The 24-year-old is part of the inaugural (YMHC), a national service initiative that places near-peer mental health navigators in middle and high schools to help support students and develop the next generation of behavioral health professionals. Colorado was one of four states to pilot the program in fall 2024. to more than 60 schools, after-school programs and a community health center across the state. The corps wrapped up its second year, having expanded to 11 states, with another five set to begin in the fall and an additional 11 in the planning stages for 2027.

shows that the effort is simultaneously improving student attendance and behavioral health while helping to grow the overstrained mental health field by making it easier for young adults like Garcia to access training and start their careers.

Garcia works full-time at York International School as an engagement support member. She is not a licensed therapist or counselor, but she’s trained to identify mental health problems among students and provide connections and support. She regularly meets with a caseload of 27 high school students who struggle with attendance and school engagement. She’s constantly receiving referrals from teachers or connecting with students who ask for a few minutes of her time. Garcia helps them access resources, such as clinical mental health support or reliable transportation to and from school, and she works with them on social-emotional skills and goal setting. Often, her role is simply to listen to what����ap going on in the students’ lives.

“Marissa, because of her young age, can really connect with students in ways that I can’t as a 47-year-old,” said Ben Schneider, assistant principal at the school. “She has the ability to connect with them and develop relationships and be really in their corner in a really significant way.”

Youth mental health is considered a global crisis. , according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and for people ages 10 to 34.

“I struggled with mental health in high school,” Garcia said. “I’m still young. I even think it����ap scary talking to adults sometimes, so I get relying on someone who is more your age because they can relate more.”

“We are really building out this community of care where peer support is as valued as clinicians and … really growing access to mental health resources at all levels, not just when we’re talking about clinical interventions,” said Fiona Yung, a program officer at the Seattle-based Schultz Family Foundation, which provides national YMHC funding.

YMHC is part of , a federally managed national service organization. Most states run their own AmeriCorps commissions that set regional priorities and distribute grant funding. is the Centennial State’s commission. Colorado YMHC is supported by five program partners, including , an education-focused nonprofit and Garcia’s connection to the work. (Garcia began working at York International School through the nonprofit����ap program the year before YMHC’s launch.)

But the new corps isn’t just focused on serving students — it also aims to increase the number of available mental health providers and diversify the field. Garcia and other members, who receive stipends for their service, have access to free training before their first day, such as Mental Health First Aid, and cultural competency; ongoing professional development, including monthly AmeriCorps networking sessions; career coaching; and, in Colorado, college credit hours or enrollment in a behavioral health assistant credentialing program through the .

In 2025, Colorado unveiled a new in response to a severe provider shortage. It makes it easier to develop entry-level behavioral health practitioners by helping people build their knowledge through flexible learning modules that allow them to join care teams and provide services as they learn. Those so-called microcredentials can then be stacked together and put toward a higher qualification, such as an academic degree.

Between 2019 and 2022, the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment reported in behavioral health job openings. The Colorado Behavioral Health Administration of 4,400 mental health workers in the state by this year. Most of Colorado is considered a , meaning there aren’t an adequate number of providers to serve the population.

In the program’s first year, 104 Colorado YMHC members completed their service term, earning 87 behavioral health associate certifications and six Master of Social Work degrees. YMHC connected with more than 7,100 students during that period, and corps members have received $600,000 in funding to use toward their student loans or further education, according to Serve Colorado.

“We’ve designed the Youth Mental Health Corps to really focus on recruiting young people that are from these communities,” Yung said. The goal: They work in their local neighborhoods and continue serving those areas after their corps service terms end.

Garcia is from Northglenn and graduated from Adams 12 Five Star Schools, a neighboring district to York International’s Mapleton Public Schools. At the end of the 2025-26 school year, she aged out of the corps program, which employs 18- to 24-year-olds and is capped at four terms of service. She’s already earned a bachelor’s degree in Family and Human Development from Arizona State University. In the fall, she’ll start her master’s degree in social work at Metropolitan State University in Denver.

Nationally, YMHC programs have seen improvements in student attendance and a decrease in behavioral referrals, and 20% of corps members found employment before their service year ended, according to a . Serve Colorado found that 65% of youth accessing YMHC programming “have shown increases in their social-emotional learning skills or an increase in school engagement,” which includes attendance, behavior and academics.

“What����ap so exciting about launching the Youth Mental Health Corps is that it was so innovative. It was a way to get more mental health workers on the ground,” said Colorado Lt. Gov. Dianne Primavera, whose office oversees the local initiative. “To have this model where it����ap peer-to-peer or near-peer help, I think, is really, really powerful.”

Leah Ameca has benefited from that near-peer connection. Garcia initially met with the 17-year-old because of Ameca’s poor attendance and slipping grades as a freshman. Ameca has attended York International since kindergarten and is now entering her senior year.

Ameca struggles with depression and anxiety and said she found it hard to get to school on time for her 6 a.m. orchestra class because she was tired or just didn’t feel like it. She worked with Garcia–meeting at least weekly—on time management and on building healthy habits, such as eating more nutritious food and drinking water. Ameca said she used to self-harm but doesn’t anymore. She is now in therapy and taking medication.

Garcia encouraged Ameca to ask for help and sat with her during the first semester of sophomore year when she told her parents about what was going on with her mental health. Garcia supported Ameca as she worked to find a therapist with whom she felt comfortable.

“At the time, I didn’t like talking about my feelings with my family. I didn’t like talking about my feelings with anyone,” Ameca said. “I liked being independent about that. But I’m very happy that I didn’t stay quiet, that one day [when I disclosed my cutting], because that one day changed my life. And if it wasn’t for that one day, I don’t think I would be here.”

Ameca’s grades and attendance have improved. She made the honor roll the second semester of her sophomore year. She calls Garcia a “friend with boundaries” and finds it easier to communicate with her than with a therapist or social worker. She feels a sense of responsibility to get to class or complete her work because she knows Garcia will check in about them.

“I didn’t really have a leader or an adult that I trusted, really,” Ameca said. “I clicked a lot with Marissa. … I’m very grateful for that.”

Schneider, the assistant principal, calls Garcia a first responder who “can act as a filter (who) either redirects students back into class with some quick supports or redirects them to deeper mental health supports.”

York International School is unique in its mental well-being offerings. Not only does it have a YMHC member, but the school district also employs a social worker, therapist and case managers.

“[We’re] working really hard to move past a simple disciplinary model where we punish kids for misbehaving in class and instead move into places where we’re trying to address the root of their behavior and support them, instead of punishing them for having a hard time,” Schneider said.

School staff receive training and follow a protocol for identifying and helping students who are experiencing a crisis or need extra support. Students can be sent to the wellness space to touch base with Garcia or another mental health provider or staffer if they’re having a tough time in class, or, more often, they seek out the calm environment on their own. Garcia typically starts her morning in the room and will sometimes spend her entire day engaging in spontaneous conversations.

“Young people want to open up to someone who’s their peer, communicating in language they understand. The social norms are the same. All those pieces are so simple and also can’t be understated,” said Mary Zanotti, executive director of Colorado Youth for a Change, one of the five organizations involved with the YMHC in Colorado. “When they see someone from the same culture and background advocating for (mental health), it makes a big difference.”

A recent “Developmental Assets Profile” survey of 775 students, which Colorado Youth for a Change compiled, showed that 91% of respondents served by Youth Mental Health Corps members reported improved school engagement and a positive sense of identity.

While chronic absenteeism remains a problem at York International School and across Colorado schools, the Thornton institution’s (35.6% and 28.4%, respectively). Schneider says Garcia’s role has put a dent in that issue and has had a positive effect at the school.

“I think our students are safer because Marissa is here,” Schneider said. “We see students … coming here to seek support, whereas before, there wasn’t anywhere to go. There’s no data on how many crises we’ve averted or how many suicides we’ve averted. But I’d like to think there’s some that we’ve headed off.”

“It����ap not a role that we’d be able to fill ourselves,” Schneider added.

AmeriCorps, the Schultz Family Foundation and Pinterest fund the national effort, with support from individuals and philanthropic groups. Colorado’s program also receives state-based aid and other grants. Schools pay a host fee if they’re able. According to Zanotti, it costs approximately $38,000 per AmeriCorps tutor, with the federal funding covering less than half. In Colorado, members like Garcia make just over $25,000 for their 1,200-hour service term.

“We’re really happy with the success of the program,” Primavera said. “I think there’s a possibility that it’ll lower long-term spending in juvenile justice and child welfare and Medicaid and things like that.”

In April 2025, the to AmeriCorps, though that decision was following a lawsuit brought by Colorado and other states. The Colorado General Assembly partially funded for YMHC funding at $750,000, ensuring that YMHC will continue in the fall.

Throughout the final months of the school year, Garcia was available to students every day. She often notices signs of depression, hopelessness and lack of motivation among students, she said. They talk about relationships and the toxicity of social media. Many want support but aren’t sure where to find it.

“Mental health can be a hard topic, especially with the population here at York. A lot of them are very cultural, and so we have different views of mental health,” she said. (The is majority Hispanic/Latino and economically disadvantaged.) “I think my job is to just continue to educate the students about facts on mental health and what is real and validate their feelings.”

It����ap a narrative she’s familiar with, having grown up in a Hispanic family that, she said, “tiptoed around the subject” of mental health. She blames a lack of information and education–both of which she is trying to counter with her career choice. Garcia’s increased knowledge has helped improve her own family dynamic.

“I’ve had some pretty dark times, especially through high school. I understand firsthand how it feels to not want to wake up the next morning,” Garcia said. “That����ap something I really push for with the kids I work with–helping them understand that this is just one little piece of your life. High school is not how the rest of your life is going to look. There’s so much more out there.”

Freelance journalist Daliah Singer wrote this story for , a publication of . It first appeared at and it can be read in Spanish at . The Colorado Trust is a philanthropic foundation that works on health equity issues statewide.

The new rules are part of the bipartisan passed in May by the Colorado General Assembly amid growing concerns over rising addiction, especially among young men and boys. The bill’s sponsors hope the new guardrails will slow bettors, who play frequently as they chase their financial losses.

Colorado’s gamble on sports betting

The deposit limits are counted on a rolling 24-hour basis.

Sports betting companies began informing their customers this month of the rule changes.

In an email to its customers, FanDuel, one of the country's largest online gambling companies, explained the deposit limits and said some users might start seeing the changes as early as Thursday.

"Each deposit counts toward your limit for 24 hours from the time it is made," the email said. "Once 24 hours have passed, that deposit no longer counts toward your limit, allowing you to make another deposit."

Five sportsbooks stopped accepting credit cards in the past year amid growing criticism that people should not gamble with money they don’t have. Thirteen online sportsbooks are licensed to operate in Colorado.

The new law also prohibits sports betting companies from targeting Coloradans who are younger than 21 and bans advertising when the majority of an audience is reasonably expected to be younger than 21.

The law will also require sports betting operators to report annual transactional data and metrics to the Colorado Division of Gaming, starting Feb. 1, 2028, and a public report based on that data will be released every three years, beginning on Jan. 1, 2029.

