Residents are often encouraged to buy local products and support farmers and the fresh food they provide. Monika Courtney of the Thunderbird Spirit Ranch understands this all too well.

Jan Quick loves having the opportunity to honor fellow veterans, aid the youth and feel like a family with the community from serving as chaplain of American Legion Post 55.

Joey Lemley was one of many kids who grew up with the superhero dream of being able to help others through their career. For Lemley, that was becoming a police officer.

Growing up, Cara Reano had an early hand in home health care while looking after her father who had a rare leukemia. This would influence her decision to turn to medicine later down the road.

Paula Barnett took over for Janell Sciacca as Buena Vista’s town clerk in September and this year will be using her decades of experience in Colorado elections for our own municipal elections in April.

Marjorie Erickson has a passion for all of humanity and lives life through the words of one of her favorite people, Desmond Tutu: “Do your little bit of good where you are; it’s those little bits of good together that overwhelm the world.”

After moving to Buena Vista in July 1996, Duff Lacy cannot imagine living anywhere else.

Serving coffee and breakfast burritos to people slugging their way to work, Tonya Wyles hopes to help the community with more than just the Slug & Chug food truck this year.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Due to an editing error, Jean Buster was incorrectly identified in the photo caption as "Trouble to her friends." Editor made mistake. The Times regrets the error and any confusion it may have caused.

If your health is perfect and there’s no room for improvement, I say go with it. Keep doing what you’re doing.

The holidays are known for bringing people together, making it an even greater time to work at Grace Church for Episcopal pastor Catherine Tran.

While most of her career was spent in administrative duties for a wide variety of different companies, she says she particularly enjoyed the time working in the mining industry.

“We actually came through BV,” he says. “I remember we stopped, we got fishing tackle, my dad got a fishing license at Hi-Rocky. We camped in the mountains west of here. We came back almost every year for Colorado vacations and camping in the mountains while I was a kid. When I was grown and got married, we continued to come out here and camp.”

Watershed is housed in the historic brick building on East Main Street that was once home to the Forest Service and later Chaffee County Public Health.

Boyd’s parents met in Buena Vista. His grandmother, Florence Tising, had started Tising’s Café with her husband during the mid-1900s. That café is now Jan’s Restaurant.

Born in Denver and raised in Buena Vista, Amy has enjoyed the past 11 years as a local business owner.

Originally from Wisconsin, Pingitore had visited Buena Vista many times previously. After his good friends Bill and Cheryl Mehaffey came out and started Bongo Billy’s off the highway, he decided to follow along.

The new website features photography from our region, has improved functionality, clean design that allows for easy navigation, and is mobile-device friendly.

“If you believe that offenders are incapable of changing, then to me, by logical argument, you yourself are incapable of changing,” says Cordova.

“I knew how to use a rod by the time I knew how to walk,” he says.

He considered attending University of Colorado Boulder to study meteorology and, as he says with a chuckle, “becoming ‘Dan-Dan-the Weatherman.’”

Business manager Jacob Mueller, who co-owns the business with Mike and Francie Allen, says, “There aren’t many places serving craft coffee, also known as third wave coffee, (a term coined in 2002), once you go west of the Front Range mountains in Colorado. Nor are there many places serving made-from-scratch authentic Italian gelato, but The Midland Stop’s five-star rating is a testimony to its success since opening in 2015.”

“I got my first taste of what mountains were really like when I climbed Mount Washington in New Hampshire and Mount Katadin in Maine. But it was my trip down the West Coast from Washington state to Baja California in 1971 that convinced me I had to move to the West.”

“I think it’s so rare for people my age to find a job in their field in a place that they want to be,” she says. “It seemed like a perfect fit of a job in my field in a valley that I love.”

Buena Vista’s wild west star is 85-year-old June Smith, who loves her 12-gauge Browning shotgun and spent most of her married life involved the Buena Vista Hunter Education group and the Buena Vista Sportsman Club.

“When I first moved here, not a lot of people were doing yoga,” says Pfingston. “It’s not like a restaurant where everybody eats or everybody drinks coffee. It’s hard to sell yoga sometimes.”

The two children of Bushnell and her husband, Robert, were born just 14 months apart from one another, each one with a genetic disability that left them requiring 24-hour care.

“In one Columbian 26-story apartment building that we lived in, there were five neighbors who were major cocaine traffickers,” he says. “I loved being around bad guys and jails in my work. I was never the type for pinstriped suits and silk ties. I loved the adrenaline rush of being in the middle of the action.”

As a designer and builder with Create Inc., Jacobson was no stranger to construction. He helped with not just the splash pad but also constructing the bathroom.

“Poutine is a French-Canadian version of hand cut fries smothered in Guinness peppercorn gravy and toppings. It sticks to your ribs... ."

After making sure they were all out of danger, Smith and the others made sure the injured man, Josh Fohner, had a pulse as they waited for an ambulance to arrive.