’23 RECAP: Top stories

InMaricopa readers spoke loudly of their favorite stories in 2023.

InMaricopa.com published more than 1,400 stories last year, but readers flocked to two of them unlike all the others.

The first was the tale of a Maricopa Marine who lied extensively about his military service — or lack thereof — and turned it into a lucrative occupation. This story was InMaricopa’s most viewed ever with more than 50,000 reads.

Our most popular series involved the Sonoran Desert Parkway. At its groundbreaking ceremony in June 2022, Ak-Chin Indian Community Chairman Robert Miguel was all smiles and handshakes but later tried to derail the project. Over a series of stories from September to November, this saga garnered more than 70,000 reads. Maricopans tuned in as the drama unfolded.

Here’s a look back:

SCAMOUFLAGE: How a disgraced Maricopa Marine conned his way to
the top
Entangled in a web of lies, a former Marine in Maricopa found himself ensnared in the sticky grip of stolen valor accusations. Like a black widow spinning artificial silk, his own web became his prison.

“This is f*cking r*tarded,” Billy Zinnerman told InMaricopa the morning the story was published.

For Zinnerman — who falsely purported to be a retired sergeant major of the U.S. Marine Corps decorated with the most portentous service medals — it was time to pay the piper.

Zinnerman crafted and advanced his spurious saga since at least 2010, when, ironically, he pontificated about moral upstanding on PBS’ bygone Ethics NewsWeekly. In retrospect, it was a scintilla of credibility that metastasized into a whole new identity for Zinnerman.

Suddenly, he was no longer a low-ranking pawn with a lengthy criminal record, booted from the service amid accusations of repeated misconduct. He was a war hero and Maricopa City Council hopeful.

Zinnerman parlayed those lies into a feature story where he made the cover of InMaricopa’s November 2022 magazine.

In July, InMaricopa kicked over Zinnerman’s house of cards and exposed his lies one at a time.

Zinnerman hoodwinked Maricopa’s American Legion and Veterans of Foreign Wars posts, the Marine Corps League of Arizona and eventually the Marine Corps itself.

In November 2022, Zinnerman appeared at the 247th Marine Corps Ball as its guest of honor. A few months later, in May, he was lauded by U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters as he delivered the keynote speech at a commemoration in Inglewood, Calif., and accepted an award from the city’s mayor.

At the event, Zinnerman recounted fantastical tales of a helicopter crash in Afghanistan, surviving gunshots in Kuwait and rescuing his comrade from a burning car in Hawaii. He brazenly described a quarter-century of military service that culminated with an honorable discharge in 2002.

Zinnerman said he was a gunnery sergeant in Iraq in the years leading up to 9/11, leading a unit that identified targets for laser-guided missiles. Public records paint a different picture of Zinnerman at that time — one of a career criminal in Los Angeles.

By 2002, Zinnerman had been charged with nearly two dozen felony counts of burglary and theft, among other things. He was convicted at least four times, public records show.

The records also suggest Zinnerman never left Southern California between 1980 and his reputed retirement in 2002. He’s now the subject of an FBI investigation.

Sonoran Desert Parkway Saga
Installation of a controversial traffic signal at an embattled intersection in southern Maricopa began in late November and wrapped up in December as the city finally put the finishing touches on its portion of the Sonoran Desert Parkway, a byway that will one day give Maricopans an additional route to Interstate 10 and hopefully ease traffic concerns in the city.

The plan was for the city and the Arizona Department of Transportation to fund the purpose-made parkway, which would lead to the front door of Harrah’s Ak-Chin Casino. Everything seemed fine as Ak-Chin Chairman Robert Miguel was on hand for the parkway’s groundbreaking in 2022 and spoke glowingly of the project.

The only cost to the Ak-Chin Indian Community was to allow city workers on 50 feet of its property to install a stoplight, which would direct patrons onto the casino property or allow them to safely turn left or right at the intersection.

This wasn’t your average installation, however. It took months to get resolution as thousands of taxpayer dollars were squandered each idle day.

Problems arose early last year when Ak-Chin filed a complaint with the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs, which in turn issued a cease-and-desist letter to the city stating right-of-way concerns had not been properly handled.

The city, on the other hand, had paperwork stating the opposite, and more than three decades ago, right-of-way was transferred to ADOT and Pinal County, which handed those rights to the city.

Things came to a head in September when Ak-Chin tribal leaders sent their police force to the intersection to arrest unsuspecting workers installing the signal. The workers left before anyone was arrested, but the message from Ak-Chin was clear.

As a result, the city set up a messy four-way stop with traffic cones and stop signs in September. The “permanent traffic condition” blocked access to Harrah’s Ak-Chin Casino at that intersection from the new Sonoran Desert Parkway.

