Security cameras monitor an extensive list of products stocked on those protected shelves, including batteries, lightbulbs, laundry detergent, pregnancy tests, deodorant, candles, medicine and baby food. Patrons pay at one of two dedicated check-out counters before being handed receipts and continuing their shopping trips.

The anti-theft measures at the store, 757 E. 20th Ave., don’t surprise some shoppers: “They call it ‘Un-Safeway’ for a reason,” Alex Haskins told The Denver Post in the parking lot, repeating a common nickname for that location.

Major supermarket chains are ramping up their efforts to prevent stealing by restricting access to certain aisles, installing merchandise lock boxes, hiring security guards and more. Corporate spokespeople point to retail crime as a major problem for the grocery and convenience store industries, though several declined to discuss measures at specific stores in Denver.

“Different products experience different theft rates, depending on store location and other factors,” said Amy Thibault, a spokesperson for CVS Pharmacy. “Locking a product is a measure of last resort.”

Often, such actions come as an inconvenience to customers, with the new security protocols recognized as nationwide annoyances. The union representing Colorado grocery store workers says they’re Band-Aid solutions to larger problems: shortages of employees and security.

“Locking up merchandise can be an effective theft deterrent, but it underscores the need for more staff and more security in our stores,” said Kim Cordova, the president of the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 7. “With limited staff, customers face delays in accessing products, leading to frustration that often falls on our essential grocery store workers.”

The grocery industry, which is making less money now compared to recent years, predicts it will shell out more cash to hire and keep employees through benefits, training and other measures, according to the industry publication Grocery Dive.

Last year, the industry’s profit margin — 1.6% — was about as low as percentages before the COVID-19 pandemic years, which sent margins up to as high as 3% in 2020, when Americans spent months under lockdowns.

“It’s a marginal business. We work at the margins,” said Pete Marczyk, the co-founder of Marczyk Fine Foods. He runs a locally owned grocer with two locations in the Uptown and Hale neighborhoods.

His small business isn’t spared from theft — and he feels the financial hits personally.

“To us, it’s rent money,” Marczyk said. “That’s the money I need for tuition for my kid.”

Denver neighborhoods with highest theft rates

In Denver, several stores that have implemented some of the most extensive anti-theft measures aren’t located in neighborhoods with the highest reports of shoplifting offenses at supermarkets.

From Aug. 1, 2023, to Aug. 1, 2024, the Central Park neighborhood had the most larceny reports at local stores, with 98, according to the Denver Police Department. Union Station followed with 45, then Montclair with 37, Baker with 31 and Hampden with 14.

Five Points — home to the Safeway store with cordoned-off aisles — didn’t make the top 15 neighborhoods, ranking 17th.

But perhaps owing to the store’s past experience with crime, a security patrol car was parked by the entrance on a late August afternoon while an officer talked to a customer by a car in the parking lot. And on a recent weekend, just inside the entrance, a security guard and an employee confronted a man they suspected of theft.

Creating a store within a store for certain products is a less-common approach, but Safeway has implemented the setup at some other locations — and customers who commented on a recent Denver-specific thread about the practice on Reddit had no shortage of opinions.

Albertsons, the parent company of Safeway, didn’t respond to requests for comment about its strategies to prevent stealing.

Several miles away, the protocols at a King Soopers location in the Central Park neighborhood — No. 1 on the police’s list for grocery thefts — felt relatively normal this week.

A sign at the front of the store, 10406 E. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., informed patrons that receipts were required when exiting the building. It banned the indoor use of suitcases, duffel bags and roller bags. In small print at the bottom, the sign said: “These enhanced safety measures will help combat crime.”

The store itself offered an upscale shopping experience, with sushi and cheese counters. Security cameras watched overhead, but infant care items, medicine, vitamins, toys and wine sat openly on display. Only cosmetics and detergent were stored under lock and key.

A security guard stood at the exit, but he didn’t make a move to check receipts.

Jessica Trowbridge, a spokesperson for King Soopers and City Market, declined to provide details on their anti-theft practices “to preserve the integrity of our security measures.” But she said stores work with law enforcement to fight crime.

“We are disappointed by the increased level of crime across retail establishments,” Trowbridge wrote in a statement. “We have recently deployed additional solutions to help prevent and deter illegal activity, and although early in implementation, we have received positive feedback from associates and customers.”

Other well-known brands keep their theft-prevention tactics concealed from the public.

“Some products are subject to additional security,” said Kelsey Bohl, a spokesperson for Walmart. “Those determinations are made on a store-by-store basis.”

Companies offering business security to the grocery industry are more direct about potential strategies. InVue, a North Carolina-based technology company, highlights several methods to prevent shoplifting, including employee training, inventory checks, security tags, smart locks and more.

At a Walgreens location at 120 N. Broadway on the edge of the Baker neighborhood, the security measures were pronounced.

