MAYOR CARGO'S BAGGAGE RILES FOES

Sunday, September 22, 2002 - OAK CREEK - Inside the VFW bar, the man next
to Kathy "Cargo" Rodeman would not stop.

Punctuating his points with two fingers, he jabbed her shoulder, hard.
Again and again.

Growing up, her daddy - the sweetest man until he drank, she said - used to
beat her, until one day she bested him with a chair and a fireplace poker.

So in the bar, after one jab too many, she turned, hooked one long, wiry
arm around the guy's waist and took him down.

Weeks later, the town of Oak Creek, population 800 or so, elected Cargo
Rodeman mayor.

She has been fighting ever since.

A self-described hippie, Rodeman won 64 percent of that April vote on a
platform that included focusing on youth and reducing the town's
three-member police department.

She fulfilled one promise quickly: The police department, at the moment,
doesn't exist.

Now Rodeman and her administration have rankled the local multi-county drug
task force - the Grand, Routt and Moffat Narcotics Enforcement Team, or
GRAMNET - by cutting off this year's promised funding from Oak Creek.

"(GRAMNET investigators) are the biggest lying thugs I have ever met," said
Rodeman, 48, a tall, rangy blond who was arrested by GRAMNET detectives in
1996 on a charge of possessing cocaine.

GRAMNET Cmdr. Dwight Murphy called Rodeman's liars- and-thugs accusations
ludicrous.

"I know the type of person she is," Murphy said. "I'd consider the source."

The charge against Rodeman was dropped after a judge ruled the evidence
found in her green Chrysler LeBaron convertible - with "Peggy Jean" written
on the trunk in hot pink cursive, for her momma - could not be used due to
an illegal search.

Today, Rodeman maintains no cocaine was ever found, only marijuana, and
that most of the case was fabricated.

"It was all lies. The hell that they put me through, the money it cost me,
it was all lies," she said, "and I'm not into supporting that."

People can say what they want, Rodeman said, yet "I'm only one vote," and
the town's seven-member board will have a majority say.

"These other people don't have the colorful background I do."

That background includes two driving-under-the-influence convictions and
one for resisting arrest. Rodeman also says she has used cocaine in the
past - "I didn't have the nose for it" - buys marijuana for a friend with
cancer and would like to see it legalized.

"Nobody has ever died from marijuana," she said. "That's how hippies became
the peace-lovin' people we are."

Yet the main reason GRAMNET is being cut off by Oak Creek, Rodeman said, is
because the task force will not furnish information on its activities.

In an Aug. 13 letter to GRAMNET, Oak Creek Treasurer Jo Dee Stordal wrote:
"The Board of Trustees of the Town of Oak Creek have instructed me not to
release additional funds to your organization until reports of activities
specifically benefiting the taxpayers of our town have been submitted for
their approval."

And that, said Murphy, is a problem.

"I'm not going to go down there and divulge all our information to people
who do not need to know," said Murphy, who also is a Routt County sheriff's
detective. "We have several investigations going on right now in that town."

And while he has always briefed the police chief, he said, the town of Oak
Creek has never requested any reports in the previous six years it has
helped fund GRAMNET.

Earlier this year, Murphy said, the town manager and the police chief both
approved a $2,000 contribution to the task force, an amount that would be
matched by federal funds.

Since Rodeman became mayor, both of those men have left town, and GRAMNET
stands to lose $4,000.

For now, the issue is on the agenda for Thursday's town hall meeting.

Friend and foe

Meanwhile, residents are becoming increasingly divided over their mayor.

Her supporters say Rodeman would do anything for anybody.

"There's not a prejudiced bone in her body," said Randy Hatlee, who used to
ranch with Rodeman. "She's friends with the cowboys as well as the rednecks."

Rodeman, who can throw hay as well as any man, also fixes most machines and
plumbs houses for the women in town on barter, Hatlee said. In the past,
she's held fundraisers for folks who lost a shed to fire, hurt their back
or were diagnosed with cancer, he said.

While those are admirable skills, said Ray Leibensperger, the former town
manager, they are hardly qualifications for being a mayor.

"Cargo is a 1960s flower child who has never grown up," said Leibensperger,
57, whose resignation from Oak Creek became final the day Rodeman took office.

Now retired in Florida, he said he left Oak Creek rather than serve under
its new mayor.

"She made it clear she didn't care for me, the police department, its chief
or structure in any form," he said.

After the chief left and one officer was fired, the remaining one quit. For
now, the Routt County Sheriff's Office patrols Oak Creek, until a new chief
of police is hired. Deputies stop through and retrieve messages, such as
one taped to the door of the police office dated Sept. 17 that says "Willow
Bend, #6, silver/blue dog in rain, tied to tree."

The town board recently narrowed 15 applications for a new police chief to
eight candidates, pitching those not from Colorado.

There are those who have little faith someone qualified will be chosen.
Resident Kelly Lipsie, who plans to launch a recall petition to oust the
mayor as soon as the required six months of her term have passed, said he
does not like the direction the town has taken under Rodeman.

"I like the lady. I've known her for 18 years now," said Lipsie, 32, a
carpenter.

"I just don't feel she belongs in the position that she's in."

Due to Rodeman or not, one thing is clear: The town is in a fix.