Mayor Nancy Smith said Ak-Chin would pay for the traffic light if it did not acknowledge the city’s permits by Sept. 11. After months of negotiation, Ak-Chin approved the permits in November. The city still shouldered the cost, proving its threat empty.

In the November magazine, through interviews with city leaders past and present and Freedom of Information Act requests, InMaricopa uncovered Ak-Chin’s history of reneging
on its promises and agreements with municipal leaders, and just how contentious the relations had gotten between the city and Ak-Chin.

Go Fund Yourself
For police officers injured in the line of duty, the ending isn’t always favorable. When injured officers can’t immediately return to work, it’s not always a given they’ll be made whole by worker’s compensation and the municipality that employs them.

Such a situation caught InMaricopa’s attention when Maricopa Police Cpl. Joshua Fox bravely chased down suspected auto thieves after one opened fire and shot him one night in June. A few weeks later, the family organized fundraisers for him to buy necessities like groceries.

From there, InMaricopa examined the system and how injured police officers in Arizona are denied benefits after injuries and often neglected by their employers.

InMaricopa reached out to the city to find out why one of Maricopa’s finest would even need such fundraisers in the first place.

Initially, the city refused to comment on Fox’s situation, but eventually had to respond.

Our story ran online on Aug. 11. On Aug. 15, the city ended its silence about injured employee pay, stating: “What is not paid by workers’ compensation is covered by the city to make the employee’s salary whole.”

The question still remains: If that’s true, why did Fox convey to the public he couldn’t afford to eat and solicit them for handouts?

Wild West Music Fest
By many accounts, the Wild West Music Fest was a finely tuned operation. The event, held for three days in mid-October to celebrate the city’s 20th anniversary, ran on time, traffic issues were nil and police made no arrests.

Aside from the operational success of the event, many questions remained months later. The city had no idea whether it made any money or even what the official attendance figures were.

And the kicker was the promoter, Steve Levine Entertainment, wasn’t contractually obligated to supply those figures until mid-February.

InMaricopa took a deep dive into the contract, the $350,000 spent on the event and details from the limited documents the city had on hand after the festival had run its course.

Was it in fact worth it? You make the call.

MPD didn’t arrest felon who admitted to shooting
Gunshots rang out on the quiet streets of Senita in July, and no one was arrested, a fact that left folks living in the neighborhood frustrated.

Maricopa police responded to gunfire in a central part of town near Maricopa-Casa Grande Highway that night. When they arrived on West Cowpath Drive — a well-manicured suburban street lined with happy adobe houses — they didn’t find the gang of drive-by gunmen a witness described.

Instead, they found the witness himself — 47-year-old Shawan Harris, who was armed — and a parked car spattered with bullet holes.

Harris allegedly told officers he shot back at assailants, but missed his target and struck the parked car instead. “I answer back, and I’m in the wrong?” Harris said in a social media message days later. “Can we not protect our land and family?”

Harris, a convicted felon, isn’t legally allowed to possess a gun. To date, Maricopa police haven’t charged him with anything — even though officers observed him commit a felony.

Harris was labeled a witness — not a suspect of any crime. Possession of a firearm by a convicted felon is a felony crime in Arizona punishable by two and a half years in prison.

Discharging that gun on a residential road could carry more severe charges, both state and federal. Maricopa police seized the gun that night but didn’t lodge charges. Neighbors said they believe Harris owns more guns.

City squandered taxpayer dollars on startup failure
In our August issue, InMaricopa looked back to 2016, when the city entered the business of offering startup loans to small businesses.

Quietly, a list of nine erstwhile startups owes the city hundreds of thousands of dollars. The city sat on its hands for years as eight of those enterprises went out of business. A feeble attempt to collect seems too little too late.

When the bygone Maricopa Center for Entrepreneurship loaned its final dollar nearly seven years ago, it expected its debtors to pay back what was owed.

Most never did.

But, for some, it was not for lack of trying. Multiple MCE loan recipients told InMaricopa they had no way to repay what they owed. When the debt inevitably mushroomed, they gave up.

MCE launched a decade ago as an incubator for startups and a resource for existing ventures in the city. A $50,000 U.S. Department of Agriculture grant for rural business development and $120,000 of taxpayer funds seeded the program.

Today, the city is owed more than twice the sum it loaned. When the incubator went belly-up in 2018, the roster of mostly defunct businesses owed more than $98,000 and the city was tasked with collecting the debt. But after years of inertia, that number ballooned to nearly $200,000 by 2020, according to data InMaricopa obtained through the Freedom of Information Act.

Slim Chickens’ fat first-day sales
“I have a feeling we may break some records Monday,” Slim Chickens operating partner Lucas Barnett told InMaricopa prior to the restaurant’s grand opening.

And by dinnertime, Barnett was proven right as the new location had the highest-grossing first day in sales in company history.

Slim Chickens, a company with 180 other stores around the globe, served nearly 3,000 guests Monday, Barnett said.

