Chester City agreed to a five-year, $2.8 million contract with VMSC Emergency Medical Services, a nonprofit that started providing ambulance services in the community after the closure of bankrupt Crozer Heath a year ago, the city and VMSC announced Monday.
During VMSC’s first year in Chester, the Lansdale organization had a $470,000 shortfall, chief executive Shane Wheeler said. The $2.8 million is expected to support operation of the services — including the cost of serving uninsured patients — and pay for equipment needs.
The ambulance company has responded to 8,324 calls since May 2, but 35% did not require transport to a hospital, Wheeler said. In many cases, the ambulance crew fulfills the function of primary care for residents.
“We’re assessing blood pressure or helping someone with their medication, helping people get up” from a fall, Wheeler said.
VMSC’s accomplishments in the first year reducing ambulance response time to about 5½ minutes from more than 12 minutes, according to Wheeler.
The contract requires VMSC to assign at least three basic ambulances to serve Chester and its direct neighbors, with two staffed 24 hours a day. The organization also must provide at least one commander with training in more advanced treatment.
A man who shot his girlfriend twice in the back on a quiet Chester street on Wednesday night later turned his gun on responding police officers, prompting them to shoot him, authorities said.
The man and the woman — whom authorities did not identify — were in critical condition at an area hospital, Delaware County District Attorney Tanner Rouse said.
Authorities said the man shot the woman shortly before 9 p.m. near the intersection of East Ninth and Walnut Streets. Then, Rouse said, the man opened fire on passing vehicles.
No drivers were struck.
When officers arrived at the scene, the man turned his weapon toward them, authorities said, and at least one officer shot him.
Helicopter footage of the scene shows more than two dozen bullet casings littering the streets and what appears to be a parked power-washing truck riddled with bullet holes.
A Chester Police Department spokesperson did not return a request for additional information on Thursday.
Rouse said his office was reviewing camera footage of the incident and would “make sure we have every angle that depicts the events that transpired.” When its investigation is complete, he said, charges will be filed against the man.
Meanwhile, he praised law enforcement for its response to the shooting.
“I can tell you with confidence that the actions of the Chester Police Department were nothing short of lifesaving and the defendant in this case had every intention to kill anyone he could,” Rouse said.
The new owner of the shuttered Crozer-Chester Medical Center in Delaware County shared what he called an “aspirational” plan to restore healthcare services to the Upland facility at a town hall meeting Tuesday in Chester.
The vision includesreopening of the emergency department, creating a small hospital above the ED, and developing outpatient services — all operated by one or more local nonprofit health systems, Yoel Polack told a standing-room-only crowd of more than 200 at Widener University.
Polack isCEO of Chariot Allaire, the for-profitpartnership that paid $10 million for Crozer in January. His group has been talking to all the regional health systems for months and expects soon to begin “a study process with two and hopefully three of the major academic medical centers in the region,” he said.
That is expected to last up to 90 days, he said, “and hopefully at the end of that period, we’re going to be having some outline of partnership with the system.” Polack described his anticipated partner as an institution “you know and trust.”
The entire process could take two or three years after a partnership is formed, he said Polack, whose company is registered in Lakewood, N.J.
He provided no details on how much Chariot Allaire would be willing to invest to attract a health system to the site, where state-led efforts previously failed to savea major safety-net provider for Delaware County that closed last May amid the bankruptcy of its California-based owner, Prospect Medical Holdings Inc.
Chariot Allaire paid relatively little for the 64-acre campus, which gives the company a low cost basis for owning the site. But that doesn’t mean it will be easy to attract a partner at a time of thin to nonexistent profit margins for the region’s health systems.
“It does not seem like there’s an easy and obvious candidate,” said Dan Grauman, managing director at VMG Health, a national healthcare consulting firm.
“There’s no question there’s need for care and for services, said Grauman, who has decades of familiarity with the Philadelphia region’s healthcare market.
A welcome public meeting
During an hourlong question and answer session, residents expressed gratitude for the meeting with Polack and his senior medical adviser, Arthur Klein, a pediatric cardiologist who spent decades as an executive at nonprofit health systems in New York.
A town hall meeting Tuesday in Chester about plans for the former Crozer-Chester Medical Center drew a large crowd.Monica Herndon / Staff Photographer
“Many times things happen in our community, and we are the last to know, so you started off very, very well,” said Zulene Mayfield, chairperson of Chester Residents Concerned for Quality Living, a community group known for the fight to close alarge trash incinerator in the city.
Some residents pushed back againstPolack and Klein’s plans for a much smaller hospital than the more than 400 beds Crozer-Chester Medical Center had at its peak. During a March interview with The Inquirer, Klein suggested the new hospital could have 80 beds.
“You don’t want a hospital of the 1990s,” Klein said Tuesday.
The current hospital structure encompasses 750,000 square feet — now completely empty. Crozer’s shuttered ED took up 30,000 of the square feet. Chariot Allaire contemplates opening a hospital a tenth of the size of the old hospital.
Operating that hospitalcost way too much, Polack said. ”It also doesn’t meet the way medical care is done today, which is mainly on the outpatient side,” said Polack,who has worked in healthcare real estate development in New York.
Simone Development Cos., where Polack worked before striking out on his own, often collaborated on real estate deals with Montefiore, a health system in the Bronx that serves many patients with Medicaid insurance, Grauman said.
That experience is relevant to the effort here, he said, given that Crozer also served large numbers of people with Medicaid, which pays significantly lower rates than private insurers.
The role of local health systems
Before Prospect’s bankruptcy filing in January 2025, a few local health systems explored establishing a new nonprofit to take over Crozer-Chester Medical Center. Those talks continued during the bankruptcy, but failed to produce a solution.