"Pernicious algorithms and advertisements are increasingly preying on vulnerable online sports bettors," state Sen. Matt Ball, D-Denver, said in a news release about the law changes taking effect. "Since Colorado’s legalization of online sports betting in 2019, technology has rapidly transformed the industry, catching more and more people in the cycle of devastating gambling addiction. As online sports betting continues its rise in popularity, we must ensure there are reasonable protections in place to help prevent addiction, protect underage Coloradans, and uphold the integrity of the game and its athletes."

Colorado's gamblers bet $6.4 billion on sports during the last year, setting a record for the amount of money wagered since sportsbooks opened in May 2020.

The Colorado Secretary of State’s Office said Wednesday that it had approved a resident����ap petition for abandonment — effectively transferring all town business and assets to Prowers County.

Hartman, a tiny community of 30 people in southeast Colorado, had been stuck in a legal limbo with no analog in recent state history since all of its elected officials resigned from their posts earlier this year. That occurred amid petty squabbles, fraud allegations and a physical altercation following a Board of Trustees meeting.

With no government, the town cannot hold elections or address a deepening crisis surrounding its water supply. The town has been on a boil order for the past year, and its water tower has been in need of serious repairs for years.

The imbroglio reached the state Capitol, where lawmakers in this year’s session passed a bill specifically written to address Hartman’s unique situation. That legislation, , makes it easier for residents and counties to declare a town abandoned — and for the state to assist dissolved municipalities with failing water systems.

In a tiny Colorado town, infighting dissolved the government. Now the water’s running out.

"Importantly, not determining that the town of Hartman is abandoned ... would leave the residents in further legal limbo during a health hazard, with no authority to conduct business, hold elections, or fix their water infrastructure so that clean water can be delivered to the town residents," the state's states. "Abandonment is the only legal mechanism in Colorado statute that creates an avenue for residents of the area to receive clean water."

Barring any appeal of the ruling, Prowers County will now assume control over all streets in Hartman, along with all town-owned property, including its water infrastructure. The county, then, will transfer control of the water system to a water operator.

Even in its abandonment, Hartman residents couldn't agree on the best path forward.

Multiple people in town objected to the process, with one saying Hartman "is not a failed town, but that Hartman is a town that was failed by the systems designed to protect it," according to the state's order.

The state, in its order, overruled the residents' objections.

As The Denver Post reported in a March story, townspeople previously compared their situation to the Hatfields and McCoys, two Appalachian families with a convoluted, generations-long feud. Elected officials regularly accused their predecessors of misusing town funds. Others said they sometimes went years without holding elections.

The town's combative reputation made nearby authorities — including multiple water operators — wary of stepping in to help.

The Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee is eying eight Colorado House seats and five Senate seats that the Democrats must either defend or flip on the path to a supermajority in either chamber — and relegate Republicans to super-minority status. The DLCC is a national political committee that aims to help Democrats win state legislative races, including by spending in support of their campaigns.

Democrats currently occupy 43 of 65 seats in the Colorado House of Representatives and 23 of 35 seats in the Senate — one seat shy in each chamber of a supermajority. In addition to the raw strength-in-numbers power that such a ratio would give Democrats on floor votes and in committees’ makeup, a supermajority would also allow the party to refer state constitutional amendments to voters with only a party-line vote.

A supermajority also lets Democrats override vetoes from the next governor on solely a party-line vote, though that power is easier talked about than accomplished — given certain deadlines in the legislative process and wider political considerations.

Democrats held a supermajority in the House in 2022 and 2023, the only time either party has had that status in either chamber since at least 1992, according . Democrats’ current majority in the Senate, while short of a supermajority, is the widest margin held by either party in at least that time frame.

In the House, the DLCC is looking to flip these districts: 16, represented by Colorado Springs Rep. Rebecca Keltie; 19, represented by Frederick Rep. Dan Woog; 50, represented by Fort Lupton Rep. Ryan Gonzalez; and 51, represented by Loveland Rep. Ron Weinberg. Keltie and Weinberg are not seeking reelection.

In the Senate, the Democrats hope to flip District 30, now represented by Highlands Ranch Sen. John Carson.

The DLCC is also planning to play defense in these House districts: 25, represented by Conifer Rep. Tammy Story; 43, represented by Highlands Ranch Rep. Bob Marshall; 46, represented by Pueblo Rep. Tisha Mauro; and 59, represented by Durango Rep. Katie Stewart.

And it wants to protect Democratic-held seats in these Senate districts: 3, represented by Pueblo Sen. Nick Hinrichsen; 11, represented by Colorado Springs Sen. Tony Exum; 15, represented by Loveland Sen. Janice Marchman; and 27, represented by Centennial Sen. Tom Sullivan. Hinrichsen is not seeking reelection.

Support from the DLCC will include data, research, polling, paid communication and direct voter outreach, according to a news release.

The general election is Nov. 3.

In a statement, DLCC President Heather Williams cited Democrats’ legislative accomplishments since they regained complete control of state government in 2018, including on abortion rights, gun restrictions, and the costs of healthcare and housing — though Republicans have argued Democrats failed to rein in the latter. She said they would pursue more policies to help Coloradans.

“We are prepared to capitalize on this once-in-a-generation opportunity to expand Democratic power across the map and get this group of strong candidates across the finish line in November,” Williams said.

They also built new regulations for autism treatment providers — which are increasingly owned by private equity investors — to fight the profit-driven lower standards characterized by that financial sector.

But similar efforts have fallen flat in recent years when it comes to and establishing guardrails on how private equity owners can , showing the difficulty some lawmakers face when trying to rein in the growing and often-criticized business force.

Private equity has caught legislators’ eye as the financial practice — often tied to layoffs, mergers and rising prices — has risen in public prominence. Private equity firms are often multilayered, deep-pocketed and mostly opaque. To critics, the investment class has become shorthand for ruthless profiteering through corner-cutting, leveraged buyouts and the forcing of public-facing businesses to take on massive debt to the benefit of their new owners.

Lawmakers, however, have run into philosophical opposition and worries that too big of a swing could wound businesses and communities on the periphery. Their attempts at regulating the sector have also faced the inevitable difficulties that come with taking on big businesses that have stakes driven deep into vital services like healthcare.

The concerns stem from the popular, and often proven, view that private equity investors seek to extract the maximum value from a business they’re purchasing in the shortest possible time — leaving communities holding the bag for shuttered hospitals, families worried about lax standards of care and clients wondering whose interests the business truly represents.

“It’s like an octopus with tentacles everywhere. And from my perspective, fairly problematic,” said Rep. Emily Sirota, a Denver Democrat who ran the failed 2025 bill targeting . “I’d challenge anyone to show a business that has improved, particularly from a customer experience, once private equity has entered into that sector.”

Regulating private equity in some sectors has proven easier than in others. Earlier this year, the state legislature passed a bill aimed at with overwhelming bipartisan support. But another effort, aimed at stopping them from buying up hospitals, died in its first committee.

With a new legislature — and a new governor — on the horizon next year, backers of the effort to regulate private equity activity promise to continue their push against this modern-day juggernaut.

‘The goal is to get rid of the worst effects’

The term “private equity” has become a catchall for corporate raiding and consolidation under a usually opaque, multitiered ownership structure — often used to refer to a business tactic as much as an investment and ownership structure.

But private equity investment has become enough of a flash point that even have villainized the business model.

private equity firms provide influxes of money and management to failing or imperiled businesses. They often rely on large pools of cash from sources like pensions, institutional investors and exceptionally wealthy individuals.

Since 2000, the number of private equity-backed companies has grown from about 2,000 U.S. firms to more than 11,500 — a nearly 600% increase, according to a 2024 analysis by .

Analysts cite different figures for how much money is behind private equity, but it����ap always in the trillions of dollars.

One article published this year by the says private equity firms control more than $9 trillion in assets and have stakes in businesses that employ more than 11 million workers nationally. The author, who was granted anonymity by the publication, is described as “a senior partner at a leading international law firm and an adjunct professor at a leading United States law school.”

“You’re not going to get rid of private equity investment,” said Matt Parr, the communications director for the Private Equity Stakeholder Project, a nonprofit watchdog organization. “The goal is to get rid of the worst effects of that type of investment. … Everyone wants private investment in your sector, but you don’t want it if it’s going to negatively affect your state or your local community.”

The firms are known for being “much more aggressive in profiteering” than other financial institutions, such as venture capital, Parr said, and often have little to no regard for the long-term health of the businesses they buy or communities in which they operate.

A common practice is a “roll-up strategy,” in which the firms buy up swaths of fragmented industries to then command a clear market share, he said. Another strategy is a leveraged buyout, where the private equity firm pays for the acquisition by borrowing money against the purchased company’s assets and revenues. The new owner can then cut services and staff, raise rates and otherwise maximize profits.

The firms are also known for their “sale-leaseback” moves. They buy a company, sell its physical assets to another entity under the private equity firm’s umbrella, and then force the company to lease back the original property — allowing the private equity firm to pocket the cash.

One of the most notorious examples of the practice involved . In 2010, the private equity firm Cerberus Capital Management bought a small nonprofit hospital system in Massachusetts and remade it as the for-profit Steward.

Steward sold off its property only to lease it back, and then used the immediate proceeds to buy more than two dozen hospitals across the country. By 2024, the hospital chain was bankrupt, jeopardizing care for thousands of patients, but was making hundreds of millions of dollars for investors and company leadership, according to .

Establishing guardrails against some of private equity’s worst impulses is a goal that bridges traditional Democrat-Republican divides, Parr said. States with Republican-led governments have sought to regulate the industry, just as blue-hued states have. And the federal bipartisan housing bill that recently became law sought to limit private equity’s involvement in the housing industry by in single-family homes.

Colorado is one of the few states “that has made real progress” in regulating private equity investments, Parr said — though his organization still ranks the state among those that are to private equity.

Mixed results in the legislature

Lawmakers have found it difficult to issue blanket regulations for private equity. That’s in part because, as opponents see it, the private equity problem is a business model as much as a specific type of company. Some legislators are wary of targeting a specific sector, and others worry that sweeping regulations will cause unintended harm.

But opponents of the practices of private equity have found some success.

Rep. Kyle Brown, a Louisville Democrat and member of the Joint Budget Committee, successfully ran , which Gov. Jared Polis signed into law earlier this year.

The law established licensing requirements for clinics and practitioners involved in applied behavior analysis, a kind of therapy for people with autism. While the law was not explicitly about private equity, Brown said its growing influence in the sector was a “subtext throughout the entire bill.”

He also noted that the bill was drafted to focus on business practices and standards, not on ownership structure.

In this case, personal stories from parents of children with autism, coupled with very real financial concerns around bad actors looking to fleece the state, helped push the bill across the finish line — and secure bipartisan support.

“We had stories of real patient harm — and in this case (affecting) kids — and that made all the difference,” Brown said.

Another proposal, , had likewise sought to go after the business practices often associated with private equity rather than targeting the firms themselves. That bill would have given the Colorado Attorney General’s Office more oversight when it came to hospital mergers.

