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Friday, Oct. 27, 2000 Timothy J. Gibbons She has a job, the woman says, pressing her fingertips against the scarred plastic window. She just can't prove it. Gayle Lluberes, on the other side of the window, rolls her eyes, but keeps her voice polite as she tries to help the woman complete the paperwork to get her boyfriend out of jail. "You need something that shows where you work and what you get paid," Lluberes explains, delivering a speech she gives a dozen times a day. "A pay stub. Anything." The two wrangle for a few minutes over how old of a paycheck the office will accept, than the client leaves, returning with the paperwork an hour or two later. By that time, Lluberes and her co-worker, Winston, are deep in consultation with another client of Ira Judleson's bail-bond business, Lluberes and Winston serve as Judleson's assistants, handling the paperwork to reunite friends and relatives with their imprisoned loved ones while Judleson, the actual bondsman, applies his expertise in the city's courtrooms. "You're an important part of the legal system," Lluberes later said about her job. "It's like being a paralegal, but you don't have to have all the education." The excitement and importance drew Judleson to the work, too, he said, leading him to open up shop three years ago. He entering the field after selling a group of nightclubs he owned in the Bronx and now has offices throughout the city, popping into each while making the rounds of courthouses and jails in Queens, Staten Island and Manhattan. The downtown office -- his main one -- squats in a corner on the 11th floor of a skyscraper whose other offices are filled with lawyers, legal consultants and the estate of Count Basie. Around the corner and down the hall from the elevator bank, the office sees a steady flow of business on a Thursday afternoon. Judleson makes his money by getting people out of jail. "I get people out for a price," he said. "I'm a legal loan shark." Bondsmen like Judleson enter the legal process after someone gets arrested. At the suspect's first appearance, a judge will decide if he must be kept in jail until his trial. If the judge believes the suspect will stay in the area, he will often set bail, a sum of money that the court will hold to make sure the accused shows up. If a suspect doesn't have enough cash to pay bail, he can turn to someone like Judleson. For a price -- usually 10 percent to 25 percent of the bail amount -- a bondsmen will pledge to the court to pay the bail if the suspect flees. With a portion of this unrefundable fee, the bondsmen then buys a bond from an insurance company. New York state law requires bondsmen, but not their assistants, to be licensed, a procedure that costs $50 and requires passing a $28 test. Judleson said he was first exposed to the bondsmen business when a friend was arrested (and late acquitted). He initially had trouble getting financing, but while playing softball in New Jersey, spoke with a man who was setting up an insurance company. The older gent turned out to be a long-lost uncle, Judleson said, and the two agreed to go into business together. Judleson now works at a desk squeezed into the back corner of his cramped Manhattan office, out of sight from clients. The paper-littered surface sports newspaper clippings about famous clients and photo copies of the New York penal code, while the mostly bare walls display a variety of posters: Orson Wells with a gun, a film noir vamp and, incongruously, a Kim Anderson print of two children kissing. Judleson himself looks like he would fit in well in a noir-type world. A bluff, barking man sporting a five o'clock shadow, the bondsman swept into the back office with a ferocious intensity, interrupting conversations with the office staff to talk on the phone then putting those calls on hold to answer his constantly ringing cell phone. "I love it," he said. "I'm part of the system, and I get to deal with all the big players. I deal with the biggest lawyers in the country. "I do all the rappers," he added, with a touch of pride. "I'm the bondsman for Old Dirty Bastard." His business moved up a notch last year, he said, when more than a dozen of the accused arrested in a Mafia sting turned to him for help. Most recently, plastic surgeon Robert Bierenbaum, now a convicted murderer, turned to Judleson when he was looking for bail money. "It says a lot that I've been in this a little over three year and people from the mob are coming to me," Judleson said. "I deal with everybody. I've bonded out Crips and Bloods. I've been called by the Latin Kings. "If you treat them with respect, they'll treat you with respect," he said. "I don't show fear. If you show fear, they'll be all over you. I respect them, and they show me respect." Respect might be the most important part of the relationship between a bondsman and his clients, said Bob Baird, a bondsman in Orlando, Fla., who wrote a book on the subject. "I write up a contract that binds us all together," he said last week. "But a contract is only a way to hedge a bad bet. It doesn't keep you here if you're going to flee." Like most bondsmen, Judleson requires three things before writing a bond: money, a friend or relative outside jail who will vouch for the suspect and collateral. Houses are the best, he said, and he will only rarely accept cars as colatoral. Of the $50 million in bonds he wrote over the past three years, Judleson said he's only had to seize the collateral and send out bounty hunters about 3 percent of the time. Most of the bail jumpers have been found by bounty hunters, he said, but some -- like a Dominican drug dealer who went back to his home country -- he's never seen again. Clients are less likely to flee if he's written a tight contract -- charging a higher fee, or insisting on more collateral, for instance, Judleson said. Tight contracts also earn the respect of judges, he said, who review the contracts before putting the suspect out on the street. "If you're there at two, three o'clock in the morning," he said, "the judges will respect you." With that, Judleson swept back out of the office, heading back to the courthouse to meet a client. |
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Sunday, Oct. 15, 2000 Timothy J. Gibbons Nobody wandered over to the comic section of the store. Perhaps surprisingly for a place named Comic Heaven, the thin trickle of customers roaming this Sunnyside shop Wednesday afternoon seem interested in anything but comics. Even the owner, Yeun Cho, doesn't really care about the slim periodicals. "I don't read them," she said. "It's so far away, so fantastical. I'm not interested in that." Superhero exploits have never captured Cho's interest, even when she opened the shop seven years ago. Her cousin started making out like a bandit -- one not caught by, say, Superman -- after opening a comic shop in Brooklyn, and Cho figured it was a good industry to get into. "At that time, the comics business was growing," she said, explaining why as a non-fan she entered the business. "I don't have any other skills, except in retail. I have dedication and I work hard." Her hard work barely has managed to keep Comic Heaven afloat. "It's not a very successful shop," she said. "Compared to when I started, I'm practically not making anything." The comic business boomed in the mid-1980s, when collectors started bidding wars, searching out rare early books. Those heady days ended in the early 1990s, soon after Cho opened her doors. Some collectors still stop by, she said, mentioning a 1962 Incredible Hulk comic she sold for $50 three years ago, but none of the collectors are long-time customers. The rarer books Comic Heaven still has in stock line the top of the walls, safely encased in plastic bags, with $20 and $30 price tags decorating many of them. Cho doesn't even dream of getting that type of money for them anymore. "Most of them are wallpaper to me," she said. "People don't even want them for free." Cho's fortunes don't look like they'll be rising anytime soon. The comics industry is continuing to nosedive, with analysts saying the industry's largest player, Marvel Entertainment, might be out of business by the end of next year. The company's shares lost 40 percent of their value over the past month, as investors reacted to Marvel's burgeoning debt, which peaked last week at $250 million. The company doesn't forecast making a profit anytime soon; after losing $49 million over the past four quarters, it's likely to see another $20 million bleed away over the next two quarters. In its latest quarterly report, covering activity through the end of June, Marvel's gross profits dropped 13 percent, from $31 million in 1999 to $27 million this year. That gave the company a net loss of $10.5 million this quarter, compared to a loss of $9.1 million a year ago. "I don't think it's going to make it," Warren Ellis, one of the industry's hottest writers, said