![]() ![]() Guardian angels train in Globeville's Argo Park during an international conference in 1994. She’d been an aerobics instructor, after all. She wasn’t sure what to expect - someone had told her they were a “vigilante group,” a reputation they still battle today - but she showed up even though her boyfriend at the time told her not to.ĭuring the first training, she recalled, she saw the recruits engaged in a knee stretch that she “didn’t agree with,” so she marched up to the front of the room to show the large group the right way to do it. She was already a grandmother when she heard that the Angels were recruiting. ![]() (Full disclosure: the group made me an honorary member because I’ve been following them around with a camera since 2015. More than 100 people became official Angels in that first class, adorned with uniforms and street names. At their peak in the mid-’90s, they had enough members to walk Capitol Hill seven days a week. They’d stand watch on seedy Colfax street corners, keeping the potential for violence at bay by virtue of their presence. While chapters in other cities faced opposition from police, Denver’s cops were less skeptical of extra eyes on the streets and the group was allowed to patrol.įor years, teams of Angels acted as visual deterrents. It was the right moment to emerge on the scene. In Denver, the Angels were born after the “summer of violence.” In the early ’90s, several high-profile incidents sent the mostly sleepy city into a panic. ![]() If you’re of a certain age, you’re likely familiar with the group, which was founded in the late ’80s by Curtis Sliwa in New York City and quickly expanded to major cities across the U.S. Twenty-five years ago this month, the Colorado Guardian Angels graduated its first class of volunteer safety patrollers clad in red berets. ![]()
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