That’s more than 4% of Maricopa’s population.

“For multiple hours, we had over 50 cars in the drive thru,” Barnett said.

Barnett said over 2,500 pounds of chicken were sold. That’s more than the weight of two concert grand pianos.

The Fayetteville, Ark.-based fast-food restaurant serves tenders, wings, sandwiches and salads in three dozen states and three countries.

Homeless restaurateurs wander the city
Food truck owners along John Wayne Parkway were evicted over the summer. The nomadic restaurateurs weren’t sure where to go or who exactly wanted them gone.

Complaints from a property owner sparked the eviction of more than a dozen food truck operators in July.

From breakfast burritos to Puerto Rican empanadas, the busy Fry’s Marketplace parking lot became a sort of culinary hub. It was a central, consistent gathering place for months, owners said.

The harmony was disrupted when a dispute with the property owner led to an abrupt eviction and a crackdown by city officials that made most food trucks find other places to set up shop.

By the end of the year, however, a businessman stepped up with a plan for a food truck park in the Heritage District.

Maricopa-based Verily Enterprises LLC submitted paperwork toward the end of the year.

Dubbed Maricopa Eats, the park would sit on the southwest corner of Honeycutt Road and Plainview Street, currently a vacant half-acre lot. It would house a dozen food trucks, picnic tables on artificial turf and a parking lot.

Owner José Meza said he wants to create a “clean and safe environment” for food trucks, particularly amid recent struggles to find space to park and sell food.

InMaricopa wins first awards
InMaricopa, the most-circulated magazine and most-read daily online news source in Maricopa, took home 10 awards in nine categories as a first-time contestant in the 2023 Arizona Newspapers Association’s Better Newspapers and Excellence in Advertising contests in August.

Publisher and founder Scott Bartle said taking home this many awards marks a big milestone for the publication that has told Maricopa’s stories for nearly two decades.

“I’m very proud of our team,” Bartle said. “Winning 10 awards in our first attempt at such recognition is a testament to the talented, hardworking professionals we have serving our readers and viewers. Earning Best Website honors and having journalists, photographers and advertising professionals all win awards is awesome.”

Viral drunk driver nabbed again
Kio Thomas found herself in police custody once again when she was charged with aggravated DUI while driving with a revoked license for DUI.

Thomas first caught attention when she was arrested in March 2022 on suspicion of underage DUI, and assaulting cops and firefighters, after she landed her car in a ditch.
The video, which can be seen on InMaricopa’s YouTube page, garnered more than 3 million views, making it the most viewed in the history of the channel.

She pleaded guilty in May that year to attempted aggravated assault on an officer in a plea bargain.

In the video, Thomas is seen fighting officers, pulling away and kicking them while hollering profanities. When placed in the back of a police vehicle, Thomas tried to kick the door open.

Bud Light boycott
Bud Light’s controversial collaboration with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney and the ensuing nationwide boycott that started in April made its impact in Maricopa.

As late as mid-August, it appeared to be in full effect as one InMaricopa story pointed out during a busy week, the Circle K on Honeycutt and Porter Roads ran out of tallboys — almost. There were still Bud Lights available but nothing else.

A month later, an InMaricopa poll showed one-third of respondents wouldn’t be caught dead with a can of Bud Light.

Anheuser-Busch cut ties with Alissa Heinerscheid, the marketing mind behind a $27 billion fumble in market share and launched a fresh NFL campaign suiting up the classic blue cans with the Arizona Cardinals logo.

But the aftermath lingered — Modelo Especial jerked away the U.S. beer crown, toasting away investors’ final consolation prize of year-over-year dominance. Some beer aisles and bar tops in Maricopa are testament to the boycott’s durability.

“Across the board, we saw a dramatic boycott,” Rand Del Cotto, owner of the Raceway Bar and Grill on Papago Road, told InMaricopa. “It is insane because Bud Light used to be the best seller.”

John Wayne Parkway painstakingly widened
In October, Maricopa felt the short-term pain of inconvenient road construction with the promise it will shave a couple of minutes off their Phoenix commute by summer.

The Arizona Department of Transportation began a $7.3 million project to improve and widen State Route 347 inside city limits to help relieve traffic congestion and reduce travel times.

The improvements include adding a third northbound lane on 1.3 miles of John Wayne Parkway from Smith-Enke Road to just north of the city limits; widening the SR 347/Lakeview Drive intersection and reconstructing the existing paved median; adding a northbound acceleration lane for traffic moving onto northbound SR 347 from westbound Lakeview Drive; and adding curb and gutter along the east side of SR 347 from north of SR 238 to Lakeview Drive and pavement repairs.

City leaders and residents alike fumed when ADOT closed lanes during peak rush hour and shooed away pleas for night work, citing cost and safety.

When work is complete, ADOT will transfer long-term maintenance and operation of SR 347 to Maricopa.