The University of Pennsylvania Health System saidit remains at the table.
“We continue to work with committed partners to restore crucial healthcare services for Delaware County residents,” Penn said in a statement. “It’s important that any new models for the former Crozer-Chester site are built to be sustainable amid a rapidly changing healthcare landscape and persistent financial challenges.”
ChristianaCare, which plans to open a micro-hospital in Aston in June, is not in discussions with Chariot Allaire, it said, but supports “their efforts to expand access to quality heath care in Delaware County.”
Arthur Klein, senior medical adviser (left), and Yoel Polack, CEO of Chariot Allaire, greet attendees during a town hall in Chester on Tuesday.Monica Herndon / Staff Photographer
While Chariot Allaire is wooing health systems, the new owners of two other closed Crozer Health hospitals,Taylor and Springfield, are doing the same thing. Local investors paid $1 million each for those hospitals. Those low prices could allow the owners to offer below market rate leases to attract tenants.
Polack noted that if no local systems want to bring services to the Crozer site, he would look farther afield.
“We don’t control hospital systems and operators, but we are doing everything that we can to put the pieces together to illustrate the opportunity that we see here to those hospital systems,” he said.
Dawn Pierce felt heartbroken last spring when she learned that Crozer-Chester Medical Center was closing.
The hospital had long been a lifeline in a city with limited healthcare services. Many Chester residents, like Pierce, were unsure where to turn for care when the hospital’s for-profit owner, California-based Prospect Medical Holdings, declared bankruptcy and shut down Crozer and Taylor Hospital in Ridley Park last spring.
“I don’t think of myself as one that will sit around and watch things happen, but I felt hopeless,” Pierce said.
Nearly a year later, Pierce and other residents say the community was left with major healthcare gaps: There are no primary care doctors or pediatricians in town. Locals who received routine care at the hospital had to switch to doctors outside the city, dealing with long drives or rides on public transportation. Some are going without care.
And many worry about whether they can make it to another hospital in time during a medical emergency.
Janice Cimabue, left, and Jamie Blair, center, with Put People First PA, after a news conference outside of the recently closed Crozer Medical Center in Delco, in Philadelphia, May 15, 2025. Jessica Griffin / Staff Photographer
These concerns have emerged through grassroots canvassing by One Pennsylvania, which shared its findings at a news conference this month. In recent months in Chester, organizers have knocked on 4,300 doors to gauge residents’ thoughts on Crozer’s closure and encourage them to advocate for better healthcare options in the city.
The membership group focuses on issues including housing rights and environmental justice. Originally founded as part of a 2011 Pittsburgh campaign by the labor union SEIU, it became an independent organization in 2015 and expanded into the Philadelphia area in 2016.
Pierce, who heads its Chester chapter, counts herself relatively lucky: While she saw specialists at Crozer, her primary care physician was at a different health system. But her brother and his significant other spent most of last year looking for a new doctor after Crozer closed.
“I do think they finally found someone, but at this point those visits are not near Chester. They’re 20 to 30-plus minutes away,” Pierce said.
Residents told One Pennsylvania organizers they felt relief that Chester officials did find a solution for EMS services lost in the closure. The city contracted with VSMC, an ambulance company, for higher-level care on the go, including blood transfusions.
“The restoration of EMS services and ambulance for our city — this matters,” Pierce said at the event held outside a downtown church on a recent Saturday. “However, EMS is a bridge. It’s not the final destination.”
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Chester Mayor Stefan Roots told residents at the news conference that he met recently with representatives from the Crozer property’s new owner, for-profit Chariot Equities, which says it wants to restore medical services to the campus.
Roots said he couldn’t provide many details about a plan for the 64-acre campus that straddles Chester and Upland Township in Delaware County, which Chariot purchased last month for $10 million. Chariot said at the time it planned to operate a “right-sized” hospital and emergency department at the facility.
The new ownership comes after government-supported efforts failed to convince other local health systems last year to form a new nonprofit to run Crozer-Chester and other Crozer Health facilities.
Chester Mayor Stefan Roots told city residents that he met recently with representatives from the Crozer property’s new owner, for-profit Chariot Equities, which says it wants to restore medical services to the campus. Tyger Williams / Staff Photographer
Roots said the new owner has impressive plans, but it could take years to bring back medical services, if successful. “It’s going to take some time, it’s going to take some money, and all we can do right here is to readjust,” he said.
Delaware County Council voted Wednesday to end a disaster declaration over lost EMS services in the wake of Crozer’s closure, since communities left without services, like Chester, had been able to contract with other EMS providers, WHYY reported.
Chester resident Andrea Robinson say she’s still feeling the impact of the lost medical services.
Robinson had to find new doctors after the closure, and a family member is now traveling farther to receive care for a mental health condition once treated at Crozer. And while other area hospitals are taking patients from Chester, the influx of new patients has at times led to long wait times elsewhere.
“We are truly in need of medical services now,” she said.
The recent state Supreme Court ruling that a receiver can’t unilaterally sell the Chester Water Authority to a for-profit company was a big win for its customers. But it complicated a plan to use the sale to bail out the city of Chester.
While the court ruling is the final word on the sale, there is more to be done to safeguard utility customers across the commonwealth and help the residents of Chester.
The best way to protect all utility customers in Pennsylvania would be for the General Assembly to repeal Act 12. The misguided legislation, spearheaded by lobbyists, opened the door in 2016 for the sale of municipal water and sewer systems.
The law was supposed to help distressed utility systems. Instead, for-profit companies have largely purchased well-run systems and massively and routinely increased the rates that customers pay.