The measure also had a subtext of “Yes, healthcare consolidation is a problem in general, but when consolidation happens in the hands of private equity firms, it becomes even more problematic,” Brown said.

He views the healthcare sector as a type of public good, and he worries a pure profit motive doesn’t align with low costs and better patient outcomes. Brown cited that found patients at hospitals with private equity owners experienced 25% more problems from their stays.

“Healthcare has had some really epic challenges in private equity investments and, in some ways, it has really decimated health systems,” Brown said.

However, the measure died for the second year in a row — and received a “no” vote in committee from Sen. Lindsey Daugherty. The Arvada Democrat otherwise had sponsored the autism therapy bill and the bill restricting private equity involvement in law firms.

Daugherty said her concerns on the hospital bill, similar to other broader attempts at regulating private equity, were that it involved such a wide playing field, with so many entities. She worried about broader disruption to the healthcare system. She contrasted it with bills that she described as more narrow. (She also said she saw the autism therapy bill as “a very human bill,” and she didn’t think of it as specifically about private equity.)

“The devil’s in the details for those bills,” Daugherty said.

Protection for law firms embraced

Daugherty found success in the regulation about law firms and outside ownership — a measure aimed at preventing private equity investors from buying stakes in Colorado law firms the way they have in other states.

She saw that measure as about making sure Coloradans who need legal help get it from Colorado attorneys, not from firms driven by out-of-state interests. Daugherty, like a good chunk of her colleagues in the legislature, is a lawyer.

The bill won the backing of the Colorado Trial Lawyers Association and the Colorado Chamber of Commerce, which don’t typically see eye to eye on many policy proposals. It also attracted Republican support. Rep. Jarvis Caldwell, the House minority leader and a sponsor, said he saw that issue as distinct from private equity involvement in other fields, where he was more agnostic.

People hire law firms because they feel there was an injustice, he said. He was swayed by arguments that out-of-state investors would create “a perverse incentive” for lawsuit-chasing and quotas, not firms taking on worthy cases.

“The Democrats and myself probably don’t align on a lot of feelings toward private equity in general,” Caldwell said. “The reason I was interested in this one in particular — the way I view the mission and the task of a law firm is to right a wrong and correct an injustice. Which is different than private equity in childcare or healthcare and things of that nature.”

Rural areas, meanwhile, might need some kind of private equity investment to keep places like childcare centers afloat. And more investment, as a general principle, is good for Colorado, he said.

Like other lawmakers — though with notably less enthusiasm than proponents — Caldwell also expects Democrats to push more private equity regulation.

Attorney General Phil Weiser, the Democratic nominee for governor — and likely the favorite in November, given Colorado’s blue hue — has made antitrust lawsuits a defining aspect of his tenure. It����ap an interest Weiser would continue to have as governor, campaign spokesperson Nate Jackson said in a statement.

“As governor, Phil Weiser will fight unlawful corporate consolidation and its harmful impacts. That includes taking on illegal private equity roll-ups in healthcare and ensuring fair competition,” Jackson said. “As he has done as attorney general, Phil will always fight against anticompetitive corporate mergers and for Coloradans.”

A spokesperson for Republican gubernatorial nominee Victor Marx did not return a request for comment about his potential approach to private equity regulation.

Despite connections to the state that run deeper than those of many Coloradans, Williams isn’t celebrating this year’s 150th anniversary of statehood. His reasons: the broken treaties that deprived Native Americans of their lands; the upending of Native American communities during the gold rush and influx of settlers; the decimation of the bison herds that sustained tribes for centuries; and the removal of Native Americans from Colorado to other regions.

“Most people today are excited by the celebration” of statehood, Williams said.  “For me, it is a dishonorable disgrace that insults my ancestors.”

Over hundreds of years,  lived full-time or have connections to what is now the state of Colorado.

But by the time Colorado became the 38th star on the American flag in 1876, the Cheyenne and Arapaho people had been forced out or left for Oklahoma, Montana and Wyoming. Around 230 Cheyenne and Arapaho people were killed in on Nov. 29, 1864. U.S. Army Cavalry Col. John Chivington, an ordained Methodist Minister, led the attack on a camp of about 750 mostly women, children and elders about 170 miles southeast of Denver.

As proponents continued to pursue statehood, who inhabited roughly the western third of Colorado under an 1868 treaty, clashed with settlers and U.S. troops moving into their lands. They saw their territory continue to shrink until the northern and central bands were .

Other bands of Utes were relegated to land in the southwest corner of the state, where the  and reservations are today.

Native American lives and communities were lost despite that identified most of the lands west of the Mississippi River as Indian territory. gave the Cheyenne and Arapaho sovereignty over the Platte River basin if they allowed white migrants to pass through and the government to build forts.

“You come to 1857, 1858, and all of a sudden, you have 100,000 people coming into the state and they’re all here illegally,” said Williams, an educator and the former CEO and president of the American Indian College Fund.

drastically shrank Cheyenne and Arapaho lands from an area between the North Platte River and the Arkansas River to land between the Arkansas River and the Sandy Fork of the Arkansas River, now known as Sand Creek. President Abraham Lincoln ratified the agreement, which tribal leaders denounced.

Northern Arapaho and Northern Cheyenne who were forced out of Colorado went to reservations in Wyoming and Montana. Under the Southern Arapaho and Southern Cheyenne went to reservations in Indian Territory, now Oklahoma.

Even with all that was lost, tribes still see Colorado as a part of their heritage. The Ute Mountain Ute and Southern Ute reservations are currently the only ones federally recognized in the state, but other Native American people with strong ties to Colorado have maintained their presence. Some never left. Many moved to Colorado or made trips to what they considered their ancestral homelands.

found in 2020 that more than 100,000 people who identify as American Indian/Alaska Native alone or in combination with one or more races were living in Colorado. Those numbers rose from the 2010 Census and the upward trend is expected to continue, according to the

Denver was one of five cities designated as relocation centers as part of the federal which was intended to assimilate Native Americans by encouraging them to leave reservations. Since then, the has been a place for Native Americans looking for community, said Nehemiah Tsosie, the director.

The center was the place where Tsosie went when he moved to Denver from Kirtland, N.M., in 2019 for work. Tsosie, a member of the Navajo Nation, was homesick and couldn’t find the kind of food he was used to.

“The center had a community meal, a community social gathering. They were singing powwow music,” Tsosie said. “It seemed like it was medicine for us.”

Williams, who grew up in western Nebraska, lives in the Denver area. He founded the nonprofit which has researched and publicized the history of Native Americans in Colorado and advocated for restoring the status of tribal nations in the state.

Native Americans might not see Colorado’s sesquicentennial as a reason to celebrate, but some see opportunities to reestablish connections.

“We have nothing to do with the anniversaries because we were not here. We were confined to a reservation in Oklahoma when Colorado became a state,” said Fred Mosqueda., the Arapaho outreach specialist on the tribe’s language and culture program for the jointly governed in western Oklahoma.

Mosqueda, whose ancestors were at Sand Creek, travels frequently to the Denver area. He was an adviser on the History Colorado Center’s Sand Creek exhibit. He and other tribal members are working with Boulder County on a project that could restore bison on county open space. He supports developing an in Denver.

The Vibrant Denver Bond Package approved by voters in 2025 includes $20 million for the embassy, proposed on open space on Denver International Airport land. Ernest House Jr., a Ute Mountain Ute Tribe member, was selected to lead the planning.

“When Rick Williams first brought the idea, I told him ‘The Cheyenne and Arapaho want to buy the first office,'” said Fred Mosqueda.. “It’ll bring all the tribes together, under one roof.”

The Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes are also looking to work more closely with the Colorado state government, Mosqueda added.

“We’re looking at becoming a part of Colorado again, to come home in a sense,” he said.

‘Deadliest day in Colorado history’

The resources, plains and mountains of present-day Colorado provided food, shelter and a way of life for Indians throughout the region.

“We lived on the buffalo. We followed the buffalo,” Mosqueda said. “I think there was a northern herd and a southern herd. I think they congregated where they crossed over to each other out there on the Eastern Plains.”

There was water year-round and other wildlife. “This was the perfect place to live. Much of our medicines still grow there today,” Mosqueda said. “We still go back to get them.”

The area was also a sweet spot for non-Indians, or “Euro-Americans,” advancing West. Middle regions of the country proved easier for people on the move because the climate was often better for growing crops, soils were fertile and the Mississippi, Ohio and other rivers provided transportation networks.

“That middle area had always just been kind of easier, more enticing,” said Thomas Andrews, a history professor at the University of Colorado Boulder and director of

Colorado’s appeal soared when gold was discovered near present-day Denver in 1858-59. to look for gold or set up businesses and farms to supply the miners, according to the History Colorado Center.

The gold rush, followed by discovery of other minerals and development of irrigation on the Front Range spurred more growth, Thomas said.  At the time, “Colorado is easily the fastest-growing, most vibrant part of the inner mountain West.”

, but it took five tries over 17 years for it to become a state, said Katherine Mercier, an exhibit developer and historian at the History Colorado Center. She believes a major reason was the conflict resulting from settlers moving onto Indian lands.

“In order to become a state, you need land. If you have native people living on the land, then it’s not available for mining, or for agriculture, or for establishing your colony, or building (an irrigation) ditch,” Mercier said.

Many of the people in power trying to make Colorado a state saw native people as an obstacle and tried to move them off much of the land to clear the way, she added.

Mercier consulted with tribes when developing on Colorado becoming a state in 1876, the 100th anniversary of the United States. That earned Colorado the nickname of the Centennial State.

Andrews sees the presence of Native American tribes as just one of many issues playing into Colorado’s struggle to being admitted to the Union. There was reluctance among some to become a state because residents would have to pay taxes to run the government, he said.

Partisan political divides played into the effort because the area was considered heavily Republican, Andrews said, fueling concerns about how statehood would affect national politics.

Settlers moving West had used various tactics since Colonial times to advance despite the presence of Native Americans, whether through legal moves such as treaties or by instigating conflicts, Andrews said.

“Colorado, when it achieved statehood, was a reflection of the extent to which American settlers had gained power over native peoples, especially on the plains,” Andrews said.

Subsequently, the rest of Colorado came under scrutiny. Less than a year after statehood, newspaper headlines began “trumpeting the Utes must go,” Andrews said. Under terms of , they lived on approximately one-third of western Colorado in exchange for giving up a huge expanse of mineral-rich land.

“Settlers and the state government start coming up with pretexts for making life kind of impossible for the northern Ute bands in particular,” Andrews said.

who founded the agricultural community Union Colony in present-day Greeley and the Greeley Tribune newspaper, became the Indian agent in northwest Colorado in 1878. He clashed with the Northern Utes when he pushed them to be farmers and withheld rations when they resisted, according to History Colorado.

when federal troops summoned by Meeker entered the area overseen by the White River Indian Agency in Rio Blanco County. The site was near the present-day town of Meeker, named for the Indian agent.

in Utah in 1881. During that period, settlers flooded into the Utes’ former homelands, Andrews said.

to serve the three Ute bands in the southern part of the state. They were confined to a reservation along the Colorado-New Mexico border.

authorized the federal government to divide Indian reservations into 160-acre private lots for individual tribal members. Mercier said the law was intended to remove the Utes from their traditional way of life that included hunting and gathering.