about the industry during a recent interview. "If you caught me on another day, there might be a different answer, but I just don't see it. The major players just aren't ready for change." Ellis, who has worked on X-Men books for Marvel as well as several creator-owned series, said the industry must make radical changes if it wants to stay viable. "Comics are moving toward becoming a cult art form," he said. "If that happens, comic shops will die." Cho can easily see such a dire end for Comic Heaven. The shop owner was reluctant to discuss her store's financial situation, but called it "dismal," with the money coming in barely covering the $950 she spends in rent each month. "It doesn't even pay for my time," she said. "I'm just happy when I can pay the rent here and at home." The store's profit is the only money the Cho family lives on. Her husband -- like Cho a Korean immigrant -- spends his time writing unsuccessful novels, she said, making Cho the family's sole breadwinner. Despite signing a new seven-year lease last week, Cho isn't very optimistic about the shop's ability to continue brining in money. Her comic book sales are down about 30 percent over the past seven years, and her other products aren't selling very well either. "Back then, when I first opened, I sold comics and sports cards -- and if one didn't sell well, the other would," she said. "Now, sports cards are doing the same as comics. They're both doing bad." Cho has diversified Comic Heaven in other ways, stocking her shelves with toys and Beanie Babies and installing a few video game machines, including a circa 1989 Neo-Geo fighting game with huge pixels. The games may be her most consistent money maker, she said, gesturing at the crowd of kids clustered around the machines on a Wednesday afternoon. "Everything else doesn't sell very well," she said. "Toys are not a big product, Beanie Babies aren't as popular, and nobody collects sports cards anymore. I used to buy (cards) by the case. Now, it's one box. It lasts for weeks." She's had to cut down on her comics inventory as well, ordering fewer titles and fewer issues of each. "I just get the majors," she said. "I don't do all the comics. I don't want to buy stuff that just sits around." Unfortunately, she said, just sitting around is what most of her inventory does. On Wednesdays, when the boxes of comic books arrive at the store, about a dozen customers will show up to buy things. Another 20 or so will filter in throughout the rest of the week. Cho still tries to lure passersby into the small shop, which has a cracked tile floor and walls badly in need of a cleaning. Posters for the Star Wars movie and the Magic: The Gathering game cover up the worst of the dirt. The door is plastered with posters advertising Pokemon and Digimon, Cho's best sellers, while Batman and Superman posters decorate the large front windows, blocking all but the most persistent sunlight from the room. This Wednesday, nobody seemed interested in comics. Most of the customers headed straight to the video games, pumping quarters into the old machine like they might hit the jackpot. Over the course of an hour, two customer asked Cho for sports magazines -- one baseball, one basketball -- and one pre-teen stared at the Witchblade figurines swinging lethal-looking plastic swords scant inches from the head of Curly, the teddy bear Beanie Baby. The only steady stream of customers was an unending trek of elementary school kids buying Pokemon cards with pocketfuls of nickels. Pokemon is also the only thing she sells that captivates Cho's interest. "I don't play it," she said, perhaps a tad defensively. "I just watch the show. I like to watch it." |
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Tuesday, Oct. 31, 2000 Timothy Gibbons By day's end, they didn't even bother shredding the stuff. Not enough time; too much excitement. Instead, the frenzied onlookers high above Monday's parading of the Yankees took to tossing out the window any piece of paper at hand. A flock of photocopier paper drifted in front of the sun, while crumbled handfuls of notebook paper beaned the unlucky on the street. Overhead, arching ribbons of toilet paper unfurled, slightly narrower than the matching curls of dot-matrix printer paper. Any description of the parchment cascade's effect must resort to cliche, calling to mind images of snowdrifts on the corner, volcanic ash falling from the sky, meteorites smashing into people's heads. Suffice it to say that, between wads of newspapers, flecks of confetti and strips of shredded foolscap, the sidewalks seemed carpeted by the efforts of those above. "I don't even know why we do it," city employee John Mondesire <cq> said, leaning away from his sniper's post four floors up, where he stood, poised, with a handful of typing paper. "We're just so happy. It's the Yankees, man," he said. "We're here and we got to do it." Mondesire was one of a group of city employees at ground zero for ticker-taping purpose. The window on the side of their payroll department office looked upon the corner where the parade turned for city hall, giving the onlookers a good view of the action -- and a good launching pad for dead trees. "The city dropped off a big bag of confetti, with instructions to use that," said Joe Montanino <cq>, another employee in the department. "They don't like the toilet paper, but we're good with the confetti and office paper." Much of the department's contribution to the paper rain started as office forms and reports before being shredded by the in-house staff. "It made me feel like part of the action," said Jeffrey Woods, who spent his lunch hours shredding paper for the past month. "Once the Mets clinched it, I started saving paper." Since then, Woods filled around 100 of the pale red shredder bags, packing the office closets with the fruit of his labor. "Usually they pick up all the shredded stuff every few days," Mondesire explained. "This month, I told them to hold off." Workers from the sanitation department still managed to get their hands on the paper, though -- after it fell to the street. City employees got rid of the mess quickly, opening Broadway for traffic three hours after the parade ended. More than 600 sanitation workers picked up 47 tons of paper in the hours after the celebration. "They went around Saturday getting ready," said a department official who saw his building, eight blocks away, receive a dusting of confetti. "They had people welding all the man hole covers shut, so there was no way to put a bomb under the street, and then they got rid of all of the (trash) baskets. They'd be useless there and just be something for people to throw around." Two sanitation buses stationed the workers along the parade route, and the city employees went to work in early afternoon with equipment including 200 blowers, 110 handbrooms and 51 rakes. "They're still working on it now," the official said. ""They got the road open, but a lot of that confetti sticks to buildings. It will be falling off ledges for weeks." Clusters of school children quickly grabbed the confetti that did fall to the ground during the parade, doing their own part to spread the wealth. Scooping ribbons of paper from the sidewalks, youngsters along Broadway took turns drenching their friends and throwing the chaff in the air. "It's part of the fun," Freddy Delarosa said, moments after burying his friend, Jose Hernandez, with shredded payroll files. "This is the first World Series of the millennium and we're going to do it right. We're New Yorkers, and we're fun." Washington Heights residents Delarosa, Hernandez and Alfred Vaquez, all 14, had taken the day off from school to witness the parade, the closest any of them had come to seeing the players. No one minded their decision to play hooky, they said. "I bet you some of the teachers are down here," Hernandez said. "They want to see it too." The boys grabbed their spot along Broadway around 8:30 a.m., 15 minutes earlier than they usually would have arrived at school. "I thought this was more important," Delarosa said. "It was a good choice." Further down the line, other skipping students endorsed that idea. "I told my mom last year that I was coming to the parade if the Yankees had one," 16-year-old Andrea DiMauro said. "It took a while for my parents to see that I was going to go, but I was going to go." Meanwhile, upstairs, Nancy Rivera was doing all she could to cultivate DiMauro's attitude in her daughter.=20 "It was really exciting," the child -- Malorie <cq> Rivera, 10 -- said after watching the victorious players pass below the payroll office. "It's the first time I've seen the parade." Her mother explained to Malorie why seeing the spectacle was so important. "It takes all they've given," Nancy Rivera said about the Yankees, "and it says thank you. It makes them realize how much we appreciate them." |
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Wednesday, Sept. 20, 2000 Timothy J.