Since Aqua Pennsylvania purchased the sewer system in New Garden Township in Chester County in 2020, for example, residents have seen their rates increase 200%, according to a consumer group fighting the sales. Other cities and towns have seen their bills go up by 100% or more.
In short, Act 12 has failed to accomplish what it was allegedly designed to do.
To his credit, State Sen. John Kane, a Democrat who represents parts of Chester and Delaware Counties, has proposed repealing Act 12, but few lawmakers in Harrisburg are brave enough to stand up to the influential for-profit water companies.
Short of a repeal, lawmakers must reform Act 12. At the very least, the law should be amended to require that the sale of any public utility be put to a vote. The residents who pay for the utility should decide whether to sell it, not the local politicians. If residents approve a sale, the utility should be put out to a public bid and not negotiated in private.
Such reforms, while not perfect, would give residents some protection from local elected officials selling off public utilities for short-term gains without their input.
The Chester City Council voted in 2021 to sell the Chester Water Authority to Aqua Pennsylvania for $410 million. In January, the state Supreme Court ruled the sale could not go through.Elizabeth Robertson / Staff Photographer
The court was right to rule that the city of Chester could not sell the water authority. After all, the authority serves roughly 200,000 people in more than 30 municipalities across Chester and Delaware Counties.
It is understandable that the city wanted to sell the water authority. The City of Chester, which has about 34,000 residents, filed for Chapter 9 bankruptcy in 2022.
Aqua offered to buy the water authority in 2017 for $320 million. Two years later, the for-profit company increased its offer to $410 million.
The board that oversees the water authority unanimously rejected the offer, but the city council in Chester viewed the sale as a way out of its financial problems.
But any short-term gain for the city would likely have resulted in a sharp increase in water bills for customers. This would have put more financial stress on residents in Chester, which has a poverty rate of 30%, making it one of the poorest municipalities in the state.
Residents in Chester and Delaware Counties would have also seen steep increases in their water bills. The water authority is already well run, so there is little to be gained by a sale.
However, the court’s ruling leaves the city of Chester in a bind. There is a vehicle in place to help Chester. Act 47, known as the Municipalities Financial Recovery Act, supplies funding to help municipalities in financial distress.
The city of Harrisburg, the city of Chester, and the borough of Newville are already part of the Act 47 program. State lawmakers should increase funding for Act 47 to help the commonwealth’s distressed municipalities.
That is the best solution to a thorny problem. It also avoids the sale of public utilities that will only result in bigger bills coming due for ratepayers.
Just ask the residents in New Garden and other towns whose local elected officials sold them out to for-profit companies.
The new owner of the defunct Crozer-Chester Medical Center wants to restore hospital and emergency services to the 64-acre campus that straddles Chester and Upland Township in Delaware County.
Newly formed Chariot Equities completed the $10 million purchase Wednesday. The for-profit entity said it expected within six months to have an agreement with a health system that would operate a “right-sized” hospital and emergency department at the facility that had been the county’s largest provider of those services before closing last year.
The idea is then to open the first phase within two years, Chariot said in a statement.
Chariot did not say how much it would spend on refurbishing Crozer-Chester, which had suffered from years of neglect under its two previous owners.
Chariot’s partner at Crozer-Chester is Allaire Health Services, a Jackson, N.J.-based for-profit operator of nursing homes.
The partners said they are in talks with regional and national nonprofit health systems regarding an operating partnership, but provided no details. The amount of money needed for the project would likely depend on what prospective tenants would want to do at the property.
“Our belief in Delaware County’s future, and the community’s need for sustainable healthcare access, made this an effort worth committing to well before the finish line,” said Yoel Polack, Chariot’s founder and principal.
Little is known about the new owners. Polack worked in healthcare real estate in the New York City area before setting his sights on redeveloping Crozer-Chester.
Federal records list Allaire’s CEO Benjamin Kurland as an owner of 20 nursing homes, including three in the Philadelphia area. Chariot’s statement said Allaire owns a total of 29 facilities in five states.
Main Line Health has been involved in discussions about reopening emergency services at three former Crozer hospitals — Crozer-Chester Medical Center, Springfield Hospital, and Taylor Hospital — at the request of state lawmakers and the property owners, Ed Jimenez, CEO of Main Line Health, said Wednesday at a Riddle Hospital event.
Jimenez said he would “entertain the concept” of restoring emergency services at one of the hospitals as part of a partnership with other health systems, but only if it can be done on a break-even basis.
All three of the former hospital buildings visited by Main Line officials are in poor condition and were stripped of medical equipment after the closures. Main Line’s experts estimated it would cost between $15 million and $20 million just to make the emergency department at Taylor functional, Jimenez said.
ChristianaCare, Delaware’s largest health system, considered acquiring Crozer in 2022. Instead, it took a different path to expansion in Southeastern Pennsylvania. It is planning to open two micro-hospitals in Delaware County. The nonprofit system also took over five former Crozer outpatient locations. Its credit rating was recently downgraded by one notch because of lower profitability.
The importance of Crozer-Chester
Crozer-Chester closed in early May during the bankruptcy of owner Prospect Medical Holdings Inc., a for-profit company based in California, and after the failure of government-supported efforts to form a new nonprofit owner for Crozer-Chester and other Crozer Health facilities.
Crozer-Chester was particularly important as a safety-net provider for a low-income area of Delaware County that has few other nearby options. The Crozer system, which had four hospitals, was the county’s largest health system and largest employer for many years.
Two local Democratic officials, State Rep. Leanne Krueger and Delaware County Council member Monica Taylor, said they were encouraged by the approach being taken by Chariot and Allaire.
At Taylor Hospital, the other Crozer hospital that closed last year, new owners are also looking for healthcare tenants. Local investors bought the Ridley Park facility for $1 million. It is less than four miles from Crozer-Chester.