Lock boxes were common along many of the aisles, making facial products, perfume, deodorant, games and dietary supplements inaccessible unless a patron pressed a customer service button to flag down an employee.

The impact of crime was also apparent: Shoppers entering and leaving the pharmacy on Tuesday were greeted by a busted window covered with plywood.

“Retail crime is one of the top challenges facing our industry today,” said Megan Boyd, a spokesperson for Walgreens. “These additional security measures allow us to improve on-shelf availability of products to customers.”

“It really is almost fruitless”

At some big-name stores, it’s largely business as usual.

The Berkeley neighborhood’s Safeway location, 3800 W. 44th Ave., sits in a quiet shopping center near a State Farm Insurance office and an Anytime Fitness health club. Vitamins and detergent are within arm’s reach. The only items locked away are premium wines, including bottles of Veuve Clicquot and Dom Pérignon.

The neighborhood recorded just four larceny offenses at grocery stores over the last year, DPD’s data shows.

For now, smaller retailers operating in the Denver area are keeping their items unlocked, too.

At the 7305 N. Pecos St. location of the Hispanic grocery chain Lowe’s Mercado, toiletries, laundry detergent, wine and beer are readily available to patrons, with only jewelry and medicines like NyQuil shielded in display cases.

Marczyk Fine Foods’ stores use security cameras, barcode tracking and employee training to mitigate stealing, which Pete Marczyk estimates happens about once a day.

Since the pandemic, he said, he’s noticed a lack of police presence in the city, and his business can’t afford its own high-level security guard. Customers shouldn’t expect lock boxes throughout his stores, he said, in part because expensive products, such as ribeye steaks, are already behind glass.

“We don’t have the financial wherewithal at our size,” Marczyk said, “to really take steps beyond making sure, as much as we can, that our employees are safe and that customers feel safe when they come in our stores.”

The silver lining is that with only two locations, they’re often not targets of organized theft. And Marczyk Fine Foods more often handles nuisance issues.

But Marczyk knows that he’s not alone in his challenges. He recalled watching a woman run out of King Soopers with a cart of groceries while a security guard looked on.

“It really is almost fruitless,” Marczyk said. “If somebody’s going to walk in and steal from you, they’re going to walk in and steal from you.”

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Instead, I left that decision to a service called Timeleft, which aims to build relationships within a group of strangers matched through a personality algorithm over a shared meal.

Although Timeleft only held its first dinner in Denver on June 26, its reach has spread around the world since it launched last year in Portugal. It now operates in 49 countries and 185 cities, as of Aug. 15, and the U.S. counts as its largest market in terms of size.

“I didn’t expect this to be needed on the global scale,” cofounder and CEO Maxime Barbier told The Denver Post. “We forget how to talk to strangers. We forget how to connect with strangers.”

The need for social networks has never been more pronounced for Americans in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. Last year, U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy referred to society’s feelings of loneliness and isolation as “an underappreciated public health crisis.” These emotions can result in tangible repercussions like rising risks of stroke and heart disease, alongside mental health issues.

In Denver, other efforts to bring people together have taken place, such as nonprofit Longer Tables’ The 528 Table, which brought 528 diners to a 528-foot table in Civic Center Park last month. It was the predecessor for next summer’s Mile-Long Table, with a plan to have 5,280 people sitting at it.

Barbier says what makes Timeleft successful is that it’s “for every age, but also for every agenda.” As an example, his 72-year-old father regularly attends dinners to socialize. In the future, Barbier plans to market the service to seniors suffering from loneliness.

Other usual suspects at the tables include recent divorcees, foodies, adventurous personalities, newcomers to cities and people in search of friendship, Barbier said.

The majority of participants are women, who represent around 70% of users, but Barbier cautions that the service isn’t a dating app.

“With Timeleft, in one click, you guarantee you’re going to meet people,” Barbier said. “That’s kind of the recipe of our success.”

A first-timer’s take on Timeleft

I learned about Timeleft through an advertisement on my Instagram feed. Intrigued, I checked out the profile, which touts: “We fight big-city loneliness. One dinner at a time.”

Soon, I was signed up for a dinner on Wednesday, Aug. 21. I chose between Denver’s two zones: Capitol Hill/Cheesman/City Park and Highland/RiNo/LoDo. No information was initially provided about the restaurant or the five fellow diners, and that’s intentional — those would be revealed later.

Details about the strangers’ zodiac signs and industries trickled in. Upon waking the morning of, I received my instructions: Group 1 at Sweet Ginger Asian Bistro&Sushi at 2710 E. 3rd Ave.

As I readied myself for the event, my parents detailed their concerns over speakerphone. Mom asked if it was a dating app — a valid question, given my committed relationship status. Dad worried about my safety. What if I was sitting down to eat with cold-blooded killers?

So, on a dark and stormy night (as the cliché goes), my heels clacked along the kempt Cherry Creek sidewalks, all the way to the restaurant’s host stand. For the past few weeks, Sweet Ginger Asian Bistro&Sushi has kept several tables reserved for Timeleft groups on Wednesdays.

