This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2013, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

I am beginning to believe I'm being stalked by Joe Ar­paio, the sheriff of Maricopa County, Ariz.

You know Joe. He's that friendly sheriff south of the Utah border who never saw a Latino he didn't want to pull over.

He also has made himself famous for his tent prisons in the Arizona desert (nothing like watching people blister in the morning), forcing inmates to wear pink underwear and sending a private posse to Hawaii to investigate President Barack Obama's birth certificate.

Joe and I, apparently, are buddies. I wrote several weeks ago about an email from Joe, who called me by name and recalled how close we have been and how much he appreciates all the help I've given him.

I don't recall meeting Joe. It could have been with my evil alternate personality: Saul Rolly.

Joe wanted a financial contribution to ward off the evil­doers who have launched a recall effort against him.

Since I wrote that column, I have received two more emails from Joe, each more personal and more desperate for my money. The latest, which I got in late March, told me that if the evildoers succeed in ousting him, this is what will happen:

"Mexican cartels will be the winner as they have been gunning for me for years."

Ooh!

"President Obama will be a winner as he has personally targeted me to destroy me."

Oooh!

"Open-border liberals will be the winner as they want nothing more than to get rid of a tough Arizona sheriff [who] will never back down."

Oooooh!

"I have never written a more personal note for help before, and I don't know that I ever will again."

Please, Joe, don't ever do it again.

Can't be too careful • I wrote last week about Elise Lazar calling Sen. Orrin Hatch's office to ask when the senator would be in Utah, and the next day getting a call from Capitol Hill police because a Hatch staffer thought she was acting suspiciously.

Well, Judy Cooper says she can do Lazar one better.

Several years ago her husband called Hatch's office to voice his disagreement with the senator's suggestion that a person's hard drive be erased if that person were suspected of downloading music illegally.

He told Hatch's office that no one would be allowed to enter his home or touch his computer without his permission.

The next day the FBI showed up at the Coopers' door because a staffer thought Hatch had been threatened.

Party crashers • Utah Rep. Chris Stewart has scheduled a series of town-hall meetings during the next couple of weeks, but not one of them is in Salt Lake County, which makes up a substantial part of his district.

So a group of Salt Lake County pro-science radicals decided if he wasn't going to go to them, they would go to him.

They traveled north a few days ago to attend Stewart's Davis County town-hall meeting.

Some of the locals didn't appreciate having Salt Lake liberals in their midst and told them so. But they did get a chance to argue with Stewart a bit about his skepticism of human-made climate change.

To give Stewart credit, they said he was polite.

And nobody called the cops.