The same group agreed last week to pay $1 million for Springfield Hospital, another facility that had previously shut down under Prospect ownership.
John Linehan and Kobe Bryant used to talk. A lot. This would not have been unusual for other AAU teammates, but these two were fierce high school rivals.
Linehan was a scrappy point guard for Chester. Bryant was a relentless shooting guard for Lower Merion. Both were competitive, almost to a fault, and in the days leading up to big games, they’d get chippy.
The week before the 1996 PIAA Class AAAA District 1 title game, for example, the players talked every day on bulky landline phones, with Bryant often calling Linehan at his home in Chester.
“I just said, ‘You know, John, I haven’t won a championship yet, and you have,’” Bryant told The Inquirer in 1996.
Linehan knew what his friend was doing. The future NBA star did the same thing a few weeks later, on March 19, a day before the teams met again in the state semifinal.
“He was trying to get me to trash talk,” Linehan said. “I think he needed a little edge. I didn’t want to give him too much. I was like, ‘Man, you crazy.’”
The late Kobe Bryant, a former Lower Merion basketball star, announcing he will go directly into the NBA draft out of high school.ALEJANDRO A. ALVAREZ / Staff Photographer
Lower Merion wasn’t a basketball school when Bryant arrived in the fallof 1992. It paled in comparison to the local powerhouses like Simon Gratz, Coatesville, and Chester.
But Bryant changed that. Even in his freshman year, a season in which the Aces went 4-20, he brought a new standard, working out before class and introducing a level of toughness that was foreign to his teammates.
Bythe mid-1990s, Lower Merion was among the best high school teams in the Philadelphia area. Its players were more confident, celebrating after big shots, and talking loud on the court.
The Aces didn’t play as many games against Coatesville, a rising power led by Rip Hamilton. They couldn’t consistently measure themselves against Gratz, which didn’t participate in the PIAA playoffs untilthe 2004-05 season.
But they could against Chester. And so, a decades-long rivalry was born.
From 1996 through the mid-2010s, Chester and Lower Merion put on some of the greatest high school basketball games in the area. They’d often sell out venues like the Palestra and Villanova’s Pavilion. Some fans would even scalp tickets.
Their communities were almost diametrically opposed. Chester was predominantly Black; Lower Merion was predominantly white. Chester was plaguedby poverty; Lower Merion was considered affluent.
Chester, with its Biddy League, had a legacy of basketball greatness, and a steady pipeline of talent. Lower Merion had nothing comparable. But these differences melted away on the court.
And while the rivalry is not what it once was, it lives on today.
“The pride and the intensity and the history will never fade,” said Lower Merion coach Gregg Downer. “I mean, if we played them tomorrow night, that would be an intense game.”
The Bryant-Linehan era
When Downer was named head coach in 1990, he already was well-aware of Chester’s tradition. He’d played youth basketball growing up in Media and had heard about the stars who’d come out of the Biddy League.
It was obvious that his team would have to go through the Clippers to win any sort of accolade. But it wasn’t until Bryant’s arrival that Downer’s aspirations became a real possibility.
The shooting guard, who was the son of former 76er Joe “Jelly Bean” Bryant, was mature for his age. He’d demand more, mentally and physically, of older teammates. Doug Young, a former Lower Merion forward, remembered seeing Bryant leaving the locker room at 7 o’clock one September morning in 1993.
He’d been at the high school gym since 5 a.m., working out by himself. To the Lower Merion basketball team, this was a “crazy” concept, so Young and his cohorts decided to join him.
In the District 1 championship game against Chester, Kobe Bryant goes to the hoop over the Clippers’ John Linehan.Jay Gorodetzer / Staff Photographer
They arrived the next day at 5:06 a.m. The players knocked on the door. Bryant didn’t answer.
“He wouldn’t open it,” said Young, who graduated in 1995. “You’re either there or you’re not. We were six minutes late.”
His teammates waited outside until 6:30 a.m., when the school opened. They made sure to show up before 5 a.m. from that day on.
Downer was wired the same way. The coach — and his NBA-bound pupil — would push the team in practice. Losses were particularly tough. The players would go through endless sprints and rebounding drills that sent them running to the trash can.
It wasn’t fun. But over time, the method created a newfound tenacity.
“No one walked into high school saying, ‘Oh, yeah, I want to win a state championship,’” Young said. “But [Kobe] knew what that was. He was like, ‘I don’t know any other way. If we’re not going to win a championship, what the heck are we playing for?’”
Chester was always going to be an obstacle, so Downer tried to play into the battle. He’d use analogies for the tough, hard-nosed team, comparing it to an animal stalking its prey.
The coach began to screen movies to underscore this point. Together, in a Lower Merion classroom, Downer’s players watched Jaws and other tales of survival, like The Edge, a 1997 thriller about a plane that crashes in the Alaskan wilderness.
“This bear is stalking them, and the couple is saying, ’What are we going to do about this bear?’” Downer said. “And one of them says, ‘The only thing we can do is kill the bear.’
“And I remember being like, ‘We can do this.’ But the only solution is to — not to be overly graphic — but to kill them.”
(The bear in this analogy was Chester.)
He added: “We tried everything humanly possible to get through to this team.”
The first few games were ugly. In 1995, Lower Merion met the Clippers in the District 1 championship, only to lose by 27 points. But they came back with a renewed focus the following year, in 1995-96, going 25-3 in the regular season to earn a district final rematch against Chester.
The Aces showed up at the arena with “27″ printed on their warmup shirts. Bryant, armed with fresh bulletin board material from Linehan, dropped 34 points against the Clippers en route to a 60-53 Aces win.