Gibbons Some of the homeward-bound commuters almost seemed afraid of Tony Burtin's hoarse shout. "C'mon," he yelled at the crush of people exiting the seven train at 46th Street in Sunnyside. "Six tomatoes for a buck. A dozen peaches. C'mon. I wanna go home." Most turned away, favoring the fruit seller with the same patented New Yorker look they'd give panhandlers. A few, though, just a few, pawed through the produce, handing over crumbled dollar bills as Burtin shoveled their purchases into paper bags. Behind him, co-worker Jerry Costa tossed empty fruit crates into a battered Ecoline van, leaving a few boxes to serve as Burtin's table. It was the end of a long day for the duo. Up at 4 a.m., they had hit the Huntspoint Market, where they loaded the van with fruit and vegetables. But a chilly, rainy Tuesday isn't a good sales day for corner fruit guys. When they arrived at the 46th Street station around 5 p.m., their van was still full. "You can't work in the rain," Burtin said. "No one would stop." The subway tracks run high in the air over the 46th Street stop, their bridge creating a shelter for the hawkers. By 9:30 p.m., most of their fruit was gone. "We buy it cheap and we sell it cheap," Costa said. "It's the only way we can make money." Costa, in his 60s, has been shilling fruit for some 20 years, after taking the business over from his father. "He did it for years," he said, pushing a rain-streaked pair of glasses further up his nose. "It's what I know how to do." Burtin's introduction to the world of corner sales came later, when he retired from factory work about nine years ago. Social security doesn't provide enough to live on, he said, so Burtin, a grizzled 74-year-old, has taken to the streets. On a good day, he makes $30. "I get to stop when I die," he said. "I can't before that." The fruit sellers usually spend most of their days in the Bronx, hanging out in minority neighborhoods where, Burtin said, "the cops don't bother us much." In other areas, run-ins with the police are a constant threat, as the two men are working without any sort of license. "The police harass you all the time," Costa said. Then, gesturing at the three grocery markets on nearby corners, he added, "The fruit store owners complain. They were here first, so they call the cops." "You're always in the jurisdiction of the police," Burtin said. "They're the bosses of the street." The men said they work for a Greek immigrant named Dimitri Dicropolos, who owns the old van and who fronts the money to buy the fruit. The salesmen split the profits with him, as do, Costa said, about a dozen other men. The only way to succeed, the men said, is to have the lowest prices on the street. "If the market's good, so are we," Burtin said. "We buy low and sell low." Tuesday, the men had bought the peaches for $5 a box and the tomatoes for almost double that. Each box held almost three pounds of produce. Such wares sell decently when people stop to browse, but Costa said the only days he really enjoys the work is when they get people's favorite fruit. "Strawberries and cherries," he said. "The day is great when we get strawberries and cherries." |
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Thursday, Nov. 2, 2000 Timothy Gibbons
Trina knew the name, she said. It was on the tip of her tongue. She lit a cigarette with a customer's lighter, leaning over the bar to return it. It didn't help. "Nope," she finally said. "I'm not sure who's running." It's not like politics comes up much, she said, looking around Tailors <cq> Hall, the Irish pub where she works as a bartender. "I don't think I've heard anybody mention it," she said, pulling another round of hard cider. "They talk about the president, but nobody mentions the local races." Across Sunnyside, a small community in northwest Queens, the election seems a chimera, with residents and politicians alike acting anything but excited about Tuesday. Even local candidates rarely stop by this solidly Democratic neighborhood where no hot issues exist to electrify the electorate. Sunnyside's business district -- sprawled along seven or so blocks of Queens Boulevard -- shows little sign of Election Day's nearness, with only one shop displaying political advertisements in its windows. "I'm not even sure what they're running for," said Olga Samlidis, manager of the Oasis deli. "They're our customers here," she explained, pointing at the posters of Assemblywoman Catherine T. Nolan and her challenger, Alice Lemos. "They didn't see their signs here and they asked if they could put some up." Usually, Samlidis said, the deli takes down such signs after a few days. Nolan and Lemos stop by often enough, though, that they're kept in the window. "We make our customers happy," she said. "As long as they keep coming here, we'll keep them up." Not that a sign or two will provide much help for Lemos, admit her supporters. "It's an uphill battle for Republicans," said Ray Murry, commander of Sunnyside's chapter of the Veterans of Foreign Wars and a volunteer on Lemos' campaign. State Assembly District 37, which contains Sunnyside, boasts an overwhelmingly Democratic electorate. About 80 percent of the registered voters -- 28,327 residents -- are registered Democrat, and in 1998, about 10,600 of the voters gave the nod to Nolan, while her Republican challenger tallied 2,625 votes, 2,000 less than the number of blank or void ballots. "It's not really a race people are talking about," Murry said. "There's no issue that's captivated the voters. I don't think people are really thinking about it." This lack of campaigning seems endemic to the area. For example, a local weekly called the Woodside Herald, which covers much of District 37, contains no political ads, while the western Queens edition of the Queens Chronicle has only one, for Garafalia Christea, the Right-to-Life candidate challenging incumbent Joseph Crowley for his Congressional seat. In an article running next to the ad, Christea said she is challenging Crowley, an anti-abortion Democrat, on "his commitment to the pro-life movement." "He isn't pro-life. He claims to be," she told the paper, adding that if he was truly pro-life he would make "legislative moves to support the cause." "I do not consider myself a professional politician," she said. "I'm an activist." The abortion debate isn't likely to drive voters to the polls, said Rita Manton, director of volunteers for the Sunnyside Community Center. "I don't think there really are any hot issues," Manton said. "The seniors will be out voting because they always vote, but there's nothing really driving people to the polls." And those familiar with seniors said the older voters are committed to the local Democratic ticket. "They might split their vote on the federal level," said Rich McGrade, assistant director of the Sunnyside Senior Center. "Some of them don't like Gore, and even traditional Democrats might not support (Senate candidate) Hillary (Clinton)," he said. "Older voters have a hard time understanding how she's put up with what she has." Republican Senate hopeful Rick Lazio, he said, stirs maternal instincts in some of the center's clients, he said. "They see him as a nice young boy," McGrade said. "And they see him as a New Yorker. He can talk about the Brooklyn Dodgers." On the local level, though, votes come down to personality and party affiliation. "Cathy Nolan comes to the center all the time," said Lillie Navarro, a volunteer at the Sunnyside Senior Center. "Even when it's not election time. I don't think I've seen anyone else. Very seldom do we get Republicans visit." Like most of her friends, Navarro said, she plans on voting a straight Democratic ticket come Tuesday. "I've been a Democrat since I was five years old," she said. "My parents were Democrats and my grandparents. Of course I'll vote Democrat." |
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Sunday, Nov. 12, 2000 Timothy J. Gibbons The stately tree in the midst of the old brick buildings reluctantly surrendered to autumn, holding on to a few orange leaves while sending their brown brethren to the ground below. Most of the other vegetation has already capitulated, leaving the maze of gardens a little less colorful than it might be otherwise. But the coming of winter can't disguise the verdant beauty of Sunnyside Gardens, a celebrated and historic group of residences on the edge of Queens. "It's an oasis," said Dante Bietto, a Sunnyside Garden resident who bought a two-bedroom apartment in the row of brick behemoths almost half a century ago. "It's a good place to have a life. No one wants to leave here, it has such an ambiance." Bietto paid $17,000 for his "oasis" residence in the days after World War II, seeking a home close to the bustle of Manhattan that was still a good place to raise a family. "I grew up on the other side of (Queens) Boulevard," he said. "We'd roller-skate here when I was a kid. I wanted my kids to have that." Such a quest has drawn hundreds of residents to the Gardens, a mixture of brick apartments, row houses and green spaces designed in a fit of utopian fervor early this century. The neighborhood has now become one of the more sought-after areas in this part of the city, with vacancies snapped up within days. Sunnyside Gardens takes up 16 city blocks, squeezing 600 two-story row houses, nine apartment buildings and a conglomeration of parking