'And always hit last'

If Oak Creek is a little rough around the edges, residents say, it is
because of its beginnings as a mining town.

Now, only a few folks grab buckets of coal when the temperatures dip, and
Oak Creek's economy relies mostly on the hunters and skiers who pass
through to the forests and nearby Steamboat Springs.

Long strands of barbed wire surround the football field as well as the
baseball diamond, where if you hit one hard and long enough it will likely
land in the cemetery behind center field.

Spiro's, the hunting/liquor/video store, sells hats that say, "Got Elk?" as
well as cow elk urine to cover a hunter's scent. In the morning, elk can be
heard bugling in the nearby hills.

These touches of a small rural town are what attract residents like Tim
Geiger, 41, who moved to Oak Creek from Thornton four years ago. He now
lives here with his wife and baby girl.

"Oak Creek is great - everybody knows each other, but there's a lot of
privacy, too," said Geiger, who enjoys the slower pace. "As soon as they
get a streetlight," he said, "I'm moving."

It was here 30 years ago Kathy Rodeman threw down her hat.

Born the youngest of four in nearby Kremmling, Rodeman said she cannot
count the number of schools she attended growing up.

"I got the name Cargo because my parents divorced when I was very young,"
she recalled, "and I got shipped around a lot."

The only child in her family to graduate high school, she left home at 16.

At 18, she meant to only pass through Oak Creek. She stayed, she said,
because the people were kind. Through the years, she worked any kind of job
she could - secretary, plumber, maid, whatever it took.

Along the way, she raised three kids without a husband.

"My dad was divorced 10 times, my mom, three - I think that pretty much has
me covered," Rodeman deadpans.

She takes pride in two things, she says.

"You can pretty much pick on any point in my life, but nobody can say I'm
not a hard worker or a good mom."

At 5 feet 11 without shoes, Rodeman is tan and lined. Her voice, low and
sandpaper-rough from 40 years of smoking, rumbles from her chest, which
rattles at times with a smoker's cough.

"My momma started buyin' me cigarettes when I was 8," she said, "so I'd
stop stealin' hers."

Now she smokes up to three packs a day. She also drinks a glass of milk at
every meal.

She tried needles at 18, shooting up morphine, and immediately stopped
because she liked it so much. "Not the drug, the needles," she said.

Always the new kid growing up, she remembers coming home one day, crying,
after another fight at school.

"Toughen up," she said her grandma told her in a deep snarl, "and always
hit last."

It was advice she would remember.

Sails through workday

After the town dug up her front yard for a right-of-way, she decided to run
for mayor.

After being elected, she got her yard back.

As mayor, she makes $90 a month, $83.12 after taxes. Her phone is about to
be turned off.

She works one day a week at the local gas station in exchange for trade,
and is supposed to be an assistant at a sewage company, although being
mayor fills all her time.

Her car is her second office, and in the back seat, her 118-pound black
Labrador Elwood - "He's a treat whore" - goes everywhere she does.

In meetings throughout the day, her hands are in constant motion. She drums
her chipped nails and rakes them across her desk, at times gripping its
edges or her chair like a vise.

Fueled by five cups of coffee, countless Marlboro Light cigarettes and one
banana creme Slimfast, she sailed through a recent 40-degree drizzly
workday in a thin black suit and bare legs.

Some folks like her, some don't.

"I think she's a great mayor," said Spike Beven, 64, who manages the gas
station.

"The police department was running roughshod over this town. It was like
having an invading army."

Debbie Van Gundy, who was mayor for four years before losing to Rodeman,
said she believes her successor "could do a good job if she would slow down
and get off vendettas."

Gundy, 51, who now works part time at the local upholstery shop, said she
misses having a local police department to patrol the town, "and I'm not a
teetotaler," she said. "I party with the best of 'em, but I walk."

Over the years, Rodeman has been arrested more than a dozen times, though
most of the charges did not stick.

Of the two DUI arrests that did, the same police officer, David Miller,
assisted with both.

Shortly after becoming mayor, Rodeman investigated Miller's background.

He used excessive force when making arrests, she said, including beating
and pepper spraying one of her friends who was accused of being drunk when
she rode her horse across town to buy cigarettes.

Although he disclosed a 1992 arrest for misdemeanor battery in Orlando,
Fla., Miller did not disclose on his application another misdemeanor arrest
in Lake County, Fla., Rodeman said. In July, an interim police chief fired
Miller.

Miller, 33, said the judge had withheld adjudication in the Lake County
case until the payment for his fine was lost. He said he told his hiring
board about both arrests, something former hiring board member Sonya Norris
remembers. He is appealing his dismissal.

Former Oak Creek Police Chief Tom Ling, now retired in Florida,
investigated and cleared Miller of charges he used undue force.

Like the town manager, Ling, 59, says he left because he could not work for
Rodeman and what she stood for.

"David Miller was unpopular because David Miller did what he was asked to
do, which was enforce the law," Ling said.

Of Rodeman, he said simply, "She's wild and crazy."

For her part, Rodeman says she's doing the best she can. She never expected
to win the election, she said, and was prepared to sell her house and leave
town in disgust if she had lost.

She had already decided on the sign she would post in her yard: "For Sale.
Bite Me."