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No one disputes that protecting a company's brand recognition is a key part of building a successful business.

That recognition can come from catchy advertising slogans, logos and other media content companies use to represent themselves. Businesses experts say protecting those images is important, especially if you run a small business operating in field crowded with several competitors.

The owners of the Z'Tejas restaurant chain have taken that advice to heart by filing a lawsuit in U.S. District Court for the District of Arizona against Hotel Scottsdale.

The southwestern-style chain, which has restaurants in Phoenix, Tempe, Chandler and Scottsdale, is accusing the hotel of violating a trademark the eatery has on its logo, which includes an oversized red letter "Z."

The hotel, located Scottsdale and Chaparral Roads, operates a restaurant called CeZar's, which also uses a logo that includes an large red Z. 

Z'Tejas' civil complaint, which was filed June 6, argues that Hotel Scottsdale "has intended and intends to continue to trade upon the goodwill and consumer recognition associated with the Z'Tejas mark."

The complaint also states Z'Tejas management has asked Hotel Scottsdale to change its logo, but the company has refused.

The complaint seeks an injunction barring Hotel Scottsdale from using the red oversized Z in its logo, damages Z'Tejas says it has suffered because of the confusion caused by the logos and reimbursement for attorneys fees.

Hotel Scottsdale has not filed a response to the suit yet.

Business owners, how important is your logo and other brand marketing materials to the success of your business. Do you think Z'Tejas' case has merit? Do you think their logos are similar enough to cause confusion? 

If you're not investing with future health-care costs in mind, you should be.

So says the Employee Benefit Research Institute, which estimates a typical baby boomer couple in their mid 50s should aim to accumulate $1.06 million to meet health costs throughout retirement by the time they reach 65. Single men aged 55 should aim for $555,000 by 65, and single women of the same age should strive for $654,000.

Those estimates seem eye-poppingly high, in part because they're designed to deliver a 90-percent probability that you won't run out of cash in retirement for health care. If you can live with lower odds, you don't need nearly as much. And if you're among the relatively lucky few who can expect to receive an employer health subsidy in retirement wouldn't need as much.

On the other hand, the estimates don't include possible outlays for long-term care or basic living costs. Also, the estimates assume people are currently in reasonably good health.

You can read more at the group's Web site, www.ebri.org.

Chandler reporter Megan Boehnke fills in for Mike Stephens with this blog.

A year ago, Sgt. Caleb Christopher died by a roadside bomb in Iraq.

Seven months ago, Lt. Ross Pixler survived one.

And last week, stories about both soldiers appeared in our publications - one in The Chandler Republic and the other in The Arizona Republic.

For nearly a month I worked on both articles at the same time. I met with both families, back and forth, sometimes in the same week.

I spent nearly six hours in the Pixlers' home, and over hot tea, listened to them talk about sleepless nights and their sons' near-misses that made them appreciate each other much more.

I went into Edward Christopher's home and sat next to him on the floor as he scattered photographs of his son and his posthumous awards. I held back my own tears, eyes welling, as he let his fall.

The conversations were never about the wars, the politics, the president's popularity. They were about the sacrifices of these Chandler soldiers and their families.

It's always amazing that people are willing to talk about the most exciting, most hopeful, most excruciating and the most terribly intimate moments in their lives. It's always awkward at first, but as they begin opening up about their loved ones, their pride takes over and their defenses fall. They want their soldiers to be remembered and honored for the service they gave.

It was a remarkable opportunity to experience, through the families, two outcomes of the same story - a man who survived the roadside bomb and another who didn't.

It's rare that anyone gets the chance to feel the breadth of human emotion, so acute and so raw, from people on both sides of a tragedy.

But even Ross Pixler, who had a brother return from war, was relieved to be alive and in the arms of his family again. He immediately talked about the three men in his vehicle who didn't survive - including one of his best friends.

It's another reminder that, while telling the happy endings along with the heartbreaking ones is important, even the tales of survivors don't come without casualties.

Even in the moment, surrounded by a dozen friends and family at the airport, he was keenly aware of the loss. The welcoming he received was bittersweet.

All he could think about were the three soldiers whose homecomings were much different, and whose families waited at the airport for a box instead of passenger.

