Last week, amid great fanfare, President Ernesto Zedillo opened Telmex's San Diego telephone operations base. This, he said, was the beginning of a new era in cross-border cooperation. So how come I'm standing by this …

What's cooking? If you're in San Diego, more than likely it's meth. By the "Nazi" method. Dry, odor-free, small-scale, impossible to catch. And if you're selling, you'll still have more customers than anywhere else in …

In Khartoum it's the Acropole. In Vientiane it's the Constellation. In London it's Biddy Mulligan's. In Tijuana the place to find "the buzz" is Big Boy -- El Big. El Big, on Agua Caliente Boulevard, …

John Stevens is a driven man. Back in the late '80s in Portland, Oregon, he taught David Stevens the ways of private investigation. Now, 12 years later, his pupil is dead. Last December 23 on …

'I have a dream for Tijuana," says ex-mayor José Guadalupe Osuna Millán. We're sitting in Osuna's office on the fifth floor of a glass complex in the Rio zone of Tijuana. With its trees, plazas, …

'I would hate to be the president of Tijuana tourism board." So says Andres Oppenheimer, 48, Pulitzer prize-winning Argentinian-born Latin American correspondent for the Miami Herald. He was in town recently to speak at San …

The mesquite bushes are thick and sharp. Agent Gabriel Arias weaves up through them, climbing the steep trail ahead of me. He pulls the black pistol out of his back left jeans pocket. Click-clack! He …

'Slow down! You're not carrying animals back here!" It was the last thing Roberto Alvarado Galindo remembered yelling. The accident happened just before midnight on September 4, 1995. It bore a haunting similarity to last …

They come out of the chilly night. When they arrive in the pool of light at the top of the stairs, their dark eyes appear more startled and startling because that's all you see. Masks …

Under mysterious circumstances, Tijuana kidnap victim Georgina Romero de Crespo was released last week, a day after the Reader wrote about her monthlong disappearance, and is safe at her home in the Coronado Cays. No …

“I’m sorry, sir, I can’t give any information.” Speaking from his Coronado Cays home, Miguel Crespo sounds tired and shaken. His wife, Georgina, was kidnapped over a month ago. “All the family are concerned about …

It's eight o' clock on a Wednesday night. Outside Tijuana's cathedral, the priests close the giant doors. The street darkens. The beggars pack up. But in a nearby shadowy parking lot the light shines out …

Silverio De La Mora Ceballos is hard to spot among the ten-foot-high reeds of this pristine section of the Tijuana River. "Pristine" isn't a word you think of when you talk about the Tijuana River, …

August, 1997. It is a sunny Saturday on Coronado's Orange Avenue. Bay Books is having a ball. Half a dozen ex-Navy SEALs sit at tables inside, each autographing the book he has written about his …

Get this: Johnny Cloud is into fog. Joel Blanket is into fog. Jerry Estberg (read "East Mountain") is into fog. Fog Cloud, Fog Blanket, Fog Mountain... Is this destiny or what? The three scientists are …

The press conference is crowded into the front room of the old blue wooden house at 11th and G. That's where Rosario Ibarra de Piedra sits, at the end of an oblong table. Hers is …

Raymond Chandler never had it so good. His town, La Jolla, is becoming notorious for bizarre murders that don't get solved. And somehow people are always killed in their cars. The case of world-renowned neuroscientist …

The elderly gent didn't stand a chance. Last Wednesday morning, 7:20 a.m., two pit bulls jumped him the moment he came out with his trash into the alley at 24th and J Streets in Sherman …

'Drug War Massacre at El Sauzal." "Tijuana Lawyer's Son Slain." "Mexican Army Tied to Drug Gang." "Tijuana Gunmen Slay 6." "Resort Seized By Mexican Drug Agents." "7 Mexican Border Agents Held In Slaying." "Bomb Call …

On December 26, 1997, Janna and Nancy Sipes thought they were going to die. The two San Diego sisters were trapped through the night 18,500 feet up on Tanzania's Mount Kilimanjaro in a howling, freezing …

Woosh! There goes Aunt Josephine. Boom! Put up your umbrellas, folks. She's coming down again! Volcanic ash! Dick Hassenger says there's no ash. The cremated human remains he sends up in giant fireworks so clients …

When Superior Court judge Terry Byron O'Rourke was allowed a glimpse at the accusations against him, he admits he gulped. "The candidate is viewed as having one of the worst temperaments among San Diego judges," …

The dark green Mustang ragtop looks blue under the hazy floodlights. Here behind the state judicial police station in Tijuana's Otay section, the smart new cars are recovered stolen vehicles, mostly with California plates. The …

Licenciado Héctor Huerta Suárez, the State Judicial Police station commander, looks up at the familiar gray portrait on the wall beside his new desk. "I love that man," he says. "Emiliano Zapata is my hero." …