The Weenuche band of the Utes agreed the land should be owned communally in what Mercier said was an act of resistance. The reservation split into two, with the Weenuche band moving to the west and forming the Ute Mountain Ute reservation. The Southern Ute reservation, to the east, is home to 

Williams refers to the inflow of non-Indians into Indian territory as an invasion.

“In almost every single conflict, there was an attack on Indian people or their nation, their village. The survivors retaliate. And then it escalates,” Williams said.

Williams worked with several other researchers on a series of reports under the banner of , which concentrated on the displacement and genocide of Native Americans in the state.

“I’m not saying our people were the most peaceful people. They were really revengeful when somebody did something to them. They didn’t forget,” he added.

Williams believes the goal behind the Sand Creek massacre, was to get Indians out of the way and secure statehood.

“It was genocidal in that it was an attempt to eliminate a portion of a population,” Andrews said of the massacre. “It was an attempt to make it impossible for that population to reproduce itself. I think the perpetrators were quite transparent about that.”

Victims were mutilated and scalped. Soldiers took body parts as trophies and paraded them through the streets of Denver.

Witnesses to the atrocities included and who ordered their men to stand down. Both testified against Chivington during congressional investigations

Less than three months after testifying, Soule was gunned down on a street in Denver.

Sand Creek happened just two months after Cheyenne and Arapaho leaders seeking peace met at  a military post on the outskirts of Denver, with territorial Gov. John Evans and Chivington.

The brutal onslaught also followed proclamations by Evans. The first required “friendly Indians” to go to certain camps. The second issued Aug. 11, 1864, authorized “all citizens of Colorado,” to kill “hostile Indians” who didn’t follow the first decree and take their property.

In 2021, Gov. Jared Polis rescinded the 157-year-old proclamations after Williams discovered that the proclamations were still on the books. Former Rep. Adrienne Benavidez,a Commerce City Democrat who’s now a state senator, supported the effort to repeal the policies.

Unvarnished  truths

Boulder County has been working for a while on going from “land acknowledgements,” or publicly recognizing that specific areas were originally the home of Native American people, to meaningful work, said County Commissioner Marta Loachamin of Longmont.

A proposal under discussion with the Cheyenne and Arapaho people of Oklahoma includes leasing land on county open space for the tribes to steward the land. That could include restoring bison to the area.

“We have agricultural leases with many different tenants doing different types of projects and work, research, etc. … It seemed like an opportunity,” Loachamin said

In 2025, Wilde, a member of the Muscogee Nation of Oklahoma, is charged with advancing the work with tribes whose homelands were in Boulder County, officials said.

on plans for managing a site with a connection to Sand Creek. Boulder County residents who mobilized into Company D of the Third Colorado Cavalry at along Boulder Creek, took part in the 1864 massacre.

“I do believe government has a responsibility to understand and to determine how to act accordingly in regards to people being removed from their land and land being stolen and taken,” Loachamin said.

Denver City Councilwoman Stacie Gilmore supports the creation of an embassy in Colorado for Native Americans who view the state as their homeland. She noted that the proposed site on First Creek at DIA Open Space is near a corner of the home to a bison herd.

Gilmore has traveled with Williams and other advocates of the embassy to neighboring states to talk about the project. While promoting the embassy has been “an honor and a joy,” Gilmore said she understands Indian tribes’ lack of enthusiasm to mark the state’s 150th anniversary.

So does Nathan Richie. He is director of the Golden History Museum and Park and is co-chairman of the , created by the to develop and promote plans for activities around the anniversaries.

“We know for certain that this is not a cause for celebration for most Native Americans. The creation of the United States and the state of Colorado came at great cost of their land and culture and people, and so it is not something that they want to celebrate at all,” Richie said.

However, he said, the sesquicentennial is an opportunity to share the history of how Colorado came to be. Richie said when the commission was formed in 2022, the goal was to ensure there was broad representation on the panel. Positions were created for representatives of the Southern Ute and Ute Mountain tribes.

The legislation was updated in 2024 to expand the commission. Richie said members wanted to create seats for members of tribes that don’t have reservations in Colorado, but have historic ties to the state.

Williams said he raised the lack of representation with commission members. He spoke during one of the listening sessions held to gather input from Indian people.

“They had very unvarnished truths to share,” Richie said of the sessions held around the state.

People made clear that the story of Colorado becoming a state should include talk of the Sand Creek massacre and other atrocities, treaties reneged on and the treatment of children at Indian boarding schools.

When people question commemorating an event with such a checkered past, Richie answers that two or more different things can be true at the same time.

“It is true that something like Colorado can be created because of great harm to native people and destruction of land and culture and gigantic loss,” Richie said. “It also can be true that people love the state and are proud of the achievements of individuals who have called Colorado home and wish to make the state that we live in a better place for themselves and for the future.

“It doesn’t diminish us to talk about bad things in our history. It actually makes us much stronger and wiser, I think, as a culture,” Richie said.

Here is a list of Native American tribes with ties to what is now the state of Colorado, based on information from History Colorado, which acknowledges that there may be tribes connected to the state that are not on the list:

• Apache Tribe of Oklahoma
• Cheyenne & Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma
• Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe
• Comanche Nation
• Crow Creek Sioux Tribe
• Crow Tribe
• Eastern Shoshone Tribe (Wind River Reservation)
• Fort Sill Apache Tribe
• Jicarilla Apache Nation
• Kewa Pueblo (formerly the Pueblo of Santo Domingo)
• Kiowa Tribe of Oklahoma
• Mescalero Apache Tribe
• Navajo Nation
• Northern Arapaho Tribe
• Northern Cheyenne Tribe
• Oglala Sioux Tribe
• Ohkay Owingeh (Pueblo of San Juan)
• Osage Nation
• Paiute Indian Tribe of Utah
• Pawnee Nation of Oklahoma
• Pueblo de Cochiti
• Pueblo of Acoma
• Pueblo of Isleta
• Pueblo of Jemez
• Pueblo of Laguna
• Nambé Pueblo (sometimes listed as Pueblo of Nambé)
• Pueblo of Picuris
• Pueblo of Pojoaque
• Pueblo of San Felipe
• Pueblo of San Ildefonso
• Pueblo of Sandia
• Pueblo of Santa Ana
• Pueblo of Santa Clara
• Pueblo of Taos
• Pueblo of Tesuque
• Pueblo of Zia
• Rosebud Sioux Tribe
• San Juan Southern Paiute Tribe
• Shoshone-Bannock Tribes
• Southern Ute Indian Tribe
• Standing Rock Sioux Tribe
• Three Affiliated Tribes-The Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation
• Ute Indian Tribe (Uintah & Ouray Reservation)
• Ute Mountain Ute Tribe
• Wichita & Affiliated Tribes
• Ysleta del Sur Pueblo
• Zuni Tribe of the Zuni Reservation

“It is with great sadness that we announce the passing of our dear sister, Lynn Bartels,” her family . “We are heartbroken. We have been overwhelmed by the love that all of you have shared. It will lift us through the coming days and will stay with us forever.”

Bartels became known for her tenaciousness as a political reporter at the Rocky Mountain News, then went to work for The Denver Post after the News closed in 2009. She had undergone surgery to remove a large brain tumor, her family in late April, and her sister Kitty DiMartino said it was diagnosed as glioblastoma. She was 69.

Plans for a memorial service were pending, the family wrote.

“Lynn was a born reporter. Long after she’d left newspapering, she was sniffing out news and passing on tips,” said Lee Ann Colacioppo, The Post’s editor, on Friday. “It was part of her DNA. The Rocky, The Denver Post and Colorado journalism were lucky to have her.”

Bartels spent 22 years working at Denver’s two metro dailies — first at the News for 16 years, then at The Post for a half-dozen more until she took a buyout from the paper’s parent company during a round of staff cuts in 2015.

“She was a delightful human being, and her loss will leave a hole in the universe,” said former Mesa County Commissioner Rick Enstrom, who met Bartels nearly 30 years ago when he served on the Colorado Wildlife Commission under Gov. Bill Owens. “If anyone deserves to lie in state at the Colorado Capitol, it is Lynn Bartels.”

Gov. Jared Polis issued a statement Friday afternoon, saying he had known Bartels for more than a quarter of a century.

“Lynn’s infectious personality and ongoing quest for selfies made her someone that everyone wanted to know, and her sharp wit kept readers coming back for more,” he said. “I know that her passing will impact so many across Colorado, but we’ve all learned something from Lynn that we can carry forward in our lives.”

Bartels regularly spent time with — and wrote about — the luminaries of Colorado politics, including governors, U.S. senators, members of Congress and state lawmakers of all stripes — often holding them to account in blunt and unforgiving ways, but never dismissing their humanity.

“She might grill them on the latest turn of the news wheel, or even openly point out their hypocrisy — citing a month, year and issue when they took the position they were now opposing,” said Todd Hartman, a former colleague of Bartels’ at the Rocky Mountain News. “But in the very same conversation, she would ask about their kids.”

Bartels, he said, “knew their family members, kids, pets and hobbies, and she was sincere in seeing them as just people, flawed and mostly trying their best like all of us.”

Bartels’ influence on political reporting went beyond Colorado. In 2015, she was named a “longtime stalwart” by The Washington Post blog The Fix in its annual list of best state political reporters, according to . MS NOW’s Rachel Maddow, then a broadcaster on MSNBC, relied on Bartels as “her political attache for the inside scoop on the Colorado midterm elections” in 2014, the story said.

‘She didn’t play favorites’

Kevin Vaughan, an investigative reporter for 9News who sat just feet from Bartels at both The Post and the Rocky for 15 years, said his colleague was fiercely fair in her coverage.

“She didn’t play favorites. It didn’t matter what party you were in, or what issues were important to you — you were fair game,” Vaughan said. “It might mean she’d write a glowing piece about you. It might also mean she’d write a tough one — one you wouldn’t like.”

But she was always willing to face her subject the next day and hear out what they thought of her story, he said.

“It����ap a big reason why she was universally beloved by people across the political spectrum,” Vaughan said. “Some of those people had been punched in the mouth by her in print, and they came to respect and love her anyway.”

Former U.S. Sen. Cory Gardner, a Republican, that Bartels covered him when he was a state lawmaker and later a senator in Washington, D.C. Her work, he wrote, “defined Colorado politics, its leadership and the intrigue of power.”

“And Lynn was there every bit of the way — knowing where the ball was bouncing before any of us had even figured out there was a ball at all,” Gardner wrote. “She was the Grand Dame of Colorado politics and political reporting.”

Bartels, a native of Vermillion, South Dakota, grew up with two brothers and six sisters. She attended Cottey College in Missouri in the mid-1970s before moving on to Northern Arizona University to study journalism.

Her first newspaper job was with the Gallup Independent in New Mexico. She then moved two hours east to work for the Albuquerque Tribune, where she met John Temple, the eventual editor and publisher of the Rocky.

The year was 1984.

