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Week of December 22, 2022
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DENVER, COLORADO
A publication of
VOLUME 96 | ISSUE 5
Meet the At Warren Village, two moms find hope for building new lives as Americans Mosquito Man On a quest bite by bite to study West Nile BY JOHN INGOLD THE COLORADO SUN
she met and married her husband, Christopher, an American from Denver. Their son, Alexander, was born in Denver, but soon after, the family moved to Houston. In 2018, tragedy struck when Christopher died. “After my husband passed away, I was lost,” Duby said. “I didn’t know what to do.” Facing financial hardship, she and Alexander, who is now 7, moved back to Colorado to stay with her mother-in-law. Duby began looking into housing but found it unaffordable. She also found that housing assistance was waitlisted for at least five years. So,
The Mosquito Man enters his lab with the energy of a kid bounding into a Chuck E. Cheese. All his friends are inside. There in one small screen-and-plexiglass enclosure is Sabethes cyaneus, a mosquito with an iridescent blue body and feathery paddles — what one researcher has called the “Hollywood showgirls of the mosquito world.” They float inside the box like dandelion seeds in the breeze. But the mosquito that has his attention for the moment is Sabethes chloropterus, a colony of which he derived from mosquitoes he first captured on an island in Panama as a graduate student. It has been a few days since this colony has eaten, he explains. They must be hungry. The Mosquito Man — Metropolitan State University of Denver biology professor Bob Hancock — rolls up his sleeve and sticks his right arm through a shrouded hole into their plexiglass home. The mosquitoes latch onto his hand. One. Two. Five. Fifteen. Forty. “Oh, this is a good feed,” he says, as the mosquitoes linger on his hand, growing sluggish the more of him they drink in. For Hancock, who studies mosquitoes, bed bugs and other insects most people would rather not spend time around, this is just another Wednesday morning. And the blood sacrifice is just part of the job for a scientist whose CV
SEE REBUILD, P3
SEE MOSQUITO, P2
Rachel, whose last name is being withheld, and Kim Duby are residents of Denver’s Warren Village and new U.S. citizens. PHOTOS BY CHRISTY STEADMAN
BY CHRISTY STEADMAN CSTEADMAN@COLORADOCOMMUNITYMEDIA.COM
It was a toddler’s bed that provided Kim Duby with the life’s path she is traveling today. When her son outgrew the bed, she put it up for sale on Facebook. A family advocate at Warren Village responded, asking Duby if she would donate it instead to help a mother in need. Duby wanted to help. So, she gave the bed away. Little did she know then how much of an impact that moment would have on her life. Warren Village is a nonprofit residential community located at 13th Avenue and Gilpin Street
near Cheesman Park. It provides single parents in need with more than a roof for their families. It has a two-generation approach to end the cycle of poverty and empower families to reach self-sufficiency. Warren Village offers a wide variety of resources that include transitional, private housing, parent services and advocacy, and early childhood education and childcare. Duby, a new U.S. citizen, is among its residents. It was through giving away her son’s bed that Duby first learned of Warren Village. The U.S.A offers opportunity
Duby, 24, immigrated to Colorado from Vietnam in October 2014 after
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Colorado plays host to USA Climbing’s national championship P10