In 20 years, are you likely to meet yourself? Could someone clone another you from a Kleenex you dropped? Will your insurance premium depend on your DNA test results? Will a federal DNA data bank …

The Michigan prosecutor bristles on the phone. “Mindy Brass is a convicted drug dealer out of California. I doubt anybody in the media or in the public would care two cents about her if she …

This is the joke among the Navy's evangelical chaplains. "Question: What do you have to do to get promoted in the U.S. Navy? "Answer: If you're a Roman Catholic, you've got to be able to …

Was Veronica Salazar strung up like a piñata and beaten to death in Michigan? Does anybody care? When the San Diego mother of three was murdered last September 1, the event rated 74 words in …

As usual, Mayor Cianci was at the murder scene. "There was one body on the street. He was in perfect health, outside of a hole in his head. He was lying face down, and they …

'Now you can be Andrew Philip Cunanan, 'the gay spree killer,' and experience his final days! You choose where to go. You decide who to meet. It's a sarcastic adventure based on the wildly inaccurate …

When San Diego police captain Lesli Lord killed herself on August 25, Joanne Archambault was furious. "I went home raging about who would do this to their children," says Archambault, a sergeant in SDPD's sex …

At the halfway house near 14th and Market, inmates sit on the balustrade, smoking cigarettes and chewing the fat. When you ask When you ask them about Fred Levy, they point toward the office around …

The news is good. Murder down 50 percent. Robbery down 18.2 percent, burglary 13.9 percent -- all for the first six months of 1998 (compared with the same period last year). Violent crimes are decreasing …

Gang members have a new weapon against the cops in City Heights. Pit bulls. According to police, the teenage own owners walk their dogs on long leashes down such main thoroughfares as University Avenue. It's …

What really happened to the late Bill Wiggins on that Friday, July 18, 1997? This much is known by Coronado police: "We discovered the body about 1:35 in the afternoon. And by the time we …

Oscar Goodman, 59, known as "The Big O," the Las Vegas attorney who local papers sometimes dub "The mouthpiece of the mob,"drives his dark Mercedes sports car toward the desert beyond the city limits. He …

Take it from Jim Duncan: this is how it is between midnight and 3:00 a.m. around El Cajon Boulevard. "You pull up, roll your window down, 'You need a ride?' 'Going to a party?' She'll …

The reason coyotes survive in San Diego, he says, is our canyons. "L.A. is just one big flat ancient ocean basin. It doesn't have coyotes as we do. San Diego is an archipelago of canyon wildlife islands."

Will Halm spreads his hand over the bulging sphere of Elizabeth's stomach. His eyes search the ceiling as he feels for movement. "He turned right around yesterday," says Elizabeth (last name omitted for privacy). "That …

Wednesday morning, 9:45. Gloria Penner's Editors' Round Table on KPBS. "Isaac Cubillos," she says, "do you agree with Bob Kittle? Do you think our Port District is doing what it is supposed to do?" "I …

'The rotor head of a helicopter doesn't know what kind of mission it's on," says Jeff Frederick. "It just goes 'round and around at 4000 revolutions per minute, and when metal fatigue reaches a certain …

You've seen it on Hard Copy, read about it in the paper. Now, how about the truth on the millionairess, the parasite, and the million-dollar horse she claims was murdered, South Pacific? Start with the …

For the first time since the 1978 PSA plane disaster over North Park, the Federal Aviation Agency (FAA) is changing San Diego's air traffic control system. According to Jerry Hargarten, the FAA's new plan looks …

The photographer pretended to be looking at carpet samples. Then he started snapping pictures of the arklike interior of Julie Melim's carpet warehouse. Melim looked up from her office, walked out, and asked if she …

Jill McEwan's life reads like a Dick Francis novel. McEwan, a graduate of USC's paralegal program, is a racehorse trainer who mixes horses and the law. "I'm just like a home appraiser, except I appraise …

Why did the city use $250,000 of taxpayers' money to get the National Baptist Convention to come to San Diego? Blame MERF. Why was Alcoholics Anonymous promised a similar quarter-million-dollar gift if they held their …

It was one of the worst shootings in Michigan for a long time. On November 14, 1996, Gerald Atkins, a 29-year old ex-soldier and glassmaker, shot his way into a Ford auto plant in Wixom, …

A shocking report from the United Nations claims Tijuana is the child-abuse capital of Mexico. And San Diego is part part of the problem. The report, delivered last week in Geneva to the 54th session …

If San Diego's Mycogen Corporation has its way, you'll soon be eating food from fluorescent plants and wearing fluorescent cotton T-shirts. Even Disney World in Florida is celebrating the invention. This month and next, Disney's …

To his parishioners in Old Town and Rancho Bernardo he was just another aging priest come West to enjoy a good-weather parish. A reward for years ministering in frigid Minnesota. To the fellow priests he …