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country with JonBenét to attend her daughter’s beauty contests. “They were so serious about this beauty queen stuff, but they never put any pressure on her. She was Little Miss Colorado in 1995,” said Dee Dee Nelson-Schneider, a family friend.
    â€œShe had her own float in the Colorado Parade of Lights in December 1995, and Patsy walked along the side of the float the whole parade to make sure (JonBenét) was safe. That’s how protective Patsy was.”
    â€”Elliot Zaret and Alli Krupski
Daily Camera, December 27, 1996
    In the winter, when the aspen trees are bare, you can see the Front Range of the snow-covered Rockies from almost every street. Boulder, just twenty-six miles northwest of Denver, is an old-fashioned small town, with many brick and wood-framed houses dating from the 1930s. With a population of 96,000—one third of whom are affiliated with the University of Colorado—the town prides itself on its pretty neighborhoods. Boulderites like to think of themselves as having an excellent quality of life.
    When you have lived for a while in the town, which is isolated by both municipal planning and topography, it isn’t hard to lose a sense of how it looks from the outside. If you are a runner, however—and there are thousands of Boulderites who run—a five-mile jog up Flagstaff Road to the top of Flagstaff Mountain is one way to rediscover where you are.
    In every direction you turn, you are faced with the facts of geography: to the southwest are the Flatirons, enormous slabs of rock that from some angles appear to prop up the snow-covered Rockies beyond; to the east, the vast flatlands of the Great Plains; to the west, the Continental Divide, dividing the country’s two primary watersheds. Along the Divide, the Indian Peaks rise 13,000 feet above sea level. Off in the distance to the southeast, you can just make out a few of Denver’s skyscrapers, where many Boulderites work five days a week. The rest are content with the pace of life in Boulder.
    From the top of Flagstaff Mountain, you can see the tidy neighborhoods laid out in neat grids and, in the heart of town, the Pearl Street Mall, home to the Hotel Boulderado, shops with turn-of-the-century facades, and over a hundred restaurants. Parallel to the mall is Canyon Boulevard, once called Water Street because of the flooding that can occur when adjacent Boulder Creek explodes out of the foothills with springtime snowmelt. To the east lies thesprawling campus of the University of Colorado, easily distinguished by its many red sandstone roofs.
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    In Boulder, it’s as if people are so intensely pursuing their own interests that they develop a kind of disregard for the general welfare. But the word community itself implies care for the general welfare.
    I was the principal of High Peaks and Martin Park Elementary School, which shared a common property. In June 1996, I wanted to have the city build another speed bump on the west side of the schools. With the addition of High Peaks Elementary in the same building and the sudden influx of more cars, I was concerned about the kids who walked to school in this quiet neighborhood.
    At a city council hearing in September or October of 1996, I was surprised at the number of people who protested. They said it would interfere with their bike riding. And yet a hundred yards from the school is a beautifully designed multimillion-dollar bike path running north and south along the creek. So it’s not that the needs of bike riders have been ignored, just that bike riders were saying, “We don’t like to slow down for speed bumps.” But what about the children’s safety? There was a real reluctance to address those needs.
    That’s what I have found missing in Boulder—a commitment to the general welfare that goes beyond “me” and “my own small world.”
    The day after JonBenét’s body was found, I talked with some