The shooting guard scored 39 points later that month — with a broken nose — in a 77-69 state semifinal win over Chester. Lower Merion went on to beat Erie Cathedral Prep, 48-43, to win its first state championship since 1943.
Kobe Bryant celebrates after defeating Chester at the Palestra in 1996 to advance to the state final.Ron Cortes / Staff Photographer
To Linehan, the difference Bryant made was obvious. He joked that he’d “never heard of Lower Merion” before his friend arrived. But once he did, Chester realized it would have to go to great lengths to prepare for the phenom.
Ahead of a big game against Lower Merion in the mid-1990s, the coaching staff reached out to Clippers alumnus Zain Shaw. He played at West Virginia and in Europe and possessed some of the same characteristics as Bryant — a tall frame and an athletic build with strong ballhandling skills.
The Clippers invited Shaw to practice, where he played the role of Bryant (to the best of his ability).
“Kobe was so special, we had to bring in a pro to help us prepare,” said Linehan, who later starred at Providence.
But there was another impact the future Lakers star had, one that had nothing to do with his own prowess. Linehan noticed that Bryant’s Lower Merion teammates started to take on some of his qualities. Suddenly, they were playing brash, confident basketball.
“We didn’t have reason to believe, until Kobe got there, that we belonged on the court with Chester,” Young said. “The fear was real. Teams were afraid of Chester because they’d run you out of the building.
“The idea of Lower Merion being on the court in a meaningful game against [them] was such a crazy thought. But then, you started to believe.”
The buzzer-beater heard ’round Chester
Bryant never got over the rivalry, even after he embarked on his Hall of Fame NBA career in 1996. Sometimes, he’d call the coaching staff before big games against Chester, leaving expletive-laden voicemails to use as motivation.
The Lakers shooting guard also created an incentive structure for his former team.
“You couldn’t get a pair of Nike sneakers unless you qualified for the playoffs,” Young said. “If you don’t earn it, you don’t get it.”
He became especially involved in 2005-06. After a lull in the early 2000s, Chester and Lower Merion found themselves neck-and-neck again. The Aces were led by the duo of Ryan Brooks and Garrett Williamson, and the Clippers boasted a deep roster, headlined by Darrin Govens. All of them eventually played in the Big 5.
(Chester was so stacked that it brought a 1,000-point scorer off the bench in Noel Wilmore.)
Students from the class of 2005 show their support as Chester and Lower Merion play in the state final. Hinda Schuman / Staff Photographer
The rivals met in the state championship on March 19, 2005. Despite strong performances from Williamson and Brooks, the Clippers pulled away in the second half thanks to a dominant third quarter from Govens. Chester won, 74-61.
The teams reconvened the following season with their competitive spark fully reignited. They faced each other three times that year. Chester took Round 1, a one-point regular-season victory on Dec. 27.
Round 2 was in the district final on March 3. Before the game, in front of a packed crowd at the Pavilion, Chester sophomore Karon Burton walked up to the layup line.
Lower Merion’s student section caught his ear with a chant about coach Fred Pickett’s stout stature.
The dig didn’t intimidate Burton. If anything, it fueled him. He grew up playing street ball in Chester and always loved trash talk.
Instead of cowering, like the crowd hoped, the sophomore delivered an unforgettable outing. The game went into overtime, and was tied at 80 with only a few seconds remaining.During a timeout, assistant coach Keith Taylor pulled Burton aside.
“He was like, ‘Hey, listen,’” Burton said. “They’re going to double Darrin. If you get that ball, do your thing.’”
Taylor’s words proved prescient. As Lower Merion’s defenders swarmed Govens, the Clippers inbounded the ball to Burton.
He took a pull-up jumper from beyond the arc and drilled it for an 83-80 win. The Chester fans stormed the court. Burton, who later joined Wilmore in the 1,000-point club, said he felt like a celebrity in his hometown.
“It was like watching a buzzer-beater in the NBA,” he said. “I just ran to my teammates, they picked me up. It was a crazy feeling.
“I’m a big Kobe fan, too. Kobe’s my favorite player ever. So when I came and I hit the game-winner on that team …”
Round 3 took place a few weeks later, in a state semifinal rematch at the Palestra on March 22. Bryant called Lower Merion’s coaches before the game.
“I don’t remember specifically what he said, but I’m sure there were a lot of [expletives] dropped,” said Young. “Like, ‘Don’t call me back if you don’t beat those [expletives].’ That was a line we heard from him a couple times.”
This one didn’t go Chester’s way. After trailing the Clippers, 47-37, at the end of the third quarter, the Aces came roaring back in the fourth and put up 33 points to eke out a 70-65 win.
The celebration in the locker room was cathartic. Water sprayed into the air. Players sat atop each other’s shoulders and turned the showers into a slip ‘n slide. Bryant called in, again, as other members of the 1996 team filtered through.
Darrin Govens scored his 1,000th point for Chester against Lower Merion in the state championship in 2005.Hinda Schuman / Staff Photographer
This was not how Govens wanted to end his high school career. And a few months later, when he arrived at St. Joseph’s on a basketball scholarship, he saw a familiar foe.
It was Williamson, his new Hawks teammate.
“We were sitting on the opposite side of the bench,” Govens said. “I didn’t want to sit next to him; he didn’t want to sit next to me. We’d kind of avoid each other and just head nod.
“Even in running drills, it was a competition. He looked to the left. I looked to the right. We tried to beat each other in sprints. But then we realized, ‘All right bro, we’re teammates now.’”
‘Hero status’
Chester had always rallied around its high school basketball team. Linehan said it was akin to playing for the Sixers. The teenagers were treated like professional athletes — especially those who had been a part of big wins.