facilities, gardens and day care facilities onto its 77 acres Almost three quarters of the land is open space, devoted to trees, flowers and park benches. Around 1925, philanthropist Alexander M. Bing funded the City Housing Corp., a private development group that built the gardens. He hired Clarence S. Stein and Henry Wright, famed architects of the time, who modeled the new development after Welwyn Gardens, a garden city north of London, England. Created in the mid-1920s, the Manhattan suburb went through a decline in the 1960s as original residents and post-war renters headed for more affluent suburbs. In addition, efforts to keep the historic character of the area intact met resistance in this period, provoking neighborhood fights over curb cuts and picket fences. Deed restrictions tied to the original construction expired in the mid-1960s, opening the doors for changes "inconsistent with the historic quality of the community." "Changes were being made which detracted from the original Garden City plan," explains a publication of the Sunnyside Foundation, an organization formed to protect the area's history. The foundation pressured the revived City Housing Corp. to place new restrictions on the properties and began revitalizing the area by planting new trees, cleaning up the community park and getting street signs installed. Peter Straus' house at 39-01 44th St. has seen the changes in the neighborhood, moving from being a victim of the Depression to its current status as a highly prized corner lot. Straus and Francis Grill bought the two-story row house in 1970 with the help of a $50,000 mortgage. In 1988, Grill moved to another house in the complex, with Straus taking out a $15,000 mortgage to purchase her share. Straus, who now lives in Connecticut, is renting out the property. Straus was the third owner of the corner house since the post-war period, when Samuel and Sadie Rubin bought the building from the North Kew Garden Development Company in 1953 with a $2,300 mortgage. The development company has bought several of the Garden buildings earlier in the year from the Dime Savings Bank, which had picked up the properties when a number of owners went bankrupt during the Great Depression. The Rubins sold their house to Limberto and Nilda Martinez on Aug. 31, 1967, with the new owners taking out a $25,000 mortgage to help pay for it. The Martinezes sold the building to Straus three years later. The property is now appraised at $271,000, a valuation that jumped from $249,000 last year. The increase in the Garden's value began in the late 1970s, when some community activists began burnishing its image. Eventually, the complex gained a spot on the National Register of Historic Places and saw a new sense of community develop. "I think it's a great place to live," said Dorothy Morehead, a Realtor and past president of the Sunnyside Foundation. "The people come together as a neighborhood -- which is what it was designed for." The neighborhood continues to live up to its design as a social experiment, urban planners said. "It was simple physical planning -- the kind of humane, paternalistic, thoughtful layout that dealt clearly and primarily with a better way to live," the New York Times' architectural critic wrote at the time. "Move people to a better place, was the credo, and you will have a better world." Most residents, though, said they weren't looking for a better world -- just a place to call home. They were drawn to the Gardens because of its closeness to the city, its quiet streets and its cozy nature. Joan Chute, for example, lived around the corner in a more traditional apartment until two years ago, when her husband died. "I wanted something smaller, something cozier," she said. "I didn't want a handyman special, but I was looking for something charming." The row house she found met her needs well. "I liked the idea of the history," she said. "It wasn't the main selling point -- I was more concerned with the shape it was in -- but I liked knowing it was there." Chute paid around $200,000 for her place, which she said is now assessed at $270,000. The rising value makes Chute happy, but she said that's not the best part of living in the Gardens. It's the people. "I know my neighbors. I know the neighborhood," she said. "My friends live in other apartments around here. This feels like home." |
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Sunday, Oct. 1, 2000 Timothy J.
Gibbons Alex Gonzalez pulled the sweatshirt over his head and turned around, displaying a bare back decorated in a mosaic of primary colors. Brilliant reds and somber greens stood out in stark relief from his dark skin, with deeper notes of blues and blacks providing highlights. The centerpiece was a depiction of the Virgin Mary, her head bowed and her hands clasped in prayer. "It's something special for me," said Gonzalez, who manages a tattoo parlor in Queens. "That's why I got it on my back. This is something special for me, for my country." Catering to a largely Hispanic clientele, Gonzalez's shop, known as Lupica's Tattoos, does "a lot of Marys on people," he said. "This is what we believe in. "We've got half-price on Virgins," he said. "I do something special for Jesus, too." Having such a specialty may be the tattoo artist's key to success in ethnically diverse Queens. Tattooing is a blend of art and technology, with the best artists mastering the technical demands and then going on to create wearable masterpieces. But to be truly successful, several shop owners said, a tattoo artist must also be a scholar, understanding the meanings and motifs of a range of symbols, catering to the different desires of any ethnic groups that wanders into their shops. "Most of our customers are Spanish," Gonzalez said, paging through books of Aztec symbols and illustrations of the Mexican eagle. "I need to find them something they believe in." This search for a meaning behind the art also motivates "Thailand Mike," the owner of Scratch Tattoo. "I do research," he said, "not just in the magazines, but in books and online. A lot of times, people come in here with an idea. I pull a picture out of it." Lounging outside his shop with a Camel and a can of Grass Syrup, Thailand reeled off lists of styles and formats, some more popular with certain ethnic groups and some appealing to different mindsets. Hispanic customers have opened the artist's eyes to an whole new hagiography, for example, with St. Lazarus and the Lady of Guadeloupe being perennial favorites in his store. Asians often go for pictures tied to their culture, opting for dragons, tigers and koi fish, while black customers chose names, portraits and geometric "tribal" designs. The Hindu god Ganesh has gotten "huge among the art people" over the past few years, Thailand said, with students from the Fashion Institute of Technology often asking for the elephant-headed deity. The differences in style are geographic as well as ethnic. West Coast tattoos tend to be more colorful, reminiscent of the bolder style seen in Europe. New Yorkers often prefer either black and white art or more subtle colored pieces. Asians designs, like dragons, are popular among Hispanics in California, Thailand said, but not in New York. Some ethnic preferences are simply based on what looks better, the artists said. Darker skinned people nee need bolder designs with less detail for the tattoo to show up well, Thailand Mike said, leading darker-skinned Hispanics and black people to chose Aztec and Mayan designs formed of strong geometrical shapes. Gonzalez, whose customers come mainly from Columbia, Puerto Rico, and Mexico, agreed.=20 "The Spanish peoples like black and gray," he said. "White people like colors. Some people with blacker skin want color, but that doesn't work well." New Yorkers who do want a touch of Chinese mythology often show up at Sam's Tattoos, a shop ran by Sam Siswath. Sam's specializes in Asian-themed tattoos, inking people's bodies with the koi fish and dragons Siswath saw around the house growing up. Such creatures are popular with other Asians, he said, but his reputation for doing them well has brought in a growing number of other ethnic groups wanting such designs. "I like to do dragon," he said. "They might take three hours, but they are beautiful." But being able to work on other ethnic groups is one of the reasons Siswath said he opened his store in Queens. "I like to do white, Hispanics, blacks," he said "That's why I'm in this location. Everyone comes here." Still, about 40 percent of his clientele is of Asian decent. "They don't want to trust most American artists," he said. "You don't see a lot of shops that do a lot of Asians, like my shop." Looking for such a comfort level is often the main motivation in choosing a particular tattoo shop, other artists agreed. With tattoos being all but permanent, customers want to make sure the artist understands the symbols deeper meaning before putting needle to skin. That understanding is what Gonzalez tries to convey with his half-price offer on the Virgin Mary. "These are the things I care about," he said, gesturing around his shop, decorated with votive candles and a print of Da Vinci's Last Supper. "I want a lot of people to have the Virgin, but they don't all have the money," he said. "I give it to them cheap. "I make money, so I can have the specials to do something good, to do something spiritual. There's a lot of meaning in this for me." |