“I made her a columnist at The Tribune and she was incredibly popular,” Temple said. “People could relate to Lynn, which was one thing that made her such a great reporter and columnist.”

When Temple moved north, he hired Bartels as the night cops reporter at the Rocky, where she was charged with covering the shenanigans and hijinks of metro Denver’s after-hours dwellers.

“Nobody could believe it at the time that someone would give up being a columnist to become a night cops reporter, but Lynn loved covering cops, and I loved working with her,” he said.

Temple remembers the uniquely human touch Bartels employed in uncovering the details of a story.

“People trusted her. They would talk to her,” he said. “She was a people reporter. She wasn’t a documents reporter. Nor did she like to write think pieces. Lynn was a true news reporter.”

While she eventually made her name covering state politics, Bartels wanted nothing to do with it at first, Temple said.

“One funny thing, given how much Lynn became part of Colorado political life, was that when we first asked her to go to the Capitol to cover the legislature, she cried,” he said. “She didn’t want to go.”

Remembrances from across the spectrum

Mary Alice Mandarich, a longtime political operative who served as chief of staff for the Colorado Senate Democrats, had known Bartels for 30 years and had her over to her home for backyard pig roasts and Thanksgiving meals over the years.

She remembers Bartels making the trek to Kansas City to watch Mandarich’s son get married, talking easily with people she had never met.

“While being an iconic newspaper reporter, Lynn had an ability to lay that aside and be just small-town Lynn from Vermillion, South Dakota,” Mandarich said. “And I believe that background gave her the ability to engage effortlessly with people in many different walks of life.”

She remembers the two strengths that Bartels had that made her the reporter she was.

“First, she strongly guarded her sources, never betraying a confidence given on background,” Mandarich said. “Second, she immersed herself in the maelstrom of political and government events. She was not one to report off of press releases and press conferences.”

Dick Wadhams, a former Colorado Republican Party chair who managed U.S. Senate campaigns and Owens’ run for governor, said Bartels “knew something was going to happen even before the candidates and campaigns did.”

He recalled a moment in 2004 when he was considering whether to run the senatorial campaign of John Thune of South Dakota, who is now Senate Majority Leader. He kept putting Bartels off when she asked if he would be heading up the effort, not knowing if Thune was even running.

“When my plane landed in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, on a frigid January evening where I would start Thune’s campaign, I turned my phone on and sure enough, there was a voicemail from Lynn saying, ‘I know you’re in South Dakota. Call me.’

“Of course she knew,” he said.

He said Bartels always wanted to be in the middle of the action.

“Her idea of a good time was going on a bus tour of rural Colorado with a candidate. And because of that, she knew every county, town and wide spot in the road,” Wadhams said.

In a statement Friday, former Gov. Bill Ritter, a Democrat who served from 2007 to 2011, said: “Lynn was one of the best reporters I’ve ever worked with. I came into public service when she came to Denver. She was hard-working and she had great, top-notch integrity as a journalist. She will be missed terribly.”

Marianne Goodland, the chief legislative reporter with Colorado Politics, regularly crossed paths with Bartels at the state Capitol.

“Lynn was the consummate reporter, and I learned a lot from her — mostly her ability to stand up to the folks in power without hesitation,” Goodland said.

Bartels, she said, would head from the Capitol office to “check the traps.”

“That was code for talking to anyone — lobbyists, partisan and nonpartisan staff, and of course lawmakers — to see what was hot, what was coming,” Goodland said. “I started doing that when I joined Colorado Politics, and it has served me extraordinarily well over the past decade.”

Post-newspaper career

Bartels’ value continued after she left The Post in 2015, Goodland said, when she was a source for Goodland as spokeswoman for the Colorado Secretary of State’s Office.

She worked several years for Secretary of State Wayne Williams, a Republican, after her newspaper career came to an end. She also worked more recently as an aide to state Sen. Barb Kirkmeyer, a Brighton Republican.

“I am heartbroken by the loss of Lynn Bartels. I loved that lady,” Kirkmeyer, who’s now running for governor, wrote in a statement Friday. “Lynn was a dear friend, trusted colleague and a buddy who worked alongside me at the Colorado Capitol after an extraordinary career covering Colorado politics.”

Bartels, she said, “brought intelligence, humor and an unmatched passion for public service to everything she did.”

At the secretary of state’s office, Williams said Bartels “transformed government communications, changing it from reactive to proactive and even publishing a blog about Colorado elections and election officials that became famous and revered.”

“She chronicled everything from conferences to elections to the day-to-day grist of the job,” he said.

DiMartino, Bartels’ younger sister by 13 years, called her big sister the “absolute ringleader of the family.” Bartels never married nor had children but she loved her nieces and nephews, she said.

“Lynn was everyone’s favorite sister,” DiMartino said. “She was there for every single birth of her nieces or nephews.”

DiMartino remembers feeling crushed, at age 5, as her sister headed off to college in Missouri. After Bartels’ freshman year came to an end, DiMartino recalled visiting her at her dorm and “running as hard as I could to jump into her arms because I loved her so much.”

Journalism for her sister, she said, became bigger than just a collection of facts to pass along to others.

“It allowed for her to be forever curious, to get to know people and to really know them,” DiMartino said. “And to use those relationships not for personal purposes but to provide information to people on issues that were important in their lives.”

“We have lost an outrageous sister, friend, colleague and human,” she said of her older sister. “Lynn was outrageously funny, outrageously loyal and outrageously talented.”

The rusted structure was barely hanging on, and its operation was time-consuming for the busy ranchers, who had to lug special tools on all-terrain vehicles and on foot to open or close the mechanism. But it seemed impossible for the tiny district to find the $6.8 million needed to replace the headgate and the rocky diversion dam that pushed water into the canal.

Then legalized sports betting came along, and, with it, millions of dollars for Colorado water projects. The tiny irrigation district, in Moffat County in the far northwest corner of the state, soon became the poster child for how gambling money is benefiting Colorado’s waterways.

The district received a $750,000 grant from the , which doles out money from sports betting tax revenue, said, sustainable food and water program director for , which helped the district land the grant. That led to a matching grant from the program. With those two grants in hand, other organizations jumped on board, and money poured in, she said.

In 2024, the Maybell Irrigation District installed a new headgate that can be opened or closed via cellphone. If a rancher is cutting hay and doesn’t need to irrigate, he can close the gates to match the amount of water he actually needs at that moment, Lane said. And the diversion structure no longer uses boulders to control the water flow. Instead, it’s a modern structure that is the right height for water control.

The project also benefited four fish species, including the threatened humpback chub, and it made river navigation easier for boaters, helping the region’s outdoor recreation economy.

“That $750,000 was really the ball that got it all rolling, that showed people, ‘Oh, this is going somewhere,'” Lane said of that initial state grant.

Since sports betting became legal in May 2020, the state has collected more than $154 million in taxes, and the Colorado Water Conservation Board has funneled $140 million to various projects that preserve and conserve Colorado’s precious water. Supporters say the gambling money is a godsend for ranchers, fishermen, paddlers and others who want to protect the state’s water and those who depend on it for their livelihoods. Critics, however, say legalized sports betting has come at a cost — fueling an addiction crisis that the state was unprepared for and is underfunding.

This is the second story in The Denver Post’s three-part series exploring the impact of legalized sports betting in Colorado, including the billions spent on wagers, rising addiction rates, and the impact on athletes and the games they play.

Erin Karney Spaur, executive vice president of the , said she reminds her family members and friends who bet on sports that every time they place a wager, they are helping ranchers like those in Maybell access precious water.

“It����ap exponentially more than we could ever imagine,” she said of sports betting’s impact on ranches and water. “Coloradans like to gamble on sports, and water is the beneficiary.”

‘That’s our ticket’

In 2015, the Colorado Water Conservation Board — at the behest of then-Gov. John Hickenlooper — released a report on how to best conserve and protect the state’s water.

“It made a lot of plans. It set a bit of policy, and it identified two big funding needs,” said , director of western water for the .

The board determined at the time that Colorado needed $100 million per year for projects to improve river and stream health and restoration, to replace the agricultural industry’s aging irrigation systems and to conserve as much water as possible.

“The 2015 water plan put up that price tag and then continued on its merry way,” he said.

But the money wasn’t there.

A consortium of groups with interests in the state’s waterways — including environmental, agricultural and recreational organizations — began meeting to figure out how to fund the water plan. They considered various tax schemes, such as asking the state to put a levy on bottled water or rental cars. But none of their ideas came with an easy path to voter approval — something necessary to raise statewide taxes in Colorado.

“We sat around a table for over a year and a half trying to figure out how to do this, and there were no good options,” Jackson said.

Then, in 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court delivered a ruling that offered the answer to funding water projects in Colorado: . That decision overturned the , paving the way for states to legalize sports betting.

“I said, ‘That’s it. That’s our ticket,’ ” Jackson said.

Jackson thought Colorado voters would be sympathetic to the state’s water crisis, caused by decades of drought and climate change. They also wagered that a tax on sports betting would be easier for voters to digest because it would only be paid by those who chose to gamble; if someone didn’t want to pay the tax, then they didn’t have to participate, he said.

The legislature agreed to put it on the 2019 ballot, and voters approved with 51% in favor. The bill established a 10% tax on sports betting companies’ revenue.

“Water certainly pushed it over,” Jackson said.

Sports betting was slated to open in Colorado on May 1, 2020. But the big date was a false start. The COVID-19 pandemic hobbled betting like a quarterback with a bum knee.

“Sports betting was legal, and there were no sports,” Jackson said. “And I thought to myself, ‘What the hell did we just do?’ ”

Gross sports betting revenue in Colorado was $2.6 million, with 25% of wagers placed on table tennis. Tax revenue was just $96,544.

But that freeze on sports did not last, and the gambling money began flowing as rapidly as Clear Creek during the early summer snowmelt.

The revenue stream

Colorado leaders soon realized sports betting was far more lucrative for tax revenues than had been predicted. In the first six years of legalized sports betting, the has reported record-setting figures each year.

“It����ap been hugely successful,” said Drew Peternell, Colorado state director at . “Revenues from sports betting have greatly exceeded any expectations when these mechanisms were put in place.”

By May 2021, when sports betting in Colorado hit its first anniversary, monthly tax revenue hit $635,640 — more than five times what sports wagering had brought in during the same month just a year prior, according to data from the Department of Revenue.

In its most recent report on sports-betting taxes, the department reported it collected $4.4 million in April. The news releases often tout the success of sports betting and the benefits it brings to state waterways. They also include links to , the state’s website for problem gambling resources.

The April tax revenue was 28% more than the amount collected in April 2025, and taxes collected for the current fiscal year through April were at $40.7 million, up 35% over the same period last year.

Thus far, the largest single-month record for tax revenue came in January when the state collected $5 million from $57.8 million in revenue. Coloradans bet $630.2 million, with $119 million wagered on professional football in a month when the Broncos made a run to the conference championship game.

Proposition DD’s 10% tax on net proceeds from sports betting means casinos and companies doing business in Colorado pay the tax after they pay out winning bets and federal taxes.