Manager Yuki Lin says it’s giving her a slight boost in business by providing the restaurant with more diners, on top of the usual takeout orders. “Dining with strange people — oh, it sounds interesting,” she added before escorting me to my seat.

I had arrived first. With a few butterflies fluttering around my empty stomach, I overheard other Timeleft diners making introductions at nearby tables.

Then, Sam Smiley slid into the booth across from me, and we were off to the races. I quickly got acquainted with them: a Wisconsinite with a Leo star sign, who recently moved to Denver from Chicago to pursue their PhD in physics.

“I haven’t started my (school) program yet, so I don’t have a lot of community,” Smiley said. “I was just looking to meet new people and do something fun.”

The other three diners followed shortly thereafter, with just one no-show, whom we nicknamed “Casper.”

It was that old joke turned reality: A materials engineer, a journalist, a student, a graphic designer and an occupational therapist walk into a bar…

Our group got to work determining our similarities and differences. We all fell within the age range of mid-to-late twenties and shared an interest in art. Beyond that, variations abounded at our table, made up of one man, three women and one nonbinary person.

Three of us fell into several of the same categories: Timeleft first-timers, Denver residents, Colorado transplants and extroverts. The other two considered themselves introverted, but they committed to three-month service subscriptions after their initial dinners — even if that meant driving to the big city from their respective homes in Aurora and Parker. They’re also Colorado born and bred.

“It just feels intimidating to go to a club or to a bar or to a social event where you’re like, ‘I’m not going to know anybody,'” said Noa Baumgarten, a diner who’s used Timeleft before. “This made it feel less intimidating to know it’s just five people.”

She’s even planning a wine and craft night with women she met at another dinner.

Over sushi and Thai curry, we asked icebreaker questions that Timeleft offered as a game at the start of dinner. They gradually grew more intense. In turn, awkward pauses gave way to monologues about future hopes and past mistakes.

Jenna Sparacio found the prompts especially helpful to keep the conversation flowing. After an hour and a half, the air had lightened.

To keep the party going, Timeleft finished the night by pointing users to a neighborhood bar for an after party to meet others in the community.

We weren’t strangers anymore, and we weren’t friends yet — but acquaintances with a deeper appreciation of the humans around them.

Tavis McMahan compared the experience to childhood summer camps.

“You put a bunch of people in a room together, and you’re gonna find friends,” McMahan said. “Nobody does that anymore, right? So, that’s why I wanted this experience.”

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The tension exploded earlier this month when a bicyclist was videotaped cursing and yelling at the sandwich shop’s staff over parking issues, calling owner Thuc-Nhu Hoang “an ugly, nasty piece of garbage” on top of race-related slurs.

“I don’t feel safe anymore,” Hoang said in a phone interview with The Denver Post. She called the incident “very racist.” CôNu’s Corner posted footage of the rant on its Instagram page.

Her shop sits at the corner of Tennyson Street and West 29th, where the Sloan’s Lake neighborhood transitions into West Highland. CôNu’s Corner Cafe, 4400 W. 29th Ave., is just one business along a small corridor (where bike lanes have already caused some agitation) that includes Quarterback Liquors, Leroy’s Bagels and SloHi Coffee + Bike.

On a recent Tuesday, only a few of the dozen-plus spaces in front of CôNu’s were available. Posted signs warned drivers that only customers are welcome and violators will be towed.

For over four years, that wasn’t the case. When Hoang’s business operated solely as a convenience store, she said she let it slide when her neighbors’ patrons parked there. That changed once she opened the sandwich shop last year.

There wasn’t enough room for her customers to park, too, Hoang said, and she worried about the potential for lawsuits during snowy months if clients of other businesses slipped and fell in her lot.

But once Hoang began booting and towing violators, she experienced harassment. Her shop is currently rated 4.7 stars out of five on Google reviews, but Hoang says she’s contended with “fake” one-star reviews written by parking offenders.

“They lie,” Hoang said. “It’s really hurt our business.”

Quarterback Liquors now pays to share several spaces in the lot, but other business owners haven’t agreed to the offer. Hoang declined to provide the cost for monthly parking rent.

“I don’t know what else to do,” she said. “They should let their customers know. That’s their job to do that.”

“Being able to be neighborly again”

Sarah Green, who owns Leroy’s Bagels, 4432 W. 29th Ave., depicted the turmoil as uncharacteristic of their community. “We’re all small businesses, and we’ve all been able to coexist really peacefully over the years,” she said. The shop opened in 2015.

In Green’s opinion, the neighborhood rift started with a lack of signage at CôNu’s, which left drivers in the dark about the towing risk. Local business owners met to discuss the issue and asked Hoang to put up signs, Green said.

“There was a good amount of time that there were no signs, and there was still a lot of towing happening, which felt unfair,” Green said.