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Thursday, Sept. 7, 2000 Timothy J. Gibbons The drums outside the United Nations stopped at 11 a.m. Exactly 11 a.m. Sure, it was a protest. But that didn't mean they had to be uncivilized about it, does it? As 150 world leaders and something like 15 times that many journalists crowded into New York in early September, demonstrators squeezed in behind them, seeking to deliver their message to ... well, many of them seemed unsure of exactly who should be receiving their message -- and of exactly how they should send it. They knew they should be loud. They also knew they shouldn't break any rules. The 91 official Millennium Summit demonstrations scheduled for the week were confined to Dag Hammarskjold Plaza, a large open area across from the United Nations building. Divided into half-a-dozen bays -- what one police office called "pens" -- the plaza was shared by a variety of groups, each competing, in the nicest way possible, for attention. Early Thursday, Sept. 7, the airspace around the square was commandeered by a group of Iranians gathered from across North America. Equipped with a brace of snare drums, a fistful of tambourines and a microphone presided over by a profundo bass and a shrieking soprano, the crowd resembled nothing so much as a high school pep band hooked on politics. "We want Khatami ... out of the U.N!" (Now the boys!) "We want Khatami ... out of the U.N.!" "You get used to it," said a cop who had been standing guard nearby all day, "but I'll be dreaming about it tonight." The music stopped precisely at 11 a.m., when the Iranian's noise permit ran out. "There are many other groups to speak," said Soheila Dashti, one of the vaguely leader-like people in the group. ("We have no leaders," she said. "We are a group of people only."). "We must be respectful," she said. "This is democracy for everyone." The protesters were part of the Iranian National Council of Resistance, a Paris-based group that describes itself as the country's government-in-exile. Many of the demonstrators waved signs depicting Maryam Rajavi, the council's president-elect, and her husband, Massoud Rajavi, chairman of the revolution. "The UN is supposed to represent the people. (Iranian President Mohammad) Khatami represents himself," Dashti said. "The UN is hypocritical, and we don't want that to continue. The seat in the UN belongs to the people." But Dashti wasn't sure what will result from the protest. "We want change," she said. "We don't know how it will come." At the tag end of a summer that has seen protesters hold Seattle, Washington D.C., Philadelphia and Los Angeles hostage, such vagueness seemed de rigueur among the small protest groups scattered throughout lower Manhattan. At Pfizer Pharmaceuticals World Headquarters, for example, the dozen or so folks marching in a circle just wanted to have their voice heard -- by anyone. The demonstrators, mainly members of the gay right group ACT UP!, pressured the company to provide cheaper AIDS drugs in South Africa. "I lost my lover to AIDS and nursed a close friend as he died," said marcher Bob Kohler. "Your anger builds up, but who are you going to be angry at? The disease?" Kohler found an outlet for his anger when he learned that Pfizer was considered a "humane company" and was working with the United Nations on various programs. "What's humane about charging $18 for an AIDS drug?" he said. "No one's saying they can't make a profit, but that's not right. "When you go to a place like South Africa, with the AIDS problem they have, we're within our rights asking them to drop prices," he said. No one, however, seemed exactly sure who the group was asking. "No one's listening at Pfizer," Kohler said, "and we can't get anywhere near the UN. But somebody has to listen." Those somebodies weren't on the streets of Manhattan Thursday afternoon. The most attention received by the marchers was from a slightly befuddled-looking pedestrian who somehow got tangled in their circle while crossing the street and couldn't figure out how to exit. The group was also joined by a Robin Williams look-a-like, complete with suspenders, who marched in line reciting -- by himself -- the Lord's Prayer, blessing the nearby crowd of police officers before heading off. If God is on the side of the big battalions, the cops had no need for Williams' blessing. New York's finest appeared to be the only group out in strength Thursday: at the Pfizer protest, there were as many cops and security guards as marchers, while at a demonstration by the Cuban consulate, protesters were outnumbered by police, who were in turned overwhelmed by the number of media personnel. The only protest group to really turn out in force were Fulan Gong adherents. Members of the sect, all wearing fluorescent yellow shirts, assembled from around the world to protest the treatment other members have allegedly received from the Chinese government. About 300 practitioners were in the plaza Thursday, although organizers said more than 1,500 were on hand the day before. Thursday, hundreds fanned out throughout the area, distributing flyers and newspapers, taking each others' pictures and exclaiming over the architecture of downtown buildings. Their message was a simple one. "We just want to practice our exercises and read the book without the government interfering," said Terente Shindler, who came from Australia for the protest. But, like many protesters, Shindler said he doesn't expect quick action, relating a conversation he had with a protester who marched against communism in Albania 20 years ago. "That went away, but it took time," Shindler said. "We know this will take time, too. "We just want to do what we do," he said. "We don't want to get the government upset." Almost unique among demonstrators, the Fulan Gong group received some public attention, perhaps because of their sheer difference: while other protesters were screaming, they stood silent; while others were marching, they were standing still, meditating; while others tried to show their agitation and anger, the Fulan Gong tried to show peace. One of the city officials in charge of protesters told the group, said Connie Chipkarr, a Fulan Gong practitioner from Canada, that he likes coming by their bay. "He finds it helps him relax," Chipkarr said. It might have been the only place to do so. Elsewhere along the ramparts of Dag Hammarskjold Plaza stood groups advocating criminal sanctions against the United States for bombing Sudan, a handful of people waving signs saying "Lies in Burma" and a man wearing an Ireland World Cup T-shirt, although he gave no indication whether he was for or against it. As the Millennium Summit ended Friday, demonstrators planned on splintering into still smaller groups and scattering throughout the city, starting with an 8:45 a.m. gathering at the Burma mission on East 77th Street and proceeding with protests in support of the Zapatistas, in opposition to the Peruvian government and attacking U.S. military aid to El Salvador, the Philippines and Colombia. "I'm going to try to go to the first one, and I'm definitely going to support the Zapatistas," said Matt O'Mahony, who had come down from Connecticut in search of protests. "I've been a Zapatistas supporter for a long time." That's one of the few things that O'Mahony, who describes himself an anarcho-syndicalist, does supports. He went to the protests against globalization in Washington D.C., and swung by the Republican convention in Philadelphia; Seattle and Los Angeles were on his calendar, but he didn't have the money to get there, he said. The diffuseness of Thursday's protests didn't surprise him. "The movement is so decentralized," he said. "The planning just wasn't there. But the way this is done -- the city is so choppy, so large. It's all over the place." No one he traveled to other protests with planned on bringing their complaints to the streets of New York, he said. "I don't think Seattle will happen again, though I think it needs to happen again," he said. "People who went to D.C. and Philly didn't know protests were going on here. "I don't think they even knew the summit was going on." |
