WEEK OF JUNE 5, 2025
VOLUME 20 | ISSUE 49
FREE
Arvada Center to host first annual Arvada Powwow on June 7
ARVADA VFW CELEBRATES P2 MEMORIAL DAY
BY RYLEE DUNN RDUNN@COLORADOCOMMUNITYMEDIA.COM
and 159 from January to June in 2024 (we ended 2024 with 459 total reported MVTs),” Amos said. “To help combat this issue, we applied for the CATPA grant to provide vehicle GPS tracking devices to community members and support officer-led events for device installation.” The department has hosted three installation events — which are free to the public for anyone who lives or works in Arvada, owns one of the 10 most-frequently stolen cars in Colorado or has been the victim of auto theft in the last year — since January, installing devices in about 170 vehicles. The process is straightforward: after making an appointment, the vehicle owner simply goes to the Arvada Fleet Maintenance complex, pulls their car into one of the garage areas and APD staff help to pair the AirTag with their phone and install it in the car. APD cannot view the location of the AirTag after it’s paired with the vehicle owner’s phone. The whole process takes about 10 minutes from start to finish.
Colorado is home to a number of long-running powwows — this year’s Denver March Powwow marked the 49th edition of that event — and Arvada is poised to get in on the festivities. The Arvada Center will host the first annual Arvada Powwow from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. on June 7 in the Arvada Center Sculpture Garden. The free event, which is put on in partnership with the Rocky Mountain Indian Chamber of Commerce and Tatanka Ska Ventures, will feature native music, art, food and storytelling. One of the highlights of any powwow is the competition — a display of dancing, singing and drumming that is scored by a panel of judges — and the Arvada Powwow will showcase Indigenous dancers of all ages competing in a number of different dance categories including jingle, fancy, grass and chicken dance. Arvada Center President and CEO Philip Sneed said the powwow is an effort to recognize people who have historically lived on the land that is now Arvada. “We’re honored to host the Indian Chamber’s new powwow — this is one small way in which we can pay our respects to the original caretakers of the land on which we work,” Sneed said. Desmond Bruguier, the board chair of the Rocky Mountain Indian Chamber of Commerce, said he was looking forward to sharing Native American Culture with the Arvada Community. “The first annual Arvada Powwow Art and Community Festival is both a celebration of the past and a cultural endowment for the future,” Bruguier said. “We are honored to forge a partnership with the city of Arvada and the Arvada Center for the Arts and Humanities in order to bring this incredible event to the people. It is our responsibility as leaders to demonstrate that the concept of community consists of more than humans sharing physical re-
SEE AIRTAG, P23
SEE POWWOW, P16
FIRST ARVADA RABIES CASE OF YEAR FOUND IN BAT P5
Arvada Police Public Information Officer Dave Snelling (left) with a resident getting a tracker installed. COURTESY OF ARVADA POLICE
Arvada Police tries unique solution to auto thefts: Apple AirTag
Grant funding helps APD install about 170 trackers for Arvada residents
SCHOOLS UNION VOTES ‘NO CONFIDENCE’ AGAINST SUPER P7
ANTIQUES: WHERE HISTORY P10 MEETS CREATIVITY
BY RYLEE DUNN RDUNN@COLORADOCOMMUNITYMEDIA.COM
A recent auto theft was foiled when members of the Arvada Police Department’s Auto Theft Reduction and Recovery Program traced a recently installed Apple AirTag tracking device to a residential garage where the car was allegedly slated to be disassembled and sold for parts, according to APD Detective Breann Bellio. Thanks to the tracker — which had been installed at a free event put on by the Arvada Police using a $3,271 grant from the Colorado Auto Theft Prevention Authority (CATPA) — the police were able to intervene before the vehicle was tampered with further. APD Public Information Officer Chase Amos said Colorado “continues to rank among the top states for motor vehicle theft” and said Arvada is no exception to that trend. Amos said that APD has used AirTags to retrieve seven stolen cars in the last year. “Our city has seen an upward trend in reported thefts, with 475 in 2022, 559 in 2023,
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