But the Colorado General Assembly placed a $29 million-a-year cap on sports betting tax revenue when it approved Proposition DD for the statewide ballot. If the state collected more than $29 million each year, the overage was to be refunded to the casinos and licensed gaming companies.

Proposition DD also determined how sports betting proceeds were to be divvied up between programs, with water projects receiving 93% of the tax revenue.

The first projection estimated that sports betting would generate about $16 million annually and that water projects would receive $14.9 million.

Six percent of the tax revenue, or an estimated $960,000, would be set aside in a special fund that would be distributed to Colorado’s three casino cities and other entities that received gaming revenue if they could prove that the new sports betting market caused them to lose money due to decreased bets on traditional gambling and horse racing.

So far, no one has tapped that fund.

Problem gambling would receive just $130,000 annually for establishing a crisis hotline and training for gambling addiction counselors. That amount was increased to $2.5 million annually in 2023.

The Post interviewed seven people whose agencies receive sports betting tax revenue, but only one — Jackson — said they bet on sports themselves. And only one person, who did not want their family’s story to be told publicly, said they sometimes were bothered by the addiction problem because a loved one had died by suicide after gambling away his money.

The tax revenue proved so lucrative that water proponents returned to the legislature to ask for another statewide ballot. This time, which voters approved in 2024, eliminated the $29 million cap, meaning casinos and licensed sports betting companies can no longer receive refunds. And more money will pour into the water conservation fund.

In 2025, water proponents returned to the revenue well again.

This time, they asked the General Assembly to eliminate a clause that had allowed sports betting companies to use their free bet promotions as tax write-offs.

In those promotions, DraftKings, FanDuel and others lure prospective gamblers by offering “free bonus bets” when users apply a promo code advertised on television.

During the NFL’s wild card playoff weekend between Jan. 10 and 12, for example, FanDuel offered a promotion in which bettors would receive $300 when they placed a $5 bet on a game. In the past, FanDuel would have been allowed to write that $300 off as a tax deduction.

But starting in January, that tax deduction was no longer allowed, which means FanDuel and other companies doing business in Colorado pay even more in taxes.

For years, the sports betting companies had argued that losing the tax deduction would force them to pull back on those offers and lead to fewer players, Jackson said. But Colorado watched other states that did not offer similar tax deductions and realized those promotions were still available to gamblers.

“It’s still the primary marketing scheme,” Jackson said. “Colorado was very much an outlier in allowing the deduction.”

Colorado’s water woes

As the planet’s temperature rises, Colorado’s rivers and streams become more threatened by drought.

Last year was for Colorado after the state marked its 10th-warmest year out of 130 years of data, according to the at .  It was the 51st driest year on record, and a swath of northwestern Colorado fell into exceptional drought — the most dire category recorded by the .

And 2026 has brought even hotter and drier weather, with the winter being the warmest on record and snowpack at its lowest levels since records started being kept in 1941.

While drought dries up lakes, rivers and streams, it also impacts almost every person living in Colorado. People live with a shortage of drinking water supplies, irrigation becomes trickier for ranchers, rivers dry up for rafters and fishermen, fish and wildlife struggle, and manufacturers must cope with less water.

Less water also boosts the state’s risk for devastating wildfires and can cause insect infestations or forest diseases to spread.

“Climate change is water change in Colorado, and we need every resource we can to put towards building a more resilient future,” said Lauren Ris, the Colorado Water Conservation Board’s director.

The conservation board intends to help Coloradans address all of those issues with the  through the state’s water plan.

“It primarily focuses on water supply, not water quality,” Ris said.

Projects awarded money during the most recent grant cycle in September included:

• to build a new water storage facility at the Jurgens Reservoir in Weld County that will increase the Lower Latham Reservoir Company’s irrigation supply
• to Adams 12 Five Star Schools to evaluate 54 irrigation systems across 475 acres of irrigated landscape and develop a water conservation plan for the district
• for a Colorado River conservation exhibit at the Confluence Center of Colorado in Mesa County

The water board employs a team of regional grant managers who live and work in the areas they serve. They become familiar with their region’s needs and help decide which projects are worth funding, said Jeannine Shaw, the grants section chief at the water board.

The more organizations applying for a grant together, the more competitive the application becomes, she said. And all of the grants awarded require the applicants to find matching funds, doubling the amount of money available.

And, as more money is spent on sports betting, Colorado can expand its outreach to all four corners of this parched state.

“The difference that makes on the ground is pretty incredible,” Ris said.

In the San Luis Valley, ranchers have long spread water over their grasslands when temperatures start to freeze to create a sheet of ice over the vegetation. As the ice slowly melts during the spring thaw, it seeps into the ground, recharging the water table. It also helps revegetate retired farmland and creates a habitat for wintering birds and wildlife, said Fay Hartman, conservation director for the southwest region of .

In September 2025, American Rivers received a $199,761 grant funded by sports betting to study how the winter ice sheet practice actually benefits the environment. The grant will provide the money for a groundwater study so scientists can collect data by placing groundwater wells at the near Saguache. American Rivers secured $145,956 in matching funds.

There just wasn’t good data on the benefits of creating the winter sheet ice, Shaw said. Different groups wanted to quantify what happens so they would be better informed about the practice and find ways to improve it.

The project, named Frozen Assets, demonstrates the water conservation board’s desire to support innovative ideas for Colorado’s water management, Ris said.

“We’re really able to test some of these theories and use this funding where there is not a whole lot of other opportunity out there to really test some concepts and pilot some things that could have pretty big benefits,” Ris said.

So far, Ris and others who are working to solve Colorado’s water woes believe sports betting revenue is the lifebuoy the state needs to start solving the crisis. It’s not enough, they said, but it’s charting the right course as the state responds to increasing drought, floods and wildfires worsened by climate change.

“We’re thrilled,” she said. “What we really needed was a steady funding stream for water projects, and that����ap what this proved to be.”

READ PART 3 NEXT: Sports betting is changing the game for Colorado’s fans and athletes as big money adds new pressures

Set to launch down a ski slope at Breckenridge, where he was celebrating his engagement with his fiancée and their friends, Everett glanced at his phone before pushing off.

A notification informed Everett that he had just won $55,000 on a $15 fantasy-golf wager on the . The money was in his PayPal account by the time he finished the run.

“That was more than my salary at the time,” he said. “You convince yourself that you’re so good.”

The money was gone almost as fast as Everett, high on dopamine from his big score, flew down that mountain. By the end of the ski weekend, he had blown the entire $55,000: drinks and food for his friends, a gold watch and, worst of all, more bets, including an $18,000 loss with one tap on his phone to bet — incorrectly — on the Big 10 football championship. He did not have enough money to buy gas to get home.

For Everett, the next two-and-a-half years would be “incredibly off the rails.”

“After I lost that money, I couldn’t get it out of my head chasing that,” he said. “I was basically trying to win it all back.”

Colorado, much like Everett, plunged headfirst into legalized sports betting after voters approved it in 2019. Since online sportsbooks opened in May 2020, the state’s residents have bet more than $30.6 billion on the outcomes of games and on the performances of the athletes who played them, netting the state more than $154 million in tax revenue.

But the growing popularity comes at a cost.

Mental health and addiction experts are sounding the alarm about a growing crisis that Colorado was not prepared to handle. The state does not sufficiently fund services for people who become addicted to gambling via the sports-betting apps on their phones, mental health experts say, and there are not enough therapists trained to treat gambling addiction. Colorado also provided little funding to promote awareness about gambling addiction and put limited guardrails in place to help people slow their betting habits.

It’s not clear how many Coloradans have gambling problems. There’s never been a study to determine that, but the results of a national survey suggest that more than 100,000 people in the state could suffer from that mental health disorder.

Jamie Glick, executive director of the , calls gambling addiction the “next big public health crisis.”

“Unfortunately, we are hearing a lot of rock-bottom stories,” Glick said. “People aren’t seeking help until they hit rock bottom. We are seeing people whose marriages are destroyed. They’re financially destroyed.”

Six years after legalization, Colorado is trying to catch up. The General Assembly this spring passed a bill that will put some controls on sports-betting apps, including by limiting the number of daily deposits a person can make. The state also increased the share of tax revenue funneled annually to problem-gambling awareness and prevention.

Gambling companies told The Denver Post they are creating new features to help people limit how much they spend, saying it is in their best interest to retain customers who view betting as entertainment, not a problem. Five sportsbooks stopped accepting credit cards in the past year amid growing criticism that people should not gamble with money they don’t have, and Colorado will ban credit card deposits, beginning in August.

“We want our customers to play with us month over month or year over year,” said Cory Fox, senior vice president of public policy and sustainability at . “If they have a problem, they will be off the platform.”

The Post examined the impact of legalized sports betting in the state by interviewing those involved in the industry and those who regulate it, mental health professionals, the groups who benefit from the tax dollars, athletes and coaches, and the gamblers. The Post also analyzed the money spent to show how much people are wagering, which sports are most popular for betting, and how much revenue sportsbooks are earning.

The first installment of this three-part series looks in-depth at gambling addiction and the attempts to get it under control before it becomes a public health crisis. The second part will examine how water conservation advocates bet on sports gambling to obtain funding to rescue communities and industries dependent on the state’s scarce water resources.

And the final story will explore how betting is changing sports itself as professional leagues embrace sportsbooks as business partners, even as gambling scandals make headlines and athletes report increasing hostility from fans who lose money when players fail to perform.

The launch of sports betting

Colorado was among the early adopters of legalized sports betting when voters approved Proposition DD in November 2019.

The state had moved quickly after the the 1992 , a federal law that had prohibited states from allowing sports betting.

In exchange for legalizing sports betting, Colorado voters agreed that sportsbooks should be taxed at a 10% rate to fund water conservation. That bargain pushed Proposition DD toward a narrow win, and the rushed to put rules in place.

By May 2020, sportsbooks in Colorado were open for business, and amid the COVID-19 pandemic, people found a new avenue for entertainment. Although the pandemic paused major sports in the U.S., including the Kentucky Derby, the NCAA basketball tournament and the NBA season, Coloradans still found sports to wager on.

Bettors spent more than $25.6 million that first month, with the largest percentage of bets being placed on table tennis at $6.6 million.

Table tennis remains one of the most popular sports for Colorado gamblers to bet on, with $989 million wagered since legalization. In April, it was the fourth most popular sport for wagering, with $28.5 million bet on it.

Those who want tighter controls on sports betting cite table tennis wagers in their arguments, saying it’s an example of problem gambling because Americans do not care about or understand ping-pong and only bet on it because it’s played in other parts of the world when most people in this country are asleep.

Professional basketball is the state’s favorite sport when it comes to betting, with $7.3 billion wagered on the NBA and overseas leagues, as of April. The NFL is second, followed by baseball, tennis and NCAA basketball, according to the revenue department’s data.

Sports betting continues to grow year after year.

In April, the most recent month of data available, Coloradans bet $521 million on sports — 20 times more than that first month in 2020. The state raked in $4.4 million in taxes.

, director of the state Division of Gaming, said interest in local sports teams is driving the growth, especially with the Broncos, Nuggets and Avalanche fielding championship-caliber teams.