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Saturday, December 4, 1999 Timothy J. Gibbons and Christine Preston DeLand -- Four people including two flight instructors, a commercial pilot and a student were killed in a midair collision between two small planes Friday morning over DeLand Municipal Airport. A two-engine Piper Seminole owned by Phoenix East Aviation and a single-engine Piper Cadet belonging to Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University slammed together about 10:15 a.m. and plummeted to the ground, authorities said. Both planes were believed to be flying in relatively the same direction. The flight instructor on the Embry-Riddle craft was identified as Todd Landry, 22, of Meraux, La. His student was Eliza Lewis, 18, of Windham, Maine. On the Phoenix East plane were Nicholas Simatos, 51, of Daytona Beach; and Abdulla Alhaj, 43, of Dubai, one of the emirates making up the United Arab Emirates on the Persian Gulf. An official with the National Transportation Safety Board said late Friday it was too soon to know what caused the crash. Both planes were on instructional flights, said Tim Monville, an air safety inspector with the NTSB in Miami. According to Monville, the Phoenix aircraft had filed a flight plan to perform a "nonprecision instrument approach" to a DeLand landing strip. This type of approach is typically used in bad weather, for which the pilot may have been training. Weather conditions in Daytona Beach, where both flights originated, were not bad, authorities said, with 10 miles of clear visibility and a ceiling of 4,800 feet, at which point clouds started. As the Phoenix East plane approached the DeLand strip, the pilot canceled the approach, saying he planned on doing "air work." The plane was last seen on radar at an altitude of 600 feet. Meanwhile, the Embry-Riddle plane had planned to fly from Daytona Beach to Leesburg about a 90-minute flight. "The key now is to find out what the Embry-Riddle plane was doing before the crash," Monville said. He also had questions about radio contact between the pilots and the air control tower in Daytona Beach. "This close to the airport, they typically would be talking to someone," he said. The Phoenix East craft went down in wetlands about 500 yards from a ballfield at the Sperling Sports Complex near the northwest corner of the airport. The Embry-Riddle plane plummeted into a marshy area about a quarter- mile away, 200 yards from the intersection of Marsh Road and Matt Fair Boulevard. Nearby residents and employees of businesses at the airport reported hearing a loud noise and seeing smoke and falling parts. "I heard this collision and looked up," said Jose Melendez, who lives and works at airport-based Skydive DeLand. "The planes were falling, and the wings were falling off the bodies." Moments after the crash, Melendez said, it was clear the damage would be severe. "It was like obvious death," he said. "There was no way anybody could survive the impact." Melendez and a friend, Marko Ivankovic, grabbed a video camera and headed out to the wrecks, getting there before police did. At the Phoenix East plane, Ivankovic said, he could see clear evidence of severe trauma. "I saw blood and bones all over the instrument panel and the inside of the cockpit," he said. "The plane was driven into the ground." The planes had both taken off from Daytona Beach International Airport earlier Friday morning. Both flying schools use the DeLand airport for "touch-and-go" exercises, in which the pilot touches down, then takes off without stopping. However, DeLand police spokesman Cmdr. Steve Edwards said, I'm not sure if that is what they were doing." All four victims were found strapped in their seats amid the wreckage of their airplanes, Edwards said. Earlier, witnesses who thought they saw a falling body had probably seen pieces of the engine, he said. The victims in the Embry-Riddle plane were removed by mid-afternoon, he said, and the other two were removed in the evening. In a statement Friday afternoon, Phoenix East Aviation stated both men on the company's plane were highly experienced" pilots. Simatos was a senior instructor at the Daytona Beach-based flight school. Alhaj was a first officer for a major airline. Friends of Lewis who rushed to the crash scene when she did not attend class Friday morning said she was more experienced than most students, having flown for years before attending the college. "She was the type of person everybody knew," one friend said. Both of the student fliers, Lewis and Alhaj, were pilot-rated. Alhaj was training to receive his airline transport pilot certificate, and Lewis was enrolled in the commercial single-engine land rating course as a first semester freshman at Embry- Riddle. Attempts to retrieve the Embry- Riddle plane were hampered by the marshy conditions. The woods, nearby residents said, are snake-infested and very swampy. Around noon, the Volusia County Sheriff's Office dive team arrived to help extract the Phoenix plane and victims. The team, Edwards said, helped attach equipment to the Phoenix plane, which was mostly under water. Late Friday, the DeLand police department called in a tow truck usually used to haul tractor-trailer rigs to pull out the Phoenix plane. Although the area around the crashed planes was covered with fuel, authorities said there was no danger of fire. The state Department of Environmental Protection came to the scene to help handle the spill. A skydiver parachuted into the cordoned-off crash scene around 4 p.m. He didn't disturb anything, Edwards said, but was taken into custody. The parachutist was wearing a helmet camera and appeared to be trying to videotape the wreckage, he said. Embry-Riddle students standing near the crash scene said they were grief-stricken. The mood on campus was similar, school officials said. "I think people (on the campus) are in a state of shock," said spokeswoman Lisa Ledewitz. "It's a tragic event and we do have counselors on standby who are meeting with students, faculty and staff who wish to use their services." The flight instruction department was shut down for the day, students said. Friday morning's mostly clear skies provided good flying conditions, said Andrew McGee, an Embry-Riddle senior who showed up at the crash scene. The DeLand airport is popular for training flights, McGee said, because it doesn't have a control tower and sees fewer airplanes. "It's less congested and more flexible," he said. "But it could be less safe because of that flexibility." Edwards said no one could remember a midair crash at the DeLand airport before Friday. The last fatal crash at the airport took place in 1987. In Friday's crash, the NTSB investigator said it would take two to three days to piece together the planes. A report should be finalized in about six months. |
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Tuesday, February 1, 2000 Timothy J. Gibbons DELTONA -- A meeting of the Edgewater Condominium association devolved into chaos over the weekend, with two senior citizens coming to blows in the lobby of the Deltona Civic Center. The reorganization meeting, everybody agreed, was raucous from the get-go. The participants seem fuzzy on exactly why, though, with no one able to name a particular topic that set off people. "The president kept getting booed because he wouldn't let anyone speak," Joseph Schirano, 60, said. "I was one of the ones yelling." Accounts differ as to what happened next. As soon as the meeting adjourned, Schirano told the sheriff's department, former association president Anthony LaRocca made a beeline for him. "He just lost his cool," Schirano said. "He was so mad because everyone was booing him. He handed his papers to his wife and tried to drag me outside." Carol Davis then stepped in to break up the fight, she told authorities. "He (LaRocca) was like a madman, he was so red-faced," she said. "This one little old lady was hysterical. He looked like the devil." Davis said she tapped LaRocca on the shoulder and he started hitting and choking her, according to sheriff's reports. But LaRocca, 65, told authorities he was just trying to leave the building when Schirano and Davis attacked him. "The meeting was just about being adjourned, and I was going to confer with the board members when, all of a sudden, the you-know-what hit the fan," he said when contacted Monday. "I was attacked by several females at least five. "It appeared to be a setup of some sort," he said. "I have a reputation for being a gentleman. That's why they sent the women after me. They knew I'd not fight back." But Davis, 51, said she got involved only to help Schirano, who is a half-foot shorter than LaRocca. "When he turned around, he hit me in the face," said Davis, who said she has had medical problems with her jaw hinge. It was the worst possible place to hit me." Then, she said, LaRocca started choking her as well. "I was kicking and punching everywhere trying to get loose," she said. "When somebody's got you by the throat, what are you going to do?" LaRocca, who used to be a school principal in New York City, said he's seen women fight before. "They were trying to hit me you-know-where. I'm black- and-blue on my thighs," he said. "I've seen riots of this nature in the school system. I know how to take care of myself." The group that targeted him has long been disruptive, LaRocca said. During his decade as president ofthe association, he's made several changes, he said, modifications that have required a two-thirds vote of condominium owners. Schirano, Davis and others were in the minority on several of those votes, he said. "This has been rumbling for a while," he said. "This last few months have gotten out of hand." After things got out of hand Saturday, sheriff's deputies gave all the parties involved in the altercation referral cards that require them to meet with the State Attorney in a week. In situations like this, with conflicting stories, the Sheriff's Office does not issue citations. According to the Sheriff's Office, Schirano showed no injuries. Davis had bruises to her face, deputies said, and LaRocca had a small scratch on his face and bruises on his left leg. All three said that they are considering civil suits against other parties. Despite the altercation, LaRocca said that he'll continue in his current elected position as vice president. He'll also continue building the consulting firm he recently founded. I'll be doing lecturing and seminars for corporations," he said. "I'll be teaching them how to deal with difficult people without becoming part of the problem. "It takes two to argue," he said. "If you don't argue, there's no problem." |