The Clippers’ public address announcer, James Howard, called this “hero status.”
“All of a sudden, your money’s no good,” he said. “Barbers take care of you, make sure your hair looks nice before games. Free food. Little kids look up to you and ask for your autograph. That’s how it is.”
In Chester, there were plenty of heroes to draw from. There was Linehan, but also Jameer Nelson, who met a young Burton in the late 1990s. Nelson, a friend of Burton’s cousin, gave the aspiring basketball player a gift before he left for St. Joe’s: his MVP medal from the Chester summer league.
“He was one of the biggest guys in our city,” Burton said, “so it’s definitely something that I’ll always remember.”
By the early 2010s, when the rivalry was reignited for a third time, Lower Merion had built more of a basketball tradition. Aces guard Justin McFadden said he’d get stopped in Wawa before big games against the Clippers.
Chester celebrates its win over Lower Merion for the state championship in 2012. Steven M. Falk / Staff Photographer
“It became a community thing,” he said. “People would be asking, ‘What do you guys think about Chester? Do you think we can get it done?’”
In 2012, the schools met in the state championship for the first time since 2005. Junior forward and future NBA starter Rondae Hollis-Jefferson put up a double-double to lead the Clippers to a resounding 59-33 win over the Aces. It was their second straight title and their 58th straight victory.
A year later, after going 17-0 in the Central League, the Aces met the Clippers in the state final again. Chester had won 78 straight games against in-state opponents. Snapping that streak would be daunting, but Downer had a plethora of motivational tactics at his disposal.
Just as they had in the 1990s, The Aces again spent pockets of the season watching Jaws, The Edge, as well as an addition: Al Pacino’s “Inch by Inch” speech in Any Given Sunday.
“He would have that fired up on YouTube, ready to go,” McFadden said. “Looking back, [your reaction] is a chuckle, but in the moment, it worked. We knew that this was the hill that needed to be climbed.
“And every time they played that speech, we got goose bumps. We were ready to fire.”
Chester got out to an early lead, but Lower Merion rallied behind a 22-point, 11-rebound performance from B.J. Johnson, who later starred at La Salle. The Aces snapped the streak and won their seventh state title with a 63-47 victory.
Lower Merion’s Jaquan Johnson goes to the net as Diamonte Reason guards him in the Chester-Lower Merion state championship game in 2013.Elizabeth Robertson / Staff Photographer
The Clippers then were coached by Larry Yarbray. Pickett, who was diagnosed with cancer in2010, was in declining health. Just before he died in 2014, Downer decided to say goodbye.
He and his former assistant coach Jeremy Treatman drove out to Pickett’s home in Chester. They went to his bedside.
“And we talked,” Downer said. “And we held hands. It was a really touching moment for me. This is a man that carried Chester on his back. That tried to carry Lower Merion on his back. And I knew it was the last time I was going to see Fred.
“We walked out the door, and we told each other that we loved each other. And I never thought he would say that to me, or vice versa. But it was just kind of like, ‘You know what? We’ve had some amazing battles, and there’s a lot of respect there.’”
Keeping the tradition alive
In recent years, the Chester-Lower Merion rivalry has diminished.
There was a brief period when the teams were in different classifications. Both programs have lost players to private schools that can recruit, and the addition of the Philadelphia Catholic League to the PIAA has made the state playoffs more competitive.
One place the Aces and Clippers could meet is in the district tournament, where they reunited in 2024. But they haven’t played each other since. And Howard says the contests don’t have the same feel.
“Both teams have lost D-I talent,” he said. “It’s not as high-flying, above the rim, as it was in the past. But still a great game. Sold out at Lower Merion, and at Chester, same thing.”
The history will always be there, though, and Burton is doing his best to keep it alive. His 8-year-old son, Karon Burton Jr., is playing in the Biddy League. His father is his coach.
Sometimes, they go on YouTube and watch old Clippers games. Junior’s favorite, of course, is the 2006 district final.
Burton believes that his son has a promising future, but isn’t sure of where he’ll go to high school yet. He doesn’t want Karon Jr. to feel obligated to follow his father’s path.
But if it worked out that way, what a story that would be.
“I’d love to be the first father and son to have 1,000 points,” Burton said. “With the same name? That would be crazy.”
Tanner Rouse will be Delaware County’s new top law enforcement officer, but he’snot new to the work.
Rouse will be sworn in on Jan. 5 as district attorney after his predecessor, Jack Stollsteimer, steps down to assume the county judgeship he won in November. Rouse, 42, will finish out the final two years of Stollsteimer’s term after working as his first assistant since 2020.
In a recent interview, Rouse discussed the strides in reducing violent crime he and his colleagues have made under Stollsteimer — the first-ever Democrat to serve as district attorney in Delaware County — as well as how he plans to continue those advances.
The short answer: Keeping the same playbook, but “putting a personal stamp on it,” as an offensive coordinator does when he takes over as head coach, said Rouse, an avid Eagles fan and ambitious Little League coach.
A former Philadelphia prosecutor under Seth Williams, Rouse credited the lessons he learned from investigating gun violence in the city, along with the recruitment of several former colleagues he brought over the county line, withimproving the way crime is prosecuted in Delaware County.
“We have demonstrated you can reform the criminal justice system and that it doesn’t have to come at the expense of stopping violent crime,” Rouse said. “They’re not mutually exclusive.”
Who is Tanner Rouse?
Rouse, a Phoenixville-area native, is the son of the late Willard Rouse III, the prominent Philadelphia developer behind One and Two Liberty Place. After graduating from the University of Wisconsin and Fordham Law School, Rouse spent seven years in the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office, prosecuting crimes in Center City and North Philadelphia.