“It’s becoming more and more exciting to watch our teams here in Colorado,” he said. “Every time we have a lot of interest in sporting events featuring our local teams, we see that continued growth. It’s more accessible with attention and advertising.”

Colorado has a healthy sports-betting market with 13 online companies and 10 in-person sportsbooks, Schroeder said. The goal, he said, is to have the best odds available for the gamblers.

The state also offers a with 5,866 approved events and wagers, ranging from which team will win the Super Bowl to whether someone will get knocked out in the U.S. SlapFIGHT championship to who will win the Chinese Basketball Association’s Club Cup.

At the same time, Schroeder said the state is committed to responsible gaming, which is the term the industry uses instead of gambling.

“We want individuals to bet smart,” he said. “Betting should be entertainment. It shouldn’t be something where you’re adding on a second level to the house by gambling.”

Colorado offers a through which gamblers can ban themselves from online apps and in-person sportsbooks at the state’s casinos. There were 1,245 people on that list as of June 15.

The state also promotes March as and operates the . Each year, the state awards millions in grants to nonprofits that are focused on gambling addiction.

Yet even as sports betting grows, public opinion is becoming more critical.

An found 43% of Americans say sports betting is bad for society, up from 34% in a 2022 poll. Still, 22% of respondents said they had bet on sports in the past year, up from 19% in the prior study.

Chasing the high

It’s impossible to know how many people in Colorado bet on sports, let alone to understand how many might suffer from a gambling addiction. Sports betting companies do not release their data and the state does not conduct public health monitoring of gambling addiction.

Sports betting is prolific among young people, said Evette Marquez, a 26-year-old, diehard Broncos fan.

She learned to gamble on a sports app from an ex-boyfriend and routinely places wagers on her favorite sport — pro football. Most of her friends do, too.

“Everyone is betting these days, especially at my age,” she said. “Some people may not be paying rent.

“I think people my age get stuck on the dopamine. You get that green ticket,” she said, referring to an icon on the DraftKings app that signifies a winning bet, “and it����ap the best feeling.”

That dopamine hit certainly contributes to the addictiveness of gambling, said assistant professor of psychiatry at the .

“It’s something pleasurable like hearing your favorite song or eating chocolate,” she said.

People who become addicted to gambling can naturally have lower dopamine levels, making them crave a high, Hemendinger said. And some people are just hardwired to take risks, and that makes them more prone to gambling addiction, she said.

Researchers have also linked gambling disorders to the parts of the brain that respond to rewards and regulate social behaviors and impulse control, Hemendinger said. But the prefrontal cortex is not fully developed until a person reaches their mid-to-late 20s, making young people more susceptible to impulsive behavior while gambling.

The profile of a heavy sports bettor is a male younger than 35 who is single, employed and well-educated, according to the . And they think sports betting involves skill, not luck, which makes them “prone to distortions in thinking,” according to a coalition summary of sports wagering and addiction studies.

Matt Ferraccio, 38, started gambling in middle school, continuing into adulthood. He found it an escape from other problems in his life.

Ferraccio said he used legal gambling apps as well as the unregulated, overseas sportsbooks and bookies. He took advantage of special promotions, and when he ran out of credit on one, he opened another account.

“A compulsive gambler just doesn’t stop,” he said.

Ferraccio and Everett each talked about “chasing” their losses. Both men said they were never satisfied with a big win. They placed more bets rather than pocketing their winnings, and when they lost, they tried to win the money back — usually losing even more.

“It’s really hard to replicate that feeling you get when you win a lot of money,” Ferraccio said. “It means higher bets and longer sessions. You’re just chasing.”

Gambling addicts can stay awake for days, betting on obscure sports happening in other countries.

“You can log in at 3 a.m. and find tennis that����ap going on in China, ping-pong in Russia, basketball in China, cricket games. The possibilities are endless if you want to be compulsive and keep going, which I did,” Ferraccio said.  “Obviously, you don’t know anything about them, but you just pick.”

Ferraccio always promised himself he would stop once he dug himself out of a financial hole. It never happened.

Unprepared for a crisis

The National Council on Problem Gambling estimates that 9 million Americans have a gambling disorder, which is recognized as a mental health illness in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.

Brianne Doura-Schawhol, director of the , said a 2023 study by the estimated about 2.4% of the population struggles with gambling addiction, which would mean about 110,000 adults in Colorado suffer from it.

But Colorado never conducted a study to gauge the prevalence of problem gambling before it legalized sports betting, and public health officials have no plans to do one.

“How can you make policy decisions without the proper data?” Doura-Schawhol said.

Colorado also ranks among the worst in the nation when it comes to funding gambling addiction resources, multiple people told The Post. The state law that legalized sports betting established a 10% tax on net sports betting proceeds, but only allocated $130,000 annually to problem gambling.

In 2023, the legislature boosted the annual amount to $2.5 million. Since 2023, the Colorado Division of Gaming has awarded $11.2 million in grants to organizations that raise awareness about addiction and help those who suffer from it.

The state allocated less than a penny per person for gambling services in 2023, by the National Association of Administrators for Disordered Gambling Services.

The bill passed in May did not include additional money for prevention and treatment. And as lawmakers faced down a $1.5 billion budget deficit, there was little room to set aside extra money. The legislature could shift some funds set aside for water to gambling addiction issues, but that has not been proposed.

Nationally, there is no federal revenue stream to support gambling addiction prevention and treatment, even though experts estimate that the social cost of gambling addictions exceeds $14 billion annually in the U.S.

In March, a group of bipartisan representatives in Congress introduced the Providing Opportunities for Individuals In Need of Treatment and Support, also known as the , which would divert a third of federal taxes collected on gambling to awareness, prevention and treatment of gambling addiction. If approved, it would raise an estimated $100 million per year, according to the National Council on Problem Gambling.

But in Colorado, there is no movement to increase funding for gambling addiction, even as the state rakes in tax revenue from sports betting.

Doura-Schawhol said the National Campaign for Fairer Gambling ranks Colorado at the bottom of the 39 U.S. states that have legalized sports gambling when it comes to funding treatment and prevention for gambling addiction.

Liesl Leary-Perez, co-founder of , said Colorado has long ignored mental health problems, and sports betting addiction is now one more thing on the list that needs to be addressed.

“To answer your question of ‘Were we prepared?’ No! We were not prepared,” Leary-Perez said of Colorado’s swift entry into the online sports-betting world. “And no one seems to care because we aren’t increasing that budget.”

When legalized sports betting came online, those who work in the addiction-treatment field were not prepared for clients struggling with gambling addiction.

The , which establishes the best practices for counseling gambling addicts and issues certifications to professional therapists, lists just 17 people in Colorado who have received certification. Only two are practicing in Denver, the state’s largest city.

The Problem Gambling Coalition of Colorado lists 18 counselors who treat gambling addiction and two behavioral health centers that offer telehealth appointments for gambling addiction on its website. And the coalition has developed a four-hour certification program for counselors on college campuses to help them recognize and treat the problem, Glick said.

Daniel Umfleet, founder and chief executive officer of , a behavioral health company focused on gambling addiction, left the United Kingdom to move to Colorado to start up his company after sports betting was legalized in the U.S.

Treatment for gambling addicts is in its infancy in the United States, Umfleet said.

“The unfortunate reality today is there are not enough health systems that understand this and have adopted it into their service mix,” he said. “The infrastructure wasn’t there.”

Ryan Canaday, founder of the in Denver, said he received a warning in 2020 from a doctor who called sports betting the “new dopamine dump,” and recommended his church and its associated nonprofit, which focuses on addiction recovery, prepare for it.

Then more people started showing up, seeking help, and Canaday had to learn what those addicts needed to recover.

“When I heard someone say, ‘Last night I lost $100,000,’ it was hard for me to fathom. I thought, ‘Well, why’d you place that big of a bet? And why couldn’t you just stop?’ and all the questions a rational mind asks,” Canday said, “but this disease of addiction is not rational, or else none of us would be here, right?”

‘Modern-day get-rich-quick scheme’

Arty Smith, a math teacher, last year launched the , a program that teaches teenagers the pitfalls of wagering.

Smith’s lessons on sports betting involve PowerPoint presentations with bar graphs and pie charts as he breaks down how it’s nearly impossible to beat the house.

He gathered data from every NFL game since 1966 and crunched numbers to show that picking the over/under bets — guessing what the total points scored by both teams in a game will be and whether it will be higher or lower than the points total set by the house — is no different than picking heads or tails on a coin toss.

It is a certainty that people lose money in the long run, Smith said.

“It doesn’t matter how well you know the game of football,” he said. “You could be Peyton Manning for all I care, you still won’t be able to pick football games any better than you could pick the outcome of the coin flip.”

On the over/under bet, the house has a 4.5% edge, Smith said. But when it comes to parlays, the house edge jumps to 40%. In a parlay, gamblers wager on multiple things happening at one time.

For the April 30 playoff game between the Denver Nuggets and the Minnesota Timberwolves, offered a “Joker Jackpot” parlay that would pay out if all-star center Nikola Jokic scored more than 30 points, recorded more than 10 assists, grabbed more than 10 rebounds, and hit more than three three-point shots. In gambler parlance, that’s a “four-leg parlay.” A winning bet on a $10 wager would return $70.

The parlays are wildly popular with gamblers because they have higher payouts, and they benefit sportsbooks because they have higher odds and bigger profits.

“It����ap a way for the sportsbooks to take gamblers’ money even faster,” Smith said. “It’s the modern-day get-rich-quick scheme. It doesn’t seem that hard to win the bet.”

Smith developed the Gambling Awareness Initiative after a friend consulted him about how to respond to his preteen son’s request to create an online sportsbook account because the boy was too young to open his own.

“He knew what he wanted to tell his boy about drinking and drugs and unprotected sex, but he was unprepared for the question about gambling,” Smith said. “It occurred to me that we need to talk about this.”

Zach Everett’s love of gambling started as a child at a race track when his father allowed him to pick a horse and placed a bet on his son’s behalf.

He gambled through a bookie for a couple of years in college. In 2018, Everett obtained his first credit card while earning $36,000 per year. Sports betting would not be legal for another two years, but daily fantasy sports were legal and growing in popularity in the U.S.

The daily fantasy sports apps run by DraftKings and FanDuel were not considered gambling because participants played against each other rather than the house. But those games gave both companies footholds in the market before sports betting became legalized, and they continue to reign as the biggest sports-betting companies in the country.

Everett, a self-described “big-time sports fan,” used his new credit card to make deposits into a DraftKings account to enter those fantasy sports contests. But he couldn’t handle winning a big prize.

“My brain couldn’t comprehend it was life-changing money,” he said. “You’re not holding the cash and you don’t have a moment to breathe. It����ap just so fast and then you blink and it����ap gone.”

Sportsbooks and responsible gaming

The sportsbook operators say they take measures to promote responsible gambling, arguing it would be short-sighted to drive people away through increasing addiction.

Lori Kalani, chief responsible gaming officer at DraftKings, said it is in her company’s best interest to establish controls that players can use to limit themselves.