During that waiting period, entrepreneurs posted their own notices in their storefront windows to notify customers. Green said she’s never encouraged her patrons to park in the lot, adding that she can’t afford to pay the cost to rent the allotted spots.

Future talks are planned between the parties, which Green hopes “will at least be able to get us to a point of being able to be neighborly again.” Representatives of SloHi Coffee + Bike didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Regardless of the strain between neighbors, Green shames the person who berated Hoang and hopes for accountability.

“No one should ever, ever be able to say something like that to another person, especially seeing that in our corridor, because we always have been tightknit,” Green said.

Local pet owners can rejoice in knowing that its opening is soon to come — although the park may only last a few years.

Mystery has shrouded Broadway Bark — the official name of the dog park at 380 S. Cherokee St. — since construction began last winter, with workers regrading the site and installing an irrigation system, a fence and more.

Denverites have taken to Reddit in recent months to inquire about the dog park’s status and speculate over who owns it.

There’s some confusion about that detail. At AMLI Broadway Park and Cortland Alameda Station, two apartment buildings that neighbor the park, leasing team members said they were under the impression the city owned it. However, Denver Parks and Recreation spokesperson Stephanie Figueroa said it’s part of a private development.

The 1-acre dog park is owned by BMP Northwest LLC, but development company D4 Urban is responsible for the property, said Dan Cohen, CEO of D4 Urban. His team aims to open the park later this fall, with plans to install signage over the next month, he added.

“We have been waiting for the native grasses to fully establish before opening the park to the general public,” Cohen said in an email. “Once the gates are open, I think word will spread very fast.”

D4 Urban may host an opening event for its so-called “canine playground,” which features an agility ramp, tunnels and more equipment. Cohen said the timing will likely correspond with the Oct. 27 opening production of the “Monopoly Lifesized” experience at the nearby Denver Center for the Performing Arts’ Off-Center at Broadway Park at 407 S. Broadway.

But the dog park won’t be a permanent fixture in the Baker neighborhood. It’s the site of future development, although what will take its place is uncertain. The commercial mixed-use zoning allows for different options, and construction will likely take place in the next four to seven years, Cohen said.

“Rather than leaving a vacant dirt lot in place for potentially several years, we decided (the dog park) could serve as a unique community amenity in the interim,” Cohen said.

Whatever happens, the space’s next iteration won’t include a dog park. But other parcels of land in the area are dedicated as open spaces, and one will potentially be set aside for dogs to roam, Cohen said.

The property, located near Safeway and Sam’s Club locations, was purchased in 2004. Previously, it was home to a Kmart store, which was demolished in 2017.

Since then, Cohen’s company has focused on adding infrastructure like streets and utilities to the area and selling land from the old Kmart site, which now houses apartment complexes.

Broadway Bark is meant to temporarily fill a local need for more dog parks.

Broadway Park North Metropolitan District No. 1 is leasing it and will take care of operations and maintenance, Cohen said. The district is “a quasigovernmental entity responsible for funding, constructing and maintaining public infrastructure improvements” for that part of Denver, Cohen said, which means new roads, utilities and infrastructure around the dog park fall within its control.

At Broadway Bark, “We look forward to seeing dogs catching Frisbees out there very soon,” Cohen said.

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“I guess it’s just like an ongoing joke,” said Ivy Pham, co-owner of Kickin Chicken. “Now, we have three rocks, and I don’t want any more rocks.”

The latest act of vandalism, which occurred in early August, counts as the third time that Pham and her brother John have weathered petty crime at their family-owned restaurant. However, she says the incidents aren’t isolated to their location at 275 S. Union Blvd., with other businesses recently targeted by criminals, too.

“Overall, the neighborhood is experiencing vandalism,” Pham said.

Days before the rock flew through the window of Kickin Chicken on August 7, a man broke into Ballmer Peak Distillery down the street, stealing a bottle of Bäsk Nömört — the distillery’s play on Chicago’s Malört — and tobacco bitters. And in Denver’s Westwood neighborhood, which runs adjacent to Lakewood, burglaries at Columbine Steak House and Lounge, Cultura Chocolate and other community staples have shaken locals.

For their part, Pham and Eric Strom, co-owner of Ballmer Peak Distillery, have taken the crimes in stride, using humor to cope.

At Kickin Chicken, the trio of stones sits on a shelf next to awards. Small signs introduce one of them as Bob, which was thrown on the restaurant’s grand opening day in 2020, and the second as Oscar. On the latter’s sign, it reads: “I don’t think my family was ready just yet to adopt another rock, but they did and here I am!”

Pham, 33, is polling customers on possible names for the newest addition. “We just can’t let that overshadow the hard work of the team, what we stand for,” she said. “So, that’s why we put some humor into it.”