Rouse left the office in 2017, months before Larry Krasner took over. He practiced civil law for a time and ran an ultimately failed campaign to unseat then-State Sen. Tom McGarrigle before Stollsteimer called and offered him the first assistant job.
At the time, Rouse said, the offer was unexpected. But, looking back, he now considers it one of the greatest opportunities of his career.
What is Rouse most proud of from his tenure as first assistant?
The most notable achievement of his tenure to date in the district attorney’s office, Rouse said, is the steep reduction of gun violence in Chester.Shootings are down 75% since 2020. Rouse credits community outreach efforts for that, especially through the Chester Partnership for Safe Neighborhoods program, overseen by veteran homicide prosecutor Matt Krouse, whom Rouse worked with in Philadelphia and recruited to join him in Delaware County.
The partnership’s fundamental philosophy is a combination of focused deterrence programs Rouse helped oversee in Philadelphia that target repeat offenders, as well as community outreach efforts run by trusted neighborhood figures.
Rouse said he never wanted to be a faceless presence in the county and made it his priority to get out and form relationships in all of the municipalities he served, visiting community meetings, block parties, and even a few pickup basketball games.
“I don’t do this job from behind a desk,” he said, speaking in his county courthouse office. “And I think demonstrating that commitment and that care by being more present in those communities, and not just being kind of the big, scary law enforcement agency on a hill is incredibly important.”
Rouse said he is proud of other reforms including creating a diversionary unit in the office, revamping its drug court and instituting a special “child’s court,” created by Kristen Kemp — Rouse’s chosen first assistant and an expert in special-victims’ cases — that allows young victims to testify against adult offenders in a more comfortable environment.
The county’s jail population is down 50% as well, something Rouse says is a result of approaching prosecuting crimes in a humane, logical way.
What are his priorities as district attorney?
Rouse said he plans to create a similar community outreach program in Upper Darby, a community he said is “on the verge of some big things.”
“It’s not as if we’re saying, ‘We’re coming in here to take on Upper Darby and what goes on there,’ but more of, ‘Guys, look, we’re not just the people you pick up and call when there’s a crime.’”
He also expressed interest in creating reciprocity agreements with his counterparts in the other collar counties around Philadelphia, specifically when it comes to handling drug cases and providing treatment to the people caught up in them.
How has his time in Philadelphia influenced his work in Delco?
Rouse said he cut his teeth in the city working alongside veteran prosecutors, and he’s worked to bring that environment of mentorship to Delaware County.
He said he and his more senior deputies often sit in on trials, giving feedback to younger staff members just as his mentors did for him nearly two decades ago.
“That’s how I got better, and that’s one of the roles I most cherish here,” he said.
One of the victims said Anais Munoz, 22, held a curling iron to her genitals, warning her that she would only prolong the abuse if the girl screamed.
The details of Munoz’s abuse were revealed during her two-week trial before Delaware County Court Judge John P. Capuzzi Sr., which ended late last month with her conviction for aggravated assault, endangering the welfare of a child, involuntary deviate sexual intercourse, and related crimes.
The jurors acquitted Munoz of other counts of those crimes.
The girl, who was 10 years old at the time, said she still bears scars from being burned with the curling iron. It was the night before Halloween in 2021, she said, and she remembers being in excruciating pain as she trick-or-treated in her neighborhood.
To this day, wearing shorts or swimwear, she said, makes her anxious.
“This scar wasn’t created by choice, this scar was created from a monster,” the girl, now 15, testified. “I didn’t ask for this, I didn’t ask for any of this, I didn’t ask to even be in this courtroom right now.”
On other occasions, the girl said, Munoz would choke her with her father’s belt until her face turned blue.
“I thought I was going to die,” she said. “I was begging her not to do it again, begging her with my everything. And she did it again.”
Still, the girls said that, fearful of Munoz, they lied and hid the injuries from their parents. The 15-year-old girl said she wanted Munoz to like her, and compared herself to a “puppy dog” seeking affection.
The victims’ injuries remained hidden until the fall of 2022, when Munoz burned the middle sister’s hand on a stove. Her teachers notified the county Department of Children and Youth, triggering an investigation, and Munoz was arrested months later.
Her attorneys, James Funt and Brandi McLaughlin, cast doubt on the victims’ testimony, saying they were unreliable and had suffered psychological trauma from what they experienced.
Funt suggested to jurors that the girls’ parents were the ones who abused them and that they were being manipulated into blaming Munoz.
“The uncomfortable truth of this case is that everybody failed them,” the lawyer said in his closing arguments. “The teachers failed them, the CYS workers failed them, the police failed them, because clue after clue after clue revealed that what they were saying wasn’t true,” and their parents were the true culprits.
Assistant District Attorney Danielle Gallaher rejected that assertion. She said all of the forensic evidence matches the girls’ description of abuse at the hands of Munoz.
It was always clear, she said, who was responsible.
“This case is about how the defendant took her anger and resentment out on children who could be manipulated and led to believe they would never been believed by anyone,” Gallaher said. “The defendant wants you to believe these kids are crazy.”
The girl and her sisters testified that the abuse began shortly after Munoz came to live with them in 2020 and that it escalated in intensity in 2021. At the time, the girls were 7, 10, and 11.
In addition to the physical and mental abuse, Munoz would engaged in sex acts with the children, they said.
During some of the violent episodes, Munoz would tell the girls she was under the possession of a demon named “Jessica,” using that to explain her abusive behavior, the girls said.
The oldest sister, now 16, said she lived in constant fear of Munoz, who sometimes would suffocate her with a pillow and body slam her into the ground.
In one instance, she said, Munoz repeatedly struck her so hard that her body eventually went limp, and she felt as if she couldn’t move.
