Fraser
She was born on a farm on the Eastern Plains of Colorado in April 2005 and quickly became a bundle of fur and bright eyes with a wildly wagging tail. As spring gave way to summer, she romped with her littermates, sleeping with them in a barn at night and each day running and playing with them. But one by one, her brothers and sisters were sold until she was the only one left, a black Lab puppy that no one seemed to want.
The summer passed and November came and still she was alone. But 170 miles to the west, her fate was, literally, unfolding.
Bob Hooser had moved to Fraser a decade earlier, chucking the Denver life for a new start as a computer repairman. He sat at his kitchen table on a Sunday, unfolded his newspaper and went to the classified ads. Black Lab puppies. $150.
“The lady said she had one puppy left,” Hooser recalled.
He drove that day to the farm in Akron and scooped up the dog in his arms. He thought about the two dogs he had buried in Fraser, his fluffy Benji look-alike, Sampson, and the black Lab named Buddy who was his companion for eight years. For a moment he was sad.
But then the squirming puppy licked his face, and in that second his heart made room for a new friend. He paid the woman and carried the pup back to his car. As they drove toward the mountains, he named her. He figured he and Jenna would spend many years together.
They got only 10 months.
A slow spot in the road
U.S. 40 rises from Interstate 70 and cuts north into the mountains, making a sharp turn to the west in Steamboat Springs and then rolling toward Utah. Just past the ski town of Winter Park, it slices through Fraser, becoming that town’s main street.
As with many similar towns in Colorado and other Western states, there is steady growth around Fraser as city dwellers seek to become mountain folks. New homes and condos dot the forest. Construction trucks pound the roadways. On Sept. 26 one of them, an 18-wheel dirt and gravel hauler, roared into Fraser from the south. The posted speed limit in town is 35 mph. Witnesses said the truck was going much faster.
Hooser and Jenna had walked from his apartment on the east side of U.S. 40 across the roadway to Computer Bob’s, a small repair shop on the other side of the street. She had spent that night as she frequently did, sleeping oddly on Hooser’s couch.
“She slept on her back, with all four legs in the air,” he said. “She was the funniest dog I’ve ever known.”
In the shop they began their daily routine: Bob fixing computers, and Jenna lying at his feet. On almost every day, Jenna was tied to a 25-foot rope. On this day, Hooser forgot.
At noon a deliveryman opened the door. Jenna, an adventurous young dog now and one who knew the neighborhood well from her frequent leash walks, bolted. Hooser went after her. She ran across U.S. 40 and into a restaurant. Then she came back out and, with Hooser just a few feet behind her, headed back to the repair shop.
“She turned and looked at me, like she was checking to make sure I was coming,” he said. “And then I saw the truck.”
Jenna hesitated, confused, and then she darted. The massive, crushing rear tires of the semi rolled over her body. The driver did not stop. Hooser stood, open- mouthed, at the road’s edge.
“I got to her and lifted her head but there was no life,” he said. “She was gone.”
Travis Beckham, 64, saw the accident. He has lived in Fraser for three years. The construction business is part of the problem, he said. People in SUVs with cellphones are part of the problem, too.
“The truck was going 50, easy,” he said. “And that’s not an uncommon thing in our town. People who don’t live here don’t seem to give us much consideration as they drive through.”
Not “that type of town”
The Fraser-Winter Park Police Department has eight officers. Most locals say speeding doesn’t seem to be the department’s main concern. Police Chief Glen Trainor, who did not return phone calls for this story, told the local Fraser-area newspaper: “We don’t want to appear like traffic Nazis.”
Fraser town manager Jeff Durbin agreed.
“Speeding through our town is definitely a problem,” he said. “We don’t have the perfect answer yet,” he said. “But I wouldn’t say we’ll set up speed traps. We don’t want to be that kind of town. ‘You’re going to Fraser? Great. Have fun in jail.’ We want to balance it with safety, but we definitely don’t want to be that type of town.”
Hooser walked six miles into the forest outside of town the day Jenna died. He stopped in a clearing beside a pine and aspen thicket. There he put Jenna to rest in the ground beside Buddy, who died of liver failure two years ago.
“I buried her with a collar,” he said. “It used to be Buddy’s collar. They didn’t know each other, but I thought they should be together.”
Staff writer Rich Tosches writes each Wednesday and Sunday. He can be reached at rtosches@denverpost.com.