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Saturday, December 11, 1999 Timothy J. Gibbons ORANGE CITY -- Christmas is being stolen from the Grinch. While the Whos in Who-ville gather in song, a self-admitted crotchety old man is being forced from his mobile home park. Park residents say he generates anything but peace on earth, good will toward men. The eviction notice 82-year-old Tony Kann received this week states he "continually violates the peaceful enjoyment of the mobile home park by its residents." The week before Christmas, Kann has been ordered to pack up his decrepit trailer and haul it away from the Orange City Mobile Home Park. But he says he's not going. "I have absolutely no intention of getting out," he said. "They'll have to call the sheriff to put me out." Kann insists he'll celebrate the holidays at home, but park manager Nancy Johnston says he won't. "He has to leave," she said. "I would like Mr. Kann to pack his things up and not make me go any further." His eviction raises two questions: Is it right to kick out an old man no matter how cranky a week before Christmas? On the other hand, how much should a neighborhood put up with before getting rid of a troublemaker? Make no mistake: Kann is a troublemaker. "People might find me a little difficult," he said with obvious relish, showing off an old license plate proclaiming "1 SOB." "I've always been individualistic. I'm well aware that I'm a lot different than most people," he said. "I do a lot of things just to be different from other people." Sometimes this is a good thing. When he was 59, for example, Kann returned to college to earn a third bachelor's degree. But recently, park residents say, he's gone overboard. "I try to just stay away from him," said Ralph Adams, whom Kann often berates. "If he keeps going on like he does, there will be a `for sale' sign on my trailer." Another resident said she's selling her trailer because of Kann. "He tries to mind everybody's business," the woman wrote to the manager. "And he's called my husband every name in the book." Kann moved to the park in 1996 after pleading no contest to a battery charge. Although only given probation, he spent 131 days in jail before the trial because, he said, he "smarted off to the judge." The charge, he said, stemmed from an attack by his wife, who divorced him and stripped the house while he was in jail. So he moved into the mobile home park, paying $10,000 for the 30-year-old trailer he calls home. "I gave him a break when he got out of jail," Johnston said. "Now I regret it." As do the neighbors. To their consternation, the decorated World War II veteran admits to being open with his opinions, ridiculing one man who didn't serve in the military, getting involved in other residents' family conflicts and calling the manager an "old bat." This is why Johnston said she made the hard decision to evict him. "It hurts me to do so, but I have to bring it to closure." Legally, there's no problem with the park evicting the curmudgeon. The only thing Kann is entitled to for his $210 rent payment is one month's use of the lot. "If the landlord wants him out and gives 15 days' notice, that's it," said Suzanne Ronneau, head of the Daytona Beach-based Volunteer Lawyers Project. "The tenant doesn't have any rights if the landlord wants him out," she said. "If the landlord doesn't want you there anymore, there doesn't have to be a reason." Florida is known as a pro-tenant state, but the law gives most of the cards to landowners, said attorney Steven Gosney. Mobile home evictions have the strictest guidelines because "you have two property interests clashing," Gosney said. "Even though it's a mobile home, it's a semi-permanent structure." Moving a mobile home costs several thousand dollars. Kann said his old home would probably fall apart if he tried to move it. "Anyway, I don't even know where the wheels are," he said. Not that he's looking. Whatever happens, Kann said, he'll be celebrating Christmas sitting on the same beat-up couch he's occupied in years past. "You don't think I'll actually be leaving on the 20th," he said, incredulous when asked about his holiday plans. "I'll be sitting here watching it on television. "What judge is going to kick me out before Christmas?" |
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Tuesday, February 8, 2000 Timothy J. Gibbons ORLANDO -- His comrades in arms said their final goodbyes Monday morning to Orlando police Officer George S. DeSalvia, bidding him farewell just yards away from where he was fatally shot. More than 3,500 individuals people crowded into First Baptist Church of Orlando for a memorial service that drew fellow law enforcement officers from as far away as Massachusetts. A sea of disparate uniforms and somber suits filled the main sanctuary at one of the few area churches large enough to contain the throng. Despite the location, DeSalvia was memorialized with a traditional Catholic ceremony funeral Mass conducted by the Most Rev. Norbert M. Dorsey, bishop of Orlando. The funeral Massceremony, which included readings from Psalms and the Book of Job, reminded the congregation of the meaning they can draw from the officer's death. "He laid down his life for others," Dorsey said after the ceremony. "That's his legacy. He was willing to give his life in service to others. We can do that, too. We can live out our love for others." DeSalvia, 29, was shot in the head during a traffic stop around 1:30 a.m. Thursday. His partner, Edward Diaz, was wounded in the shooting and is in stable condition at Orlando Regional Medical Center. Preceded by motorcycle-mounted officers and surrounded by horses including one symbolically left riderless the hearse carrying the fallen officer arrived at the church shortly after 10 a.m. Eight uniformed pallbearers followed by skirling bagpipes playing When the Battle is Over" brought the casket into the church, while a police officer and DeSalvia's sister-in-law escorted his widow behind it. DeSalvia's 256 days on the Orlando police force were remembered by one of his trainers during the ceremony, which included a tear-filled speech by a man who served with DeSalvia in the Army. The slain man was on his way to fulfilling the goals he laid out in his application to the force, said Officer Patrick Guckian, who helped train DeSalvia. "So few people touch our lives in ways that will always be remembered," he said. "Though I only knew him for a short while, Sal was one of those type of people I will never forget." In his application, DeSalvia said he "wanted to be a police officer for as long as I can remember." "It's sometimes a not-so-glamorous job and the hours can be long, but it's a job I've been passionate about," DeSalvia wrote, mentioning that both his uncle and father had been New York City police officers. "I do prefer to be out with the public." Those dreams of serving the public public service were ones DeSalvia and his friend Michael Daughtery discussed when they were stationed together in Georgia. "You lost a loyal member of your force," Daughtery, a police officer in Milton, told the crowd. You lost a loyal servant to the city of Orlando. I lost a true friend." DeSalvia will be eulogized again today when his family holds a fu neral at San Pablo Catholic Church in Northport, closer to where many of his family members live. DeSalvia will then be buried in the Venice area. The service for DeSalvia, the first Orlando officer killed in the line of duty since 1968, was held but a stone's throw from the scene of the shooting. The somber site, marked by two white crosses, has attracted flowers and votive candles some left by grieving relatives, others by community members who said they never met the man. "It shows how much police offi cers mean to the community," said Shane Smith, a former Marine who said he attended the memorial service to honor a fellow veteran. "People should realize how important they are every day." In addition to his widow, Cynthia, DeSalvia leaves behind three young children. |
