12 Days of Longform

“I remember seeing Bill up on stage after the championship game,” says Peyton Manning. “We felt like this was going to be our year to win the Super Bowl. We felt like we’d sort of overcome some demons in that game.”

Chris Carlson left Indianapolis with his three grandsons for a male-bonding adventure in the Grand Canyon. Then he went to prison.

Anderson says she wants to focus on the future, one that now looks glamorous. But her liabilities, brought on by years of financial missteps, keep her tethered to the past—and to Central Indiana.

Jimmy’s parents sent him to live at Muscatatuck in 1952. It was a state-run institution for people with developmental disabilities, a place where parents sent children with nowhere else to go.

With a catchy slogan and a strong work ethic, Rich Burd built one of the city’s largest car dealerships. But after the economy wrecked the auto industry, Rich felt he had only one way to turn.

“We are all defined by our fathers,” says Bishop T. Garrett Benjamin of Mmoja Ajabu. “Everything we do in life is either in honor of, or in reaction to them.”

Phil Ferguson pulled off one of the biggest frauds in Indiana history, duping clients out of millions of dollars and staying one step ahead of the law.

Although she is one of 238,000 truckers living in Indiana, a state with more drivers than almost any other, Charci is easy to pick out at a crowded truck stop. Only 5 percent of drivers are women.

This guy gets paıd to hang out with the Sexiest Woman Alive. James Bond. Don Draper.

David Gundlach died suddenly and left his fortune to the struggling Indiana town. But three years after Gundlach’s death, the picture of Elkhart’s mystery benefactor remains just a sketch.

Matt White—track star, sharp salesman, skilled golfer—has had almost everything taken away by ALS. He’s one of the luckiest guys you’ll ever meet. Just ask him.

And this, truth be told, is what I have always wanted for my child: I want her to be a Hoosier.

My old neighborhood used to be a nice little place to live. But since I moved back, rampant crime has made it a desperate, dangerous wasteland. It just took a botched burglary at a friend’s house for me to wake up and see it.

“My daughter is hurt!” the mother yelled, desperate. A stranger appeared and made a tourniquet for the girl, and then a woman who said she was a nurse and a man who said he was a doctor carried her away. Trust us, they said.