Another witness, a boy who did not live in the house, said he observed some of this abuse while Munoz babysat him there. During one incident, he said, Munoz choked him until he “saw white” and bit him on his left forearm.
Tonya Robertson was working one of her three jobs at a charter school in Chester when she broke down crying to a colleague: She was homeless, living in a domestic violence shelter with three children, and pregnant with twins.
Her co-workers suggested she talk to the school’s counselor, who gave her a stack of applications to apply for federally funded food support, at-home prenatal nurse visits, and maternal health resources, all coordinated through The Foundation for Delaware County.
The nonprofit has for almost a decade provided access to safety net programs such as Women, Infants, and Children, the nutrition program known as WIC; Healthy Start; and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), the food program for low-income families. It also offers a menu of other support services for families, such as a program that provides at-home prenatal visits, housing assistance, legal aid, doulas, mental health resources for new mothers, and a fathers’ support group.
“They had so many resources — things I was scared to open up my mouth about, things I didn’t want to say I needed,” said Robertson, 39, of Marcus Hook.
She said she wishes she’d known about the organization sooner, during the years she struggled to raise her three older children as a single mother.
Now the foundation is rebranding its offerings as the Family Village, in an effort to raise awareness about the nonprofit’s full range of services. Foundation leaders said that in the past, people may have connected with the organization for a specific resource, such as WIC or SNAP, without learning about other programs they could benefit from. The idea of the Family Village is to make the foundation’s services more cohesive, wrapping around those in need.
The initiative has been years in the making, but is especially timely after the county’s largest health provider, Crozer Health, closed earlier this year when its for-profit owner filed for bankruptcy. The health system had long been an anchor for Chester and the surrounding communities, providing critical access to maternity, pediatric, and mental health services.
“Children don’t come with instructions. We all need a helping hand at some point,” said Joanne Craig, the foundation’s chief impact officer. “We have this great continuum of resources for families, but from the outside looking in, it wasn’t always easy to see and understand.”
An ambulance drove by the entrance to Crozer-Chester Medical Center, in Upland. This hospital closed earlier this year. Alejandro A. Alvarez / Staff Photographer
Filling gaps in Delaware County
The Foundation for Delaware County was formed in 2016, when the nonprofit Crozer-Keystone Health System was sold to Prospect Medical Holdings. When for-profit companies acquire nonprofit health systems, Pennsylvania law requires the nonprofit assets be set aside in an independent charity. Crozer’s nonprofit assets became the Foundation for Delaware County.
The foundation’s overarching mission is to support the health and welfare of Delaware County residents by coordinating government safety-net programs and creating its own offerings to help families in need. The foundation also provides millions of dollars in grants to nonprofits and charities to support public health, housing, and youth development.
With $53.9 million in net assets as of October, the foundation is the largest philanthropic organization in Delaware County, serving some 8,000 people a year.
Many of the foundation’s most used programs, such as Healthy Start, a federally funded prenatal and early childhood initiative, began before the foundation was spun out of Crozer, in response to the high infant mortality rate in Chester.
When Prospect said it would close the remaining Crozer hospitals, The Foundation for Delaware County was pressured by the case’s bankruptcy judge to take on part of the company’s debt to keep the hospital open until a new operator was found. The foundation shelled out $20 million to extend operations temporarily and later contributed $3 million to help former patients obtain their medical records.
The foundation’s new Family Village initiative can’t close all the gaps Crozer’s closure left — the area lost its largest emergency department and maternity ward, the only 24-7 mental health crisis center, and critical pediatric care.
ChristianaCare won an auction to take over five former Crozer outpatient locations in Broomall, Media, Glen Mills, and Havertown, and has plans to open two new micro hospitals in Aston and Springfield.
Delaware County in August selected Belmont Behavioral Health to establish a new crisis response center and expand mental health services.
But Craig said she hopes the foundation’s new approach will help families better access resources that remain available — and that they may not have known about.
Help without judgment
Before connecting with the foundation, Robertson was skeptical of organizations and programs that offered help.
Her grandfather, for instance, berated her for enrolling in SNAP and the at-home nurse program, warning her that she could end up losing her children, if coordinators decided her home and parenting weren’t good enough.
“I’m so scared to let someone in, let them come in my house and see that my house is not up to par, see that I’m struggling with this, or that I can’t feed them,” Robertson said.
“If I can’t feed them, they’re going to take my kids, and I’m going to go to jail,” she added.
Research has found that these fears are often justified, with social service workers deeming parents of color unfit at higher rates than white parents, and equating poverty with neglect.
Healthcare workers, social workers, and teachers are among so-called mandated reporters, who are required to report to Child Protective Services any suspicion of abuse. Only a fraction of reports are substantiated after being investigated, but they stoke fear and can dissuade families from seeking help.
But Robertson was working three jobs and still couldn’t feed her family, so she filled out the forms the school counselor had given her.
Her first prenatal visits through the Nurse-Family Partnership were at the domestic violence shelter where she was living.
Robertson was proud when she was able to afford to move her family into an apartment in Chester. But her nurse told her the gaping hole in the ceiling and mold growing in the corners were unsafe. She connected Robertson with the foundation’s Housing Opportunities Program for Equity, which helps people secure safe housing and navigate problems with landlords.
After her twins were born, the foundation’s Moving Beyond Depression program helped Robertson work through postpartum depression, which may have otherwise affected her ability to work and care for her children.
Two years later, Robertson said she still faces challenges. The recent government shutdown cut off the family’s food stamps, making for tough budgeting decisions earlier this month.
But now she knows where to turn for help, if the load ever becomes too heavy again.
Editor’s note: This story was updated with additional information on the foundation’s mission.
