What's in a Name? | Life in the 'Weird State'

• Residents of a particular neighborhood in the Denver suburb of Cherry Hills Village may not have ever known the name of their subdivision: It didn't appear on signs, but could be found in the fine print of real estate documents.

Nonetheless, the Cherry Hills Village City Council voted unanimously to change the neighborhood's name from Swastika Acres to Old Cherry Hills.

Councilman Dan Sheldon explained that the name came from the Denver Land Swastika Co., which divided the land into plots in the early 20th century, before the Nazis appropriated the symbol: "There was nothing wrong with (the name) at that time," Sheldon told KDVR-TV.

Only one resident opposed the name change, Sheldon said. "She thought it was important to preserve that historical value of that symbol ... even though she herself lost family members in the Holocaust." [KDVR, 4/16/2019]

• Some days everything goes right.

So it was for the Polk County Sheriff's officers who responded to a call on March 24 from Marta Diaz in Winter Haven, Florida.

Diaz's car, a tan Jeep Patriot, had been stolen earlier in the day. As the officers took Diaz's statement, that same tan Jeep pulled up in front of the house, and Ronnie Dillon Willis, 25, emerged, telling deputies he was "looking for his cellular phone, which was pinging back to the residence," reported the Miami Herald.

Diaz told the officers she didn't know Willis but had seen him earlier on her street. Willis told the officers he woke up that morning at that location, inside a vehicle, but he wasn't sure if it was the Jeep or a minivan also parked there.

He knocked on the door of the house, but when no one answered, he took the Jeep to look for his phone, which was missing.

The deputies arrested Willis for grand theft of a motor vehicle; Willis also had a suspended license, for which he received a traffic citation. [Miami Herald, 4/5/2019]