"It's just a constant reminder of my soldiers who can't come home," he said.

I had a little visit from my dad the other day. An early Father's Day gift, you might say, from him to me.

There he was suddenly, dropping by to check in. It was unexpected but really, not surprising.

Good dads are like that. They have a way of popping up at all sorts of times, in all sorts of places.

I was looking through some computer discs at old family photos when I came upon a file that looked different from the rest. I clicked on it and there, suddenly, was Dad, looking straight at me across a restaurant table.

I wasn't there, but I could tell from the bandage on his arm that it was in the final months of his life, before the cancer took him. Someone, probably my brother, was trying to take a picture and had accidentally hit the button on the camera that records video instead.

Over and over I watched those precious few seconds, mistakenly recorded, as my dad talked to the waiter about bread sticks and pondered the merits of the Caesar salad and asked others at the table what they were having.

It was ordinary lunchtime conversation, nothing special. Not then, anyway.

Tomorrow will be my fifth Father's Day without my dad. He died four years ago last week.

He, like all fathers, was a lot of things during his life. An only child who came late to his parents and thus was treasured all the more. A boy who grew up during the Depression and learned that the most valuable things – love, honor, faith – don't cost a dime. A teenager who went to fight the Nazis and came home a man. A husband, a father and grandfather, a respected journalist. (Yes, there have been a few.).

But like a lot of dads, he was so much more than we realize when we are young.

He was the guy who must have been dead tired every night when he came home from work yet couldn't wait to sit down on the floor after dinner and play games.

He was the guy who drove through the night to rescue a daughter who caught the wrong bus home from college and wound up in another state. Instead of a complaining, he just smiled as if I had given him a gift, an unexpected opportunity for father-daughter adventure.

Like most good dads, he knew the secret to fatherhood was just being there, and he was. For every rough moment in my life and for every joyous moment and for most of the moments in between.

As it turns out, those were the best moments, those ordinary ones.

The delight he took in the sight of a blue hibiscus – the one I somehow managed to keep alive in the Arizona heat when he never could. The sweetness of an after-dinner walk when, arm in arm, we would talk about anything or sometimes nothing at all.

The chance to watch him with my own children and to see once again just how special it is to have a man such as this in a child's life, even when the child is now a woman.

I've learned a lot in these past four Father's Days. Mostly, that the best dads aren't remembered so much for the big things they do. Instead, it's the lifetime's worth of little things they do that together become the biggest thing of all.

And I've learned that good dads never die. They pop up, still, during the rough times and the joyous times and in so many  times in between.

They are with you always.

All those years when you thought you were wrapping him around your little finger? Turns out he was busy wrapping himself around your heart.

(Column published June 14, 2008, The Arizona Republic)

I see that 28-year-old Carlton Anderson feels “sick to his stomach” about leaving his four children, all under the age of 5, alone overnight Wednesday in an unlocked apartment filled with garbage, broken beer bottles and little else.

According to court records, Anderson went to pick up his wife at a bar and when she wouldn’t leave, he did what all good fathers do – he went out drinking with a friend.

Fortunately, his three-year-old twins went wandering and were about to wander right into traffic on I-17 when they were found and rescued. The tots led police back to what passes for their “home,”  which had broken beer bottles covering the kitchen floor and trash piled up in the corner and oh yeah, no food.

The father was arrested when he returned to the apartment at 8 a.m. Thursday. As of Friday morning, mommy hadn’t shown up yet.

The four children, ages 1 to 4, were taken by CPS and put into foster care.

This is likely the last we’ll hear of them but based on the cases I’ve studied, I have a pretty good idea of what will happen next. CPS will develop a plan to reunify the children with their parents (assuming mommy and daddy want them back, that is). They’ll offer parenting lessons and free bus tickets and they'll require urine tests to make sure they stay clean  and they'll return the children to their loving parents. And when mommy and daddy blow off the urine tests, they'll be given another chance. And another. And yes, probably another.

Eventually, CPS will pronounce this family fixed and walk away. And we'll just have to hope the that kids are smart enough to go wandering again...

Finally, a reality check about Arizona's energy future.