Resilience runs in her family. Her parents hail from Vietnam and emigrated to the U.S. after the Vietnam War. Colorado-born Pham grew up in the restaurant industry, watching her mom run phở restaurants in Aurora and Lakewood. During the pandemic, she and her brother opened their own restaurant, with an approach she described as “fried chicken with kind of a twist — fusion, almost.”

Their menu offers an eclectic range of choices: chicken tenders with a cheddar jalapeño bubble waffle, Mexican street corn, Vietnamese slaw, Thai iced tea, Vietnamese iced coffee and more. But the chicken sandwich and chicken katsu reign supreme as the most popular, Pham said.

At Ballmer Peak Distillery, the owners are also trying to have some fun. They created a specialty shot related to the break-in: a concoction that consists of the stolen liquor and bitters. But Strom recommends trying a house favorite, the Three Dots & A Dash rum cocktail, instead.

“There’s nothing we can do about it. There’s no point in getting mad about it,” Strom said. “It’s just learn what we can do in the future and try to be upbeat about it.”

Since the distillery at 12347 W. Alameda Pkwy. first opened in 2019, Strom and his co-owner, Austin Adamson, haven’t dealt with any issues until the burglary over two weeks ago. Through the building’s cameras, Strom watched as a man smashed a window, then took his products.

“It was just kind of a crime of opportunity,” he said.

After Strom, 35, shared the incident on social media, users responded with anecdotes of their own about other crimes in the area.

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“It’s a fairly quiet neighborhood, so it’s not something that we necessarily thought was an issue that we’d have to contend with a whole lot,” he said. “Once it happened to us, it kind of shed a light — oh yeah, everybody else seems to be having this issue.”

But these entrepreneurs aren’t letting the incidents hinder their successes. On August 8, Ballmer Peak Distillery opened its second location in Lakewood at 275 S. Sheridan Blvd. Kickin Chicken also plans to open another location in Aurora near the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus in October.

“We’re very optimistic people,” Pham said. “Of course, anybody faces their challenges, but it’s just how you’re going to overcome it — and your mindset after.”

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Attendees visited vendors selling fresh Colombian coffee and arepas, or stuffed corn cakes. Near a stand hawking raspados — refreshing shaved ice — Chantel Baumgard remarked on how much her community has flourished in recent years.

“We came to this same event three years ago, and it was just one food truck out here,” said Baumgard, 29, whose mother is from Bogotá, Colombia’s bustling capital. “This year, it’s huge.”

Denver has taken in tens of thousands of migrants from Venezuela since late 2022, with the community rallying together to organize shelters, gather food and integrate children into local schools. But a smaller influx of newcomers has arrived from Colombia, Venezuela’s South American neighbor.

Their reasons for leaving have differed at times, though the political strife in Venezuela has impacted Colombia by proxy. As Colombians try to settle down in Denver, they often feel overlooked.

“Within that wave of newcomers, yes, (the) majority were Venezuelans, but a lot of our community — Colombian community — kind of feel left out,” said Xiomara Sanchez, the president of the grassroots organization La Fundación de Colombianos en Colorado. “Some of the Colombian population feel like some of the resources, or the stuff out there (for Venezuelans), is not necessarily for them.”

Recent arrivals from Colombia say they want to secure jobs and build better lives for themselves here. Colombian immigrants who had lived near the border with Venezuela cite another reason: to escape conflict.

Decades of violence in their own country, tied to civil wars and drug trafficking — with the repercussions still felt today — also convinced some Colombians to say goodbye to their home country.

But when they land in the Centennial State, some aren’t sure where to turn for help, including housing assistance, employment services and access to health care providers. Often, their status as undocumented immigrants poses challenges. And much of the community messaging in the last two years has been directed at Venezuelans, who have been the focus of significant spending by Denver city government and nonprofit groups, especially during a period at the start of the year when daily busloads were arriving from Texas border cities.

Denver Human Services spokesperson Jon Ewing noted that “we made zero distinction in regards to country of origin” when providing migrants with city resources, such as support in applying for work authorization.

Both populations have weathered similar challenges in broad strokes, including unemployment, financial hardship and fears about safety. However, the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Venezuela has created dire conditions, so many of its migrants have been granted specific protections in the U.S. as they’ve sought asylum at the border.

“The resources allocated to Venezuelans and Venezuelan organizations are due to the current political situation in Venezuela,” Sanchez said. Still, “not everyone knows what is available and who qualifies.”

The number of Colombians in the U.S. — both foreign-born and American-born — has steadily risen from about 500,000 in 2000 to 1.4 million in 2021, the Pew Research Center reports. In 2022, Colorado was home to almost 7,700 foreign-born Colombians, according to the Migration Policy Institute.

The size of the state’s Colombian population has become notable enough that, in May, the Colombian Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced plans to open a consulate in Denver.

The political instability in Venezuela is still among the factors spurring Venezuelans and Colombians alike to leave for other places like Denver. Since Venezuela’s presidential election took place on July 28, civilians have protested claims by President Nicolás Maduro that he won reelection over mounting evidence that his challenger, Edmundo González Urrutia, received the most votes.

