8 July 18–24, 2024 dallasobserver.com DALLAS OBSERVER Classified | MusiC | dish | Culture | unfair Park | Contents ▼ HEALTH BAD NEWS COVID IS SPIKING IN DALLAS COUNTY ONCE AGAIN. BY EMMA RUBY I t seems everyone is coming down with a case of the summertime sniffles, and an- ecdotal and official reports are pointing to a midsummer spike of COVID-19. Texas stopped mandating the reporting of COVID-19 cases in March, but the Ob- server recently spoke with a handful of pharmacies across Dallas County that have reported a recent jump in the number of prescriptions written each day for Paxlovid, a medication used to treat COVID, and the number of patients saying they have tested positive for the virus. “It has definitely gone up in the past few weeks,” one Dallas-area pharmacist told the Observer. According to the CDC, COVID-19 infec- tions are increasing in most states, including Texas. The Texas Department of State Health Services tracks the number of CO- VID-19 cases voluntarily reported to the de- partment, and the weekly Respiratory Virus Surveillance Report shows cases across the state were up 41% in the first week of July when compared to the week prior. Tarrant, Dallas and Harris counties were among sev- eral identified as having an increased num- ber of cases. According to Dr. John Carlo, CEO of Prism Health North Texas, the region’s supply of at-home COVID-19 tests and Pax- lovid are sufficient for current demand, but unusually high numbers of other respira- tory illnesses are making it difficult for health officials to get an accurate sense of how many actual COVID cases are out there. Potential variant strains of the virus and vaccine use can also alter the way symptoms present, resulting in undiag- nosed cases, he said. “It’s a little bit of everything right now,” Carlo told the Observer, adding that viruses like the flu, RSV or the common cold are “showing pretty high numbers this year” as well. He recommends keeping several at- home COVID tests around throughout the summer, and testing even if symptoms seem as minor as allergies. Staying up to date on vaccine boosters can help avoid serious in- fections as well. Dallas’ medical community is keeping an eye on an updated COVID-19 booster vaccine that is expected to come out later this year ahead of the winter flu sea- son, he said. As for why cases are spiking, summer- time travel and hot temperatures pushing people indoors could be to blame. Dallas County Health and Human Services still publishes an estimated daily infection risk level, which, as of the time this story was written, was marked as “proceed carefully,” or a two out of four in severity. “What we’re seeing from different hospi- tals and people reporting is there is a slight uptick in COVID cases, but it’s not some- thing for people to be alarmed by like a few years ago,” Christian Grisales, spokesperson for DCHHS, said. “It could be multiple rea- sons why people are getting COVID, but we are encouraging people to still get vacci- nated ... wash their hands, and avoid crowded places as necessary.” ▼ CRIME ‘IMPERFECT VICTIM’ NORTH TEXAS ACTRESS REVISITS 1980S MURDER IN NEW PODCAST. BY KELLY DEARMORE O n July 7, 1988, Angela Stevens was murdered by three teenage boys. Stevens, a Princeton High School student, was only 16 when she was beaten to death and abandoned in an empty hay- field. One of the three killers was a boy whom Stevens had dated off and on for some time. In 1988, Princeton, about 40 miles north- east of Dallas, was a tiny town of barely 2,000 residents. It’s 10 times that size now. Similar to the exploding suburbs around it such as Prosper, Celina and McKinney, Princeton is a much larger, more compli- cated place than it seemed to be in the late 1980s. A new podcast, True Texas Crime: The Significant Life of Angela Stevens aims to bring the grisly story to life in a new way and from a different perspective. The podcast is hosted by Julie Dove, a Princeton native who went to high school with Stevens and is now an actress in Los Angeles. She’s cur- rently playing the role of Connie Viniski in Days of Our Lives and has had roles in The Office, Angie Tribeca, Happy Endings and other comedies. “I absolutely remember the Monday morning after they found her [Angela Ste- vens’] body,” Dove says. “I remember talk- ing about it and being like, ‘Oh my God, I knew her.’” When I say I knew here, it’s that Princeton small town thing, where ev- eryone felt like they knew each other be- cause you’d pass by everyone in the school hallway. She was this little, petite, upbeat, sweet girl.” But Dove added that Stevens was also an “imperfect victim,” a so-called wild child. Dove, who taught school in Princeton after college in the early ‘90s, found out along with the rest of the town during the murder trial that Stevens was a 16-year-old who had sex with boys who were dating other girls, drank and even once stole her mom’s checkbook. That such details came out during the trial and become the topic of conversation around town didn’t sit well with Dove. Nor did the fact that few seemed to be talking or wondering about the family that was shat- tered and left behind. For the podcast, the host compiled interviews with some of Ste- vens’ family members, people Dove feels like didn’t have the voice back then that vic- tims and their families often seem to have today. “Her father, Jack, immediately became suicidal and was never the same. Sadly, he just died last week on July 8,” Dove says. “They were in their 30s; they just lost their middle daughter. They had a younger daughter still at home that they were still trying to raise and I don’t feel like they had community support to rally behind them.” During the trial, Angela’s mother was questioned on the stand about her daugh- ter’s partying and misdeeds, although An- gela was the victim of the heinous crime. Dove found that the Stevens family were ready to talk, possibly because of the amount of time that has passed since the murder. “I don’t feel like her parents had the mental strength to do more than just survive and, honestly, who would?” Dove asks. The topic has stayed with Dove, but it wasn’t until those shutdown days of the pandemic that a podcast began to be more than just an idea. In 2022, Dove and one of her former students from Princeton began researching the murder in order to get roll- ing on their own production. In some ways, the case seems rather open and shut. It’s not a mysterious cold case, and the assailants were brought to justice in short order. But for the actress raised in Princeton, that’s not enough for the whole story to truly be known. “We started pulling up all the news ar- ticles again, and we started listening to other true crime podcasts,” Dove says. “And we realized there’s no mystery here in that we know who killed her. But there is a kind of mystery as to why it happened still. We can read what was said in Austin Distel/Unsplash A 1988 North Texas murder is the subject of a new true-crime podcast. Unsplash In the first week of July, COVID-19 cases in Texas increased by 41% compared to the week before. Unfair Park from p6 Elaine Reid Podcast host and actress Julie Dove. >> p10