Paul Kamps has been an emergency dispatcher in Dane County longer than the county 911 system has existed. The 56-year-old said he became a Madison police dispatcher because he gets meaning in his life from helping people -- whether that means delivering babies over the phone or comforting someone whose loved one had died. "I wanted to catch the bad guys too, " Kamps said. "We can do an awful lot on that end. " Kamps started ...

Ryan Suchanek 's memories go blank shortly after 2:45 p.m. on Oct. 5, 2007. The next thing the 27-year-old motorcycle stunt rider from Milton remembers is waking up in a hospital more than a month later -- missing half of his left leg. Yet Suchanek is calm, even casual, as he talks about the head-on collision that ripped off his foot and threw him from his bike headfirst through a car windshield. He doesn ...

A Dane County alternative high school that faced possible shutdown over finances has won a reprieve that will keep the school open for at least one more year. "The good news is we got it to stay open. And we got some time to recommit ourselves to how we might keep it open, " said Belleville School District Superintendent Randy Freese, who worked with the superintendents of the Mount Horeb and Oregon school districts to ...

Almost two years after Highway 12 was expanded between Middleton and Sauk City, a 6-mile gap remains in the bike path that follows the roadway, with no immediate plans to complete it. Add that to Dane County 's own "bridge to nowhere " -- a bicycle and pedestrian bridge over the highway about seven miles northwest of Middleton that at this point doesn 't connect anything -- and the project has left some cyclists scratching ...

The first question when Kelly Nolan didn 't come home June 23 was simple: What happened to her? The answer two weeks later was heartbreaking, but remains incomplete. Nolan 's body was found July 9 in a wooded area in the town of Dunn, 10 miles south of Downtown Madison. Ten months later, police still don 't know who put her there, while a cause of death and a motive for the crime have never been ...

A 7-year-old boy died and his 2-year-old brother was injured in a house fire on Janesville's west side on Saturday morning after their young brother and three adults escaped. The Janesville Fire Department said the fire, reported at 7:54 a.m., was at 327 N. Palm St. in a century-old house divided into two apartments — one upstairs and the other downstairs, where the fire ...

Wisconsin moved up a notch this school year, edging past South Carolina, and now has the nation's seventh-highest enrollment of 4-year-olds in kindergarten.Despite Wisconsin's growing image as a national leader in 4K programs, though, there's something missing — Madison. The state's second-largest school district remains unable to solve a puzzle figured out by two-thirds of the school systems. An estimated 40 percent of Wisconsin's 4-year-olds are enrolled in state 4K programs, up from ...

For Jeff Fray of Reedsburg, a tiny investment in a California oil well has turned into a big headache -- and for that, he blames the Wisconsin Department of Revenue. Fray said the electronic form on which he declared that he 'd paid $86 in California taxes on the income from the oil well wasn 't accepted by the Department of Revenue 's computer system. As a result, the agency erroneously billed the retired air-traffic ...

The trolls are ready to roll. Twenty-three of 'em: Round-bellied, wild-haired and grinning ear to ear — tied up, down and all around the fenders of an old Schwinn bike. Trolls on the handlebars. Big ol' troll rattling the spokes. "The Troll Bike is hugely popular," assures Ann Bell, as she gives a tour of two-dozen two-wheeled wonders temporarily parked along the driveway outside her apartment. "That's the Wicker Bike," she says, turning ...

Madison police arrested two men early Friday morning after a Milwaukee Street convenience store was robbed at knifepoint. Scott M. Andruss, 18, of Madison, was tentatively charged with armed robbery. Curtis J. Langlois, 27, of Madison, was tentatively charged with a parole violation. Police responded to the PDQ store at 4202 Milwaukee St. at about 12:46 a.m. Friday, where a clerk said he had been robbed at knifepoint. About an hour earlier, at 11:40 p.m., two men ...

A drug dealer who provided heroin that killed two people in Madison was sentenced to 24 years in prison Friday and had to be hauled from the courtroom as he angrily lashed out at the judge. Adrian Starks, 29, was convicted by a jury in February of supplying local drug dealers with the heroin that killed Sarah Stellner, 20, and Michael Ace, 31, in separate incidents in 2005. Starks has steadfastly maintained his innocence, and ...

Madison police arrested two men at gunpoint early Friday morning after a Milwaukee Street convenience store was robbed at knifepoint. Scott M. Andruss, 18, of Madison was tentatively charged with armed robbery. Curtis J. Langlois, 27, of Madison was tentatively charged with a parole violation. Police responded to the PDQ store at 4202 Milwaukee St. at about 12:46 a.m. Friday, where a clerk said he had been robbed at knifepoint. About an hour ...

Three masked men, two of them armed with handguns, robbed a West Side bank this morning, Madison police said. Police responded to Bank Mutual, 5521 Odana Road, at 9:15 a.m. The three men — described as black, 5-foot-8 to 5-foot-9 inches tall and in their 20s, wearing ski masks — were seen leaving the area in a white, older model Plymouth or Chrysler with no license plates. ...

While anglers and boaters are enjoying spring on the Madison lakes, thawed finally after an endless winter, experts warn that the clear water of the early season may be a short-lived pleasure. Limnologists say that heavy rains last August and the harsh winter may combine to produce a bumper crop of the pesky algae blooms that clog up the lake during summer months and lead to everything from revolting odors to beach closings. But that news is ...

The interim chancellor at UW-Whitewater has been recommended as its next leader. Richard Telfer says he looks forward to leading the university where he has worked 23 years. University of Wisconsin System President Kevin Reilly and a UW Board of Regents special committee are recommending Telfer from five finalists. The board is expected to confirm the pick in June. Reilly says Telfer knows the campus from top to bottom and is a champion for higher education. Telfer joined ...

Dane County residents should not doubt the community's 911 services despite a controversial error involving homicide victim Brittany Zimmermann, the 911 center director says. "We haven't stopped operating just because of this call," county 911 director Joe Norwick told County Board members at a meeting Thursday. "People make mistakes. People in a very stressful job make mistakes. We've told you what they are; we've told the public what they are. We hope no mistakes happen every ...

A cascade of health problems struck Dan Graber in his early 40s. The Madison attorney — obese for years — developed a frequent thirst, his vision grew blurry and his legs started tingling so much it woke him up at night. Graber was diagnosed with Type 2, or adult-onset, diabetes. Unlike most of the 19 million Americans with the disease, Graber was soon cured — through a gastric bypass. It's a type of bariatric, or weight-loss, surgery. The ...

Madison is threatening to take over a condo project in a fragile South Side neighborhood because the developer isn't making payments on a $2 million loan. The city's Community Development Authority on Thursday asked staff to demand a tardy $27,000 payment and use all legal remedies available. The developers, Lake Point Madison LLC, also face more than $500,000 in notice of lien claims and lien claims from contractors, and the CDA expects it will have to ...

A Madison police commander bristled Thursday at a news story in a weekly paper that accused the department of failing in March to catch a person who looked like the suspect in the Joel Marino murder. The witness, in a story published in Thursday's Isthmus, alleged Madison police did not take his sighting of the suspect — who he had last seen on Jan. 28, minutes after Marino was killed — seriously enough and let ...

Over the next six months, opera singer Kyle Ketelsen will perform in Barcelona, Los Angeles and his "home away from home," the Royal Opera House in London's Covent Garden. Friday and Sunday, he'll perform his fifth role with Madison Opera. And then he'll go home to Sun Prairie. Though his singing career has led him on an upward trajectory for the past nine years, Ketelsen, 36, and his wife, Rebecca, chose to put down roots ...