Ties that bind Venezuela and Colombia

The turmoil in Venezuela isn’t solely affecting its citizens. As Sanchez, 42, has worked with Colombian immigrants in Colorado, she’s noticed that more are arriving in Denver after leaving the Santander department near the Venezuelan border.

“A lot of the people that you see here now are from the border, and that’s because they were affected by the whole situation,” she said. There, “things are ugly.”

The Migration Policy Institute notes that a large swath of Colombians are opting to cross into the U.S. from Mexico without proper documentation. More than 126,000 Colombians were recorded at the border over the first eight months of the last fiscal year, up sharply from two years earlier.

“Many (Colombians) also cross the border and have nothing when they arrive,” Sanchez said.

In Colorado, Sanchez said, some inquire about seeking temporary protected status, which protects beneficiaries from deportation and grants them work authorization. Sixteen countries’ citizens are currently designated for TPS, including El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua and Venezuela — but not Colombia. And for now, only Venezuelans who have resided in the U.S. since July 31, 2023, can apply for TPS as first-time applicants.

“Seeking asylum is one of the paths some Colombian immigrants take, but it is not necessarily the most common route for all Colombian immigrants,” Sanchez said.

At times, Colombia’s and Venezuela’s respective histories have overlapped. For a brief period in the 19th century, the two nations were even part of the same state — Gran Colombia — which also included Panama and Ecuador.

Oliver Kaplan, an associate professor at the University of Denver’s Josef Korbel School of International Studies, described the Colombian system as traditionally conservative-leaning, democratic and stable. But because of its disparities in wealth and services, “Colombia is known as one of the most unequal countries in the world,” he said.

For over two centuries, civil wars rocked the nation. The latest armed conflict, which lasted five decades, ended in 2016. Many Colombians fled the fighting. In the 1980s and 1990s, they largely took shelter in neighboring Venezuela, which was a thriving country at the time.

In turn, “the Colombians have done really this heroic effort to take in and absorb and provide services for a massive number of Venezuelans” as that country has been destabilized, Kaplan said.

During President Hugo Chávez’s socialist rule of Venezuela from 1999 to 2013, its wealthy residents primarily relocated to the U.S., although some moved to Colombia.

“There were a few with a lot of money,” said César Caballero Reinoso, the manager of Colombian polling company Cifras & Conceptos S.A. “We received them with open arms.”

A Denver Post reporter met with Caballero in Bogotá while traveling in Colombia in late July. As he nursed a lemonade drink in the penthouse of a business club in the upscale Zona G neighborhood, he recounted a brief history of his country’s modern relationship with Venezuela.

After Maduro was elected president of Venezuela in 2013, Caballero said, the nation’s masses left, too, with many opting to walk west through Colombia. Initially, they were met with solidarity from Colombians, who passed out food and gave truck rides to migrants.

“You don’t see that now,” Caballero said.

Xenophobia increased as more Venezuelans resettled in Colombia, with locals blaming migrants for security threats and added competition for jobs — although the situation has since calmed, Caballero said.

Family, opportunities draw people to Colorado

Denver resident Mayra Regalado has seen both perspectives. The native of Calabozo, Venezuela, resided in Bogotá for nine years with her husband Huila, who is from Colombia’s Tolima department. There, Regalado noticed Colombians were moving abroad after feeling the squeeze of unemployment and inflation.

At age 31, she decided to make the trek to the U.S. with a small group of people, including her son. For three months, they traveled alongside Colombians, Panamanians and even Asians.

“I know a lot of Colombians, and they are hard workers,” Regalado said in Spanish while sitting in the courtyard of her north Denver apartment building this summer. “On the trail, they’ll help you with the luggage, with your bag, with your kid.”

She was deported twice from Mexico after officials caught her riding atop a train moving toward the U.S. Regalado eventually completed her journey and has made ends meet for nine months in Denver by cleaning houses.

When asked if she feels more stable in the U.S. than in Venezuela and Colombia, she answered: “Un poco mejor.” (“A little better.”)

Among Colombians, several of the reasons they choose to emigrate are homegrown, including safety concerns.

“You might own a little bit more than your neighbor, and you already are a target for kidnapping,” Sanchez said. “Like every nationality, there’s always going to be good people and bad people.”

Colombia’s dearth of employment is another factor that’s consistently driven Colombians to other countries, Eliana Vásquez said.

“There are not many opportunities here for work,” said Vásquez, 70, in an interview with The Post at a shopping center in Medellín, Colombia, last month. “I feel that’s always been the case.”

After Vásquez made the decision to leave Colombia, she lived in the U.S. for 44 years. She originally came to learn English, but stayed for several reasons, including job prospects. Vásquez spent the last two decades working in administration at Stanford University in California before returning to Colombia in late 2023.

