Burns told reporter Anya Kamenetz in her book The Stolen Year.

“With the mass amount of death that we’ve seen, it has really created this place of empathy and understanding for families who were grieving before, and even more so for families who have had a loss in the past year or so,” Burns said.

The 26,470 square-foot house was specifically designed to meet the nonprofit’s needs, and will be replacing its old location in Denver.

CEO Jessica Maitland Mayo said that Judi’s House had grown out of its old quarters, which were two repurposed Victorian-style houses in the Denver area. The location was also challenging for some families to get to, she said.

The new location will be more centrally located and is close to a number of transportation hubs, including the light rail and I-70, Mayo said. Aurora also has more families with children than Denver, she said, which makes it a good location.

“In our programming we serve children from all types of socioeconomic backgrounds, and it feels like a good metaphor to be in a community that is as diverse as the community that we serve,” she said.

The land the house was constructed on at East 25th Avenue near Stanley Marketplace was purchased from Aurora Public Schools, and was originally not for sale. However, due to the ongoing partnership Judi’s House had with APS, where it hosts grief groups in district middle schools, the district agreed in the spring of 2020 to sell the property for $1.045 million.

APS Superintendent Rico Munn was present at the ribbon cutting, where he spoke about the importance of the facility being located in Aurora.

“This is a community that’s experienced a lot of trauma and a lot of loss, and is often associated with that,” Munn said. “However this community should also be associated with the healing that is happening here.”

All of the services that Judi’s House pro- vides to families are free. The organization is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year. In that time it has served over 13,000 children, with those numbers increasing over the years. Mayo said she hopes the new location will put it in good stead to serve children and their families for decades to come.

“We hope that our families feel it is an easy door to walk through,” she said.

Priola recall petitioners get green light

Backers of a campaign targeting a Colorado lawmaker who left the GOP and joined the Democratic Party, citing the Republican Party’s embrace of discredited 2020 election conspiracies, received the go-ahead last week to collect voter signatures in their bid to trigger a recall election.

Colorado’s secretary of state’s office said it had approved a recall petition targeting state Sen. Kevin Priola, whose term representing a suburban Denver district ends in 2025. Petitioners have until Nov. 8 to collect enough signatures to force an eventual recall vote.

Priola infuriated Republicans when he announced his party switch in August, saying he was horrified by the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol and had waited in vain for his party to repudiate it as well as former President Donald Trump, who continues to insist the 2020 presidential election was stolen.

Numerous assertions that the presidential election was stolen have been proven false.

Priola also rebuked what he called the GOP’s refusal to take climate change seriously. “Today, my Republican colleagues would rather deny the existence of human-caused climate change than take action,” he wrote in a letter announcing his decision.

Priola’s move enhanced Dem- ocrats’ prospects for retaining a majority in Colorado’s senate in the November midterm elections. The party holds a comfortable majority in the House. But the recall drive is in a new district assigned to Priola that’s become more conservative thanks to last year’s redistricting process.

Signature-gatherers hit the streets Friday, and the recall campaign already has raised $130,000, said Michael Fields, who heads the recall committee and is president of the conservative group Advance Colorado Institute. Fields cited Priola’s past votes with Democrats, especially on state tax policy, as well as what he called Priola’s betrayal of the Republican voters who elected him to office.

“Conservative Republicans voted for him to be a conservative leader in the Senate,” Fields said.

Priola did not immediately respond to telephone and email requests for comment.

Priola is in his second term as a state senator and is not up for reelection in November. The campaign needs signatures equal to at least 25% of the number of votes cast in the district in the last election to force a vote.

Fields said any recall vote, if certified by the secretary of state’s office, could be held in January.

— JAMES ANDERSON, Associated Press

Arapahoe County seeks redistricting volunteers

Arapahoe County is asking for residents’ help redrawing the boundaries of commissioner districts, giving voters a say in how county commissioners will be elected starting in 2024.

County commissioners in Arapahoe County are elected from five districts, which according to state statute must contain roughly the same number of people, with no more than a 5% difference between the most and least populous district.

The once-per-decade redistricting process gives the county the ability to realign district boundaries based on population growth, quantified using U.S. Census Bureau data.

Nine citizens — including three voters registered with the state’s most popular political party, currently the Democratic Party; three with the second-most-popular party, currently the Republican Party; and three unaffiliated voters — will be chosen by commissioners to serve on an advisory committee.

The Citizens Redistricting Advisory Committee and county staff will draft no fewer than three district maps, after which current commissioners will take public comments and decide which map to adopt.

Applications for the committee are being accepted now online. To be eligible, a person must be a county resident and their current voter registration must be the same as their 2020 registration.

The appointment will last from December 2022 through September 2023. Candidates should be able to attend one or two monthly meetings lasting between an hour and an hour and a half in person starting in December. There will also be at least three public engagement activities lasting the same amount of time.

County spokesman Luc Hatlestad said there is currently no deadline for applications, but that the county wants to have finished the selection process by December.

According to a county news release, finalists will be chosen by commissioners based on party affiliation as well as:

- Civic interest.

- Willingness to listen to, respect and understand diverse viewpoints.

- Experience working with others to reach outcomes or decisions.

- Commitment to a fair and equitable process.

- Geographic and demographic diversity.

- Commitment to attending all meetings as required by law.

Applications are available at bit. ly/3QoR9Fr.

— MAX LEVY, Sentinel Staff Writer

EDUCATION Construction begins on Aurora school

Aurora Public Schools broke ground Thursday on a new P-8 school that will serve students in the Aurora Highlands. It will be the first of four schools in the development.

The school is scheduled to open for the 2023-2024 school year and will serve about 1,000 students in preschool through eighth grade, according to a news release from The Aurora Highlands. Funding for construction comes from a $300 million bond voters approved in 2016.

Details including the school name and whether the school will have any particular academic specializations will be made at a later date. The attendance boundary is still being finalized as well, and the district will seek feedback from Highlands residents and others in the nearby community over the next several months, according to the release.

The school principal will be former Wheat Ridge Middle School principal Josh Cooley, who has been with APS for 15 years.

“This is such a unique opportunity for both students and staff,” Cooley said in a statement. “There’s a special kind of inspiration that comes with learning in a brandnew building with top-of-the-line technology and educators.”

The groundbreaking comes as

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