ARTIST OF THE MONTH

Les Lawrence is not necessarily a household name – unless you happened to purchase the artist’s individually signed dinnerware from Neiman Marcus in the ’80s. The Carefree resident is a big wheel in pottery circles, where fans spin tales about the talents and innovative techniques he applies to a discipline that dates back to ancient times.

A West Valley lawmaker with an Ivy League education wants to outflank Arizona’s budget cuts to support poor families and fellow veterans. Can he win?

When Ruben Gallego first returned from his Iraq deployment in 2005, he no longer cared about politics or helping his community.

After losing his best friend in combat, Gallego grew angry from his war experiences and the lack of services he saw for veterans back home. After all, he served in the 3rd Battalion, 25th Marine Regiment, Lima Company, an infantry unit Gallego says saw more combat than most. The 3/25 – as it’s often called – lost 46 Marines and two Navy corpsmen between January 2005 and January 2006, according to the Marines’ website.

Former Phoenix Police Chief Jack F. Harris is waiving his right to remain silent on the stormy ending to his storybook career.

Office politics and almost 40 years of chasing bad guys should have left Jack F. Harris a husk of a man. Instead, he has just gone for a 20-mile bike ride from Bell Road down into Paradise Valley, and now he’s ready to talk about why he is no longer Phoenix’s top cop. The reason involves illegal immigrants, he says. But on top of that, there’s a dead police sergeant, an internal fraud investigation, an officer accused of murdering a suspect (and the suspect’s dog) and accusations of falsifying crime statistics to obtain federal funds. Harris was chief for almost seven years, but he says the last 18 months were the most difficult period of his career. 

BACK OF THE HOUSE

Chrysa Robertson, owner and chef at Rancho Pinot in Paradise Valley, is a legend in the local food scene. She started Rancho Pinot in 1993, and it quickly racked up critical awards and mentions in national food magazines. She’s cooked at the James Beard House in New York and, in the late 1990s, founded the first Phoenix chapter of Slow Food, an international organization devoted to local, sustainable eating. In March, the Arizona Culinary Hall of Fame named her “chef extraordinaire.”