So, how can her nation retain its people, particularly its youth? “If young Colombians who are going have a reason to stay here,” Vásquez offered.

Many Colombians have been drawn to Colorado by “chain migration,” in which people leaving home join relatives who already live here, Sanchez said. Her younger sister is among them — she arrived in Colorado about three years ago, spurred to leave by the lack of opportunities.

Cristian Plazas, 21, also followed a sibling to Denver, resettling from Colombia’s Antioquia department two years ago. “I had a brother that came, and he invited us to come,” Plazas said in Spanish at the Colombian Festival last month.

Sanchez’s organization has stepped up to build a network for newcomers by donating clothes and connecting them with professional and volunteer opportunities.

As her community grows, she sees glimmers of her homeland in Denver.

“Twenty years ago, we couldn’t find anything that really reminded me of my country,” said Sanchez, who hails from Cali, Colombia, and moved here 23 years ago, at age 19.

Now, she said, “Colorado’s home.”

Police issued a crime alert on Aug. 16 about the homicide of Grace Monet McKittrick, nicknamed “Josie,” asking for help from the public in its investigation.

McKittrick was found dead with signs of trauma near East 16th Avenue and North High Street on Aug. 14, police told The Denver Post. It was originally investigated as an outdoor death after it was reported around 5:30 p.m. in the 1900 block of 16th Avenue.

The Denver Office of the Medical Examiner on Friday announced McKittrick died from asphyxia after she was strangled and ruled her death a homicide.

Investigators have not yet made any arrests, and anyone with information can call Metro Denver Crime Stoppers at 720-913-7867.

Updated Aug. 17 at 1:28 p.m. This story was updated to correct the victim’s name. Police originally identified the woman as Monet Grace Mckittrick.

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District Court Judge Sarah Stout on Wednesday afternoon granted a temporary restraining order requested by Javier Hidalgo the previous day. The order requires property owner Nome Partners LLC, management company CBZ Management and its representatives, Shmaryahu and Zev Baumgarten, to provide their former Fitzsimons Place tenants with either hotel rooms or apartment units similar to their old ones.

Once the former residents make those requests, the accommodations must be provided within 24 hours, said Hidalgo’s attorney, Benjamin DeGolia. The focus over the next week is to inform tenants that this option is now available and to help them request it, DeGolia added.

In the larger case, he also intends to seek back rent for every tenant.

“We’re prepared to fight this all the way to a judgment through a trial,” DeGolia said on Thursday.

Stout wrote in the court order that if she didn’t take the initial action, the displaced renters would be put at risk “of being unable to maintain habitable housing, and potentially being entirely unhoused.”

She set a hearing for next Wednesday to hear arguments on whether to extend the temporary restraining order and convert it into a preliminary injunction. As it stands, the temporary order will last 14 days.

An Aurora city spokesperson has said the city is covering hotel stays for former residents through the end of August, and outside organizations will pay for former tenants’ security deposits if they secure a new rental. But the court’s involvement could provide more certainty in the long term.

Representatives of the property management company didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday. The city of Aurora declined to comment.

Hidalgo filed the class action complaint on Monday after more than 85 families were forced to move out of the 98-unit apartment building, 1568 Nome St., by Tuesday morning. The lawsuit listed a litany of issues endured by residents since CBZ Management took over in 2019: bed bugs, black mold, in-unit flooding and more.

“As soon as we got in and saw the conditions and complained about how poor the conditions were, the management would ignore us or refuse to do anything,” Hidalgo told The Denver Post on Tuesday.

He hails from Guárico, Venezuela, and is a Venezuelan migrant like many of the other former tenants. Hidalgo, 27, moved into the building in February.

Last week, Aurora city officials condemned the complex for unaddressed code violations and gave the occupants six days to leave — a quick timeline that left residents begging the city for an extension. CBZ Management, for its part, blamed recent problems at the property on the presence of a transnational Venezuelan gang.

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The lawsuit, filed Monday by Javier Hidalgo, sought to force the landlords to provide him and other displaced residents with housing. The suit cites conditions that made the 98-unit building “fundamentally uninhabitable,” including water leaks, pest infestations and structural damages.

Hidalgo is asking Adams County District Court to order property owner Nome Partners LLC, property management company CBZ Management and its representatives, Shmaryahu and Zev Baumgarten, to provide former residents with either apartment units similar to their old ones or hotel stays for at least 60 days.

“Every one of us tenants in that building feel like we were defrauded,” Hidalgo said in Spanish on Tuesday afternoon. “We were robbed from the very beginning.”

Benjamin DeGolia, Hidalgo’s attorney, said he also plans to seek a significant amount of back rent for every tenant.

“Unfortunately, we see a lot of properties in the Denver metro area that have been neglected,” DeGolia said. “But I’ll also say that these conditions in this building are exceptionally horrific.”