“It����ap the right thing to do,” she said. “If people are out of control and they’re spending money on entertainment that they don’t have to spend, they’re not going to be a happy customer and we’re not going to be a happy business. We want long-term customers. Not only is it the right thing to do, it’s the smart thing to do.”

At DraftKings, Kalani has a staff of 50 who work on the company’s responsible gaming programs. Those include a budget builder that lets players determine how much they want to spend and how long they want to be on the app. They can set alerts that notify them when they’ve hit their limits.

DraftKings also provides customers with a personal stat sheet they can use to review how much they’ve deposited, how much they’ve wagered, how much time they’ve spent on the app, and even which sports they’ve bet on. It’s like getting a monthly spending report from a credit card company, she said.

Meanwhile, Kalani’s staff also manually reviews individual accounts flagged for abnormal betting patterns, such as a customer suddenly making much larger or more frequent deposits. Last year, 92,000 accounts were reviewed, she said.

When Kalani, who is a lawyer, first took the job at DraftKings, she was surprised by how few people used the various tools that help control time and money on the app. People saw responsible gaming tools as something only those who have problems need, she said.

“I thought that was upside down,” she said. “The whole point is you use them so nothing gets out of control. It����ap a lot of work to change how people think about that.”

Fox, Kalani’s counterpart at FanDuel, said his company also makes an effort to boost participation in the app’s responsible gaming features.

FanDuel’s parent company, , wants 75% of its average monthly players to use its responsible gaming tools by 2030. Individual performance bonuses for employees on his team will be tied to that goal, Fox said.

One tool introduced in the past year by FanDuel is an artificial intelligence program that can quickly detect when a person has deposited an amount that is much larger than that player’s previous deposits on the app. The program then asks the player if they are sure about the amount, Fox said.

A staff of 30 people reviews accounts that get flagged for abnormal betting patterns, and after users threaten customer service representatives or even mention they can’t pay their mortgage. Those employees can send emails with responsible gaming information, put players in time-out, set deposit limits and, in some cases, ban them from the app, Fox said.

“There’s still a lot of work to be done in this field. We are not declaring victory,” Fox said. “We are working hard to figure out the best ways to identify and protect that small percentage of our user base who may be struggling to manage their play on our site.”

While the sports betting companies say they limit problem gamblers, others insist that’s not the case.

Josiah Clarke, 40, is a lawyer and a sports betting sharp — meaning he figured out how to win consistently.

Clarke played fantasy football for years and casually bet on offshore sportsbooks. But when sports betting was legalized in Colorado, and the pandemic gave him a lot of spare time, he decided to “take a real go at it.”

Clarke, who lives in Greeley, built a system of analyzing games and created his own model for statistical analysis. He raised the stakes as his model improved.

He won — and the sportsbooks noticed his winning pattern.

DraftKings was the first to limit him after he won $24,000 over two football seasons, Clarke said. FanDuel followed.

“I’d try to bet like $2,000 on an NFL game, and they’d say you can bet up to $47,” he said. “And I was like, it����ap not worth all the effort I’m putting into it for $47.”

Ferraccio and Everett said no sportsbook ever cut them off, even when it was clear they were gambling too much.

“Responsible gambling from these sportsbooks doesn’t even come close to identifying people,” Ferraccio said. “If they see me spending all night doing it, guess who’s getting the free bet? Guess who’s getting the big promotions? It����ap not the people who are winning.”

Bonus bets are not free money. Instead, gamblers must put something into their accounts first. Gamblers are never allowed to withdraw those “bonuses,” and they expire.

FanDuel’s Fox took exception to accusations that sportsbooks do not actually limit gamblers who show signs of addiction.

“First and foremost, we absolutely identify problem gamblers and prevent them from being on our site any longer,” he said. “Any suggestions that we don’t actually do that on that basis are inaccurate and wrong.”

Doing a lot with a little

Colorado has boosted its addiction awareness and prevention efforts in the six years since sports betting went online.

The state’s Gaming Division funds responsible gaming grants, doling out $3.8 million in March. Those grants were awarded to nonprofits, including the Problem Gambling Coalition of Colorado, which will use its $1.5 million to certify therapists treating gambling addiction, to support a project that works with college students, and to promote gambling addiction awareness.

The , a nonprofit advised by Umfleet, received more than $1 million to work with the military to address gambling addiction within the ranks. He said Colorado is doing a lot of work with little funding, and some efforts are gaining national attention.

“You’re doing it half the speed of what you would prefer,” he said.

In its most recent legislative session, the General Assembly passed , setting some first-in-the-nation standards to control addiction through state law. The law will go into effect in August.

The new law bars gambling companies from sending push notifications to their app users, something that emerging research shows triggers people into betting more. It also restricts advertising from targeting people younger than 21.

The new law will limit gamblers to six daily deposits on an app. But it does not limit the amount a person can deposit, and people can have multiple apps, meaning they still could deposit an unlimited amount of money in a 24-hour period.

The bill was watered down after its sponsors, under pressure from the gambling companies and their lobbyists, struck a provision that would have banned all proposition bets. A prop bet allows gamblers to wager on an individual athlete’s performance, and those prop bets can be rolled into the wildly popular parlays. Colorado already bans prop bets on college athletes.

Sen. Matt Ball, a Denver Democrat who was one of the bill’s bipartisan sponsors, said the new law should put some friction between gamblers and their impulse to place bets.

It was needed, he said, because technology has rapidly changed since Colorado legalized sports gambling, making it easier and faster for people to bet. Industry advertising works, Ball said, because he sees its effect on his preteen son.

“It works on his brain,” Ball said. “He asks me about placing bets. He thinks he can make a big hit, win $100. We need to put reasonable guardrails on sports betting to protect our kids.”

‘There is hope’

Ferraccio has no idea how much money he lost over the years. He said he could go on a winning streak and have as much as $200,000 in his accounts, only to lose it all over again.

“It����ap a lot,” he said. “Everything I’ve ever earned basically.”

Ferraccio placed his last bet on July 1, 2024.

“I was hitting a point where I had nothing but debt and darkness, and it just made me sick,” he said. “When you get to that point, it doesn’t feel like you have a way out.”

Ferraccio was afraid that if he did not stop and get help, he would become part of the statistic that haunts gambling addiction — the high suicide rate.

Multiple studies in the U.S. and internationally have found that people with gambling disorders have higher suicide rates than people suffering from other addictions, such as alcohol. One in five people with a gambling addiction has attempted suicide, according to the National Problem Gambling Coalition.

Ferraccio found help in recovery groups. He formed friendships with other recovered gamblers, and they hold each other accountable.

“There is hope,” he said. “You have to look in the right places. You have to admit you lost control. If you can’t admit you have a serious problem, you’re never going to get right.”

For three years after his big fantasy golf prize, Everett said he gambled so much that he alienated almost all of his friends and family.

He maxed out six or seven credit cards. He burned through at least six payday loans. He ran out of friends and relatives willing to loan money. He pawned a $12,000 TAG Heuer watch that his dad had given him as a wedding present. He wrecked his car — also on loan from his dad — while checking a bet on his phone.

Everett, who worked as a sales director and ranked first in sales for his company, was fired after his boss learned he had asked a client for a loan.

“Getting called into the office that day…” Everett said, unable to finish explaining what happened.

He dreaded telling his wife he had lost his job because of his gambling. She quit wearing her wedding ring.

Everett gambled away his severance. Loan sharks came calling. His first inpatient stay had failed, and support groups and regular therapy were not helping. He considered fraud. He considered overdosing.

So he flew home to Minnesota and the one person who still took his calls — his dad, Brad Everett.

Looking back, Brad Everett said he did not realize that gambling addiction strangles people much like alcohol and drug addiction.

“I didn’t understand why he just couldn’t stop,” he said. “It was a complete lack of understanding. And a complete lack of understanding of how easy it is with your phone and the apps.”

Brad Everett had already flown to Denver multiple times to help his son, crafting lists of people from whom his son had borrowed money. “But it was never the end,” he said.

Brad Everett checked his son into another rehab center in Minneapolis with a warning: If Zach Everett did not complete rehab and stop gambling, he would be financially cut off.

“He’s the most generous man in the world, and it was eye-opening to me to see him get to his breaking point,” Zach Everett said.

Everett placed his last bet on April 24, 2024.

Since then, he said he has kept his promise to his father. He repaired his marriage. He is slowly paying off debts and earning his old friends’ trust. He attends regular meetings with other recovering gamblers.

And he is becoming more comfortable telling his story in hopes of helping others struggling with gambling addiction.

“It’s such a hidden problem,” Everett said. “You’re definitely not alone. I know how scary it is. If you do not address it, it����ap only going to get worse. You’re not going to win yourself out of whatever hole you’re in. You can’t bet yourself out of it.”

READ PART 2 NEXT: How sports betting became Colorado’s ticket to funding $140 million in water conservation projects

Updated 10 a.m. June 18, 2026: This story has been updated to clarify Daniel Umfleet’s relationship to the Kindbridge Research Institute.

Lawmakers and advocacy groups have been calling for regular inspections since Melvin Ariel Calero-Mendoza, a 39-year-old Nicaraguan national, died in Aurora, Colorado’s only center, in October 2022. The center, administered by Geo Group, has 1,530 beds.

In March of this year, the Adams County Health Department reprimanded the facility for lack of access to staff and delays during its investigation into accusations of widespread gastrointestinal and respiratory illness in January. Detainees have also criticized the center for serving moldy or spoiled food and poorly functioning air conditioning.

Geo Group, which operates the Aurora detention center under a contract with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), filed suit to strike down the law and suspend its implementation immediately. The company contends that unpredictable inspections will increase the cost and administrative burden to the company and the government, and that only the federal government can mandate how the company is run. Moreover, they say, the law is unfair since the state does not require county health inspections of prisons. These reasons have succeeded in deterring several other states where legislators have tried to oversee ICE. 

One such state, , though in the midst of similar court proceedings, was able to conduct a partial investigation of Geo Group-run Delaney Hall and found the facility’s kitchen areas satisfactory. The state Department of Health inspectors, however, were not allowed to examine the medical unit, bathrooms or sleeping quarters. New Jersey Attorney General Jennifer Davenport filed a against Geo Group for denying that access.

Other detention centers run by other companies have also received complaints about food, sanitary conditions, air conditioning, medical care and abuse. Last week, the Government Accountability Office issued a report finding Camp East Montana in Texas, the nation’s largest facility, wasted millions of taxpayer dollars and failed to provide adequate care. The report found some egregious problems; a contract security guard at the center, for example, lost a loaded somewhere in the camp, putting everyone in danger. 

For all these reasons, state lawmakers want greater leverage to investigate facilities to ensure detainees are receiving care. The Colorado General Assembly did the right thing in passing HB 1276. Whether they win or lose in court, the bill’s passage will serve as a wake-up call. All immigration facilities in this country, whether they are managed by ICE or through a contract, must provide basic, safe, clean facilities with clear water and decent food. The General Assembly will have their day in court. In the meantime, they can sleep at night, which may be more than we can say for detainees at some ICE detention centers. 

Krista Kafer is a Sunday Denver Post columnist.

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