The latest litigation follows legal action pursued by the city of Aurora against Zev Baumgarten for longstanding code violations at Fitzsimons Place. However, CBZ Management argued that recent problems on the property were caused by a transnational Venezuelan gang’s presence at the building.

Spokespeople representing the property management company declined to provide further comment.

On Tuesday morning, tenants of the building — many of whom are Venezuelan migrants — scrambled to finish moving out before police arrived just after 7 a.m., said Nate Kassa, a community organizer at the East Colfax Community Collective. Residents were given only six days to leave by the city.

“We were still rushing to get everybody out on all four floors,” Kassa said. “Right now, these people are literally homeless.”

Aurora city spokesperson Ryan Luby confirmed that it appeared the building, 1568 Nome St. near the Anschutz Medical Campus, was vacated by 9:30 a.m.

Around that time, the East Colfax Community Collective directed 70 former tenants to 25 hotel rooms as temporary shelter, with at least 30 more rooms available to those still being processed, Luby said.

Only “a handful” of residents had found other housing options, Kassa said. Since early hotel check-ins weren’t available Tuesday, he added, former tenants were waiting at the corner of Oswego Street and East 16th Avenue around 1 p.m.

“The parents — they’re just ready to be in the next place,” Kassa said. “We as a community need to push the city to make sure that they execute their promises.”

The city will cover the hotel stays through the end of August. When former tenants find a new place to live, organizations working with Aurora officials will pay for their new security deposits through a flex fund, Luby said.

Later, he said, the city plans to recover the money shelled out for the abatement, security deposits and hotel rooms from CBZ Management and its principals.

The affected renters protested the impending move-out deadline on Monday at the Aurora Municipal Building, pressing City Manager Jason Batchelor and Mayor Mike Coffman to grant them another two months to secure housing. They also requested city support for security deposits, housing vouchers and financial aid for the first month’s rent.

But city officials didn’t waver on the Tuesday morning deadline to vacate the apartment complex.

After shutting off utilities, “city contractors will subsequently begin boarding up the building and fencing off the entire property,” Luby said in a Monday statement.

“Let us be clear,” he wrote, “the blame for this unfortunate circumstance rests solely with CBZ Management and its principals, the owners and managers of the property, who have repeatedly failed their tenants for years by allowing the building and property to fall into a state of complete disrepair.”

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“We are humans. We are not animals,” said Emanuel Chabrier, 27, a renter for about three years. “This is not fair.”

On Wednesday morning, police notified tenants of 1568 Nome St. that the complex, which is run by CBZ Management, will soon be shuttered because of its history of unaddressed code violations, including rodent infestations and sewage backups. More than 85 families — many of them Venezuelan migrants — are affected by the building condemnation.

Placards affixed to the front doors of each of the 95 apartments notify tenants of the order to vacate. In bold red font, they say: “Danger, no trespassing.”

Occupants have until 7 a.m. Tuesday — a total of six days after the official notification — to figure out alternatives and move out.

A group of about 30 residents and advocates gathered for a news conference on Thursday afternoon in the courtyard at Fitzsimons Place. They called on Aurora City Manager Jason Batchelor to allow two months longer to find new homes.

The East Colfax Community Collective and Housekeys Action Network Denver are also pushing the city to provide tenants with housing vouchers, rental assistance for the first month of their new leases and money for security deposits.

Aurora city spokesperson Ryan Luby said the city was working to find housing resources for tenants. It plans to cover the costs of security deposits for those affected by the condemnation and pay the sums directly to their new landlords, he said.

Officials will recover that money from the owners of Fitzsimons Place later, he added.

Earlier this week CBZ representatives told The Denver Post that managers had not visited the complex in weeks because of security concerns, including problems caused in the complex by a transnational Venezuelan gang. But city officials called that a diversion from longstanding safety and health problems.

In the courtyard, residents spoke in English and Spanish about the challenges they’ve faced in trying to secure housing quickly, including missing days of work.

Some children held white balloons and signs reading “Aurora renters demand healthy homes” and “We need a response from the company,” while others returning home from school clambered up stairwells, lugging backpacks.

“You have over 66 children in this building alone,” said V Reeves, an organizer with Housekeys Action Network. “These are good people, they’re deserving people and they have rights as paying tenants.”

Luby said city management was bound by municipal code on the abatement process. The code says the city “shall permit not more than 15 days” for occupants to vacate a building once notice is officially given that it’s deemed unsafe for human habitation.

“It would be irresponsible for the city to allow 1568 Nome St. to remain occupied for another two months in its current state,” Luby wrote in a statement. “The building owners and managers made the decision to effectively abandon their paying tenants, and this is the unfortunate consequence.”

As for whether the city could extend the six-day notice to the maximum allowed by code, Luby said water service “is scheduled for shutoff on the posted date.”

But that is exactly what residents are hoping for: a delay. On Thursday, their voices echoed in the courtyard as they chanted, “Queremos más tiempo” — or, in English, “We want more time.”

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