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Friday, November 5, 1999 Timothy J. Gibbons DEBARY -- A marina owner accused of hiring a transsexual trucker to kill his stepmother left jail Thursday after posting a $1 million bail bond. Donald Bauerle Jr., of DeBary, is charged with conspiracy to commit murder. Police say he agreed to pay his friend, Lionel Beak bane, of Kansas, $250,000 to kill Bauerle's stepmother, Janet Brush. The 6-foot-2, 200-pound Beakbane planned on using the money to get a sex change operation and was already taking hormone shots when he was arrested in September. Bauerle, 49, turned himself in to the Martin County Sheriff's Office on Wednesday and was held overnight. Thursday morning, he asked for a lower bail, but that request was denied. Bauerle, who owns Highbanks Marina & Camp Resort in DeBary and developed a San ford business park, has been plotting for years to kill his stepmother, police said. Bauerle believes his 64-year-old stepmother killed his father in 1995 and is upset she receives a $10,000-a-month payment from his father's trust fund, said Wayne Ivy, a Florida Department of Law Enforcement special agent who testified during Beakbane's appearance in a Kansas court. I've been a police officer for a little over 19 years," Ivy said. "This is one of the oddest cases I've ever worked. I hope it is the oddest." Beakbane, police said, made one attempt to kill Brush in July. Dressed as a woman, Beakbane approached Brush at her home in Sewalls Point, a wealthy enclave near Port St. Lucie. He brought her flowers he said were from a secret admirer. Beakbane wore surgical gloves as well as a dress and planned on shooting the woman then, authorities said, but got spooked by how close the houses were. The environment wasn't as conducive as he thought it would be," Ivy said. "He chose to come back later." Later never happened. The 49-year-old trucker was arrested while preparing to embark on an over-the-road haul to California, where police said he planned to buy a silencer and then try again. Authorities in Indian River County were tipped off to the conspiracy by a woman who told the Indian River County Sheriff's Office that Beakbane offered her $10,000 if she would provide him an alibi at the time he killed Bauerle's stepmother. Bauerle and Beakbane have known each other since they attended high school in Fort Lauderdale, Ivy said. Police said the two began discussing the crime about a year after Bauerle's father, Donald Sr., died. Around that time, Brush filed suit against sued her late husband's trust, of which both Brush and Bauerle Jr. are co-trustees. If Brush died, Bauerle Jr. would be the sole trustee. The trust, Brush said, was supposed to buy an annuity that would pay her $10,000 a month for life, but Bauerle Jr. wanted to pay her the money each month and not tie up the funds in an annuity. He countersued to remove her as a trustee. That case is pending. Bauerle, administrator of his father's estate, also sued his stepmother for failing to pay back a $50,000 loan she received from his father four months before his death. That pending suit, which also is pending, states Brush never repaid the money. Bauerle "adamantly denies" any involvement with Beakbane's plans for murder, said Robert Buonauro, his attorney. "We're looking forward to our day in court," he said. "We're going to come down to a situation where my client's credibility will win out in the end." If convicted, Bauerle faces up to 30 years in prison. Beakbane pleaded no contest to the conspiracy charge and agreed to cooperate with police as part of a plea agreement. He was not promised a reduced sentence, authorities said, and faces up to 15 years in prison, but his sentencing is on hold pending Bauerle's case. |
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Sunday, November 21, 1999 Timothy J. Gibbons Three more Volusia County residents took their own lives last weekend. Their deaths brought the county's 1999 suicide total to 72, a number that shocks local experts and places the county far ahead of national and state averages. "It's outrageous this year," said one employee in the Medical Examiner's Office. "They just keep coming in." Suicide, by a variety of means and methods, pops up every few pages in the list of cases compiled by the county medical examiner. It's a startling total, surpassing the number of county homicides and placing the county well above the national average of 11.6 suicides per 100,000 people. Volusia County has seen 17.4 suicides per 100,000 people so far this year, based on a population of about 414,000. The county's figures also top the state's, which saw 2,156 suicides in 1998, a rate of 14.3 suicides for every 100,000 people. Flagler County's rate isn't far behind Volusia's. Although the county saw only seven suicides last year and the same number so far this year its smaller population puts its rate at 16.1 suicides per 100,000 people in 1998 and 14.9 this year. Volusia is also well on its way to the number it posted last year, when 77 people killed themselves. The problem has become more visible this year following the recent rash of teen-age suicides and railroad deaths. Each of the past four months has seen an increase in suicides from the same month a year ago, with 16 suicides in August, 17 in September and 14 in October. Four people have already killed themselves this month. "It really looks like a trend," said Dr. Tom Beaver, medical examiner for Volusia and Seminole counties. "There's a disproportionate number of suicides, but it's too early for me to tell why." It's also too early to tell how high this year's figures will go. Officials are somewhat heartened by the fact that, contrary to popular belief, few Volusia County residents committed suicide around the holidays last November and December. But post-holiday statistics are still a cause for concern. Seven people killed themselves in January 1999, compared to 11 the previous January. In addition to having a higher rate of suicides than the state and nation, Volusia County also differs in the ages of its victims. Nationally, 50 percent more people over 65 kill themselves than the population in general. Here, most suicide victims are middle aged, with the peak age groups being 30-to-39 year olds and 40-to-49 year olds. The county's suicide rate has Beaver so concerned that he plans on presenting his findings to the County Council early in 2000. The goal, he said, is to get community leaders interested in addressing the problem. "I'm in the process of putting it together," he said. "I don't have any answers." Suicide is much more difficult for a community to deal with than homicide, Beaver said. "I'm anticipating a negative response from community leaders," he said. "The problem is very hard and they don't know how to deal with it." Many times, local experts said, public organizations don't like talking about suicide. "They have an attitude of ignore it and it will go away,'" said Rita Repp, leader of a support group for survivors of suicide. "That's so backwards." Some local experts hope they can help offer suggestions. "People are finally recognizing that this has been a problem for a long time," said Laura Meyer, founder of SPAN Florida, a burgeoning local chapter of a national organization. "It's not in the forefront yet, but we're trying to bring it out in the open," she said. DeLand-based SPAN Florida the Suicide Prevention Advocacy Network incorporated last month. The grass-roots organization tries to get state and local governments to put prevention plans in place. Individuals and communities must change their attitudes, said Repp, whose ASSURE support group is affiliated with the county Mental Health Association. "There really needs to be a better understanding of mental health and depression," she said. "We need to start in the grammar schools and teach people how to face life." Similar movements are progressing on a national level. "We must promote public awareness that suicides are preventable," Surgeon General David Satcher said in a speech on the issue over the summer. "We must remember that prevention begins at home, and the work of suicide prevention must be done at the community level." Getting official community leader involvement is perhaps the best way to "stem the flow" of suicide, experts said. "If you communicate that you don't want to hear about it," said Dr. Lanny Berman, executive director of the American Association of Suicidology, "you're communicating that you don't give a damn about people. That creates suicidal behavior." A community that's willing to help is more likely to have residents seek out assistance, he said. "The more politicians you have behind it, the more public education you have, the more the rates tend to fall," Berman said. Even if suicide rates don't jump during the holidays, Berman said it's vital that the problems of depressed people are noted, especially this time of year. "They should be aware of people feeling lonely and isolated," he said. They should be attentive to any communications. They should be aware of behavior. Suicidal behavior is almost always preceded by other behavior." With Volusia County's more transient population, it's especially vital that community support is available, experts said. "People that are in a depressed state really need to be able to reach out for help and talk to somebody," Repp said. Repp got involved with ASSURE when her son committed suicide 15 years ago. After a divorce, her son had moved to Las Vegas and "didn't really have a support system." "People who are new to the area don't have a root system," she said. They need to know someone cares." And that, Beaver said, is what he hopes the county can provide. "The community can pull together to stem the tide," he said. "The problem is significant enough that we need to take a look. "Volusia County has a lot of community strength. Some of these suicides can be prevented."
Sidebar: Individuals contemplating suicide can contact: Act Corporation's 24-hour crisis line: 255-7384. Halifax Medical Center/ Psychiatric Center 24-hour crisis line: 254-4080. The national hope line network has a 24-hour national hot line: (888)SUICIDE (784-2433). Other support and advocacy groups: SPAN Suicide Prevention Advocacy Network - c/o the Mental Health Association of Volusia County: 252-5785. ASSURE, a support group for those who have lost loved ones to suicide: 252-5785. |
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Monday, February
15, 1999 Timothy J. Gibbons ORANGE CITY -- File it in the "be careful what you wish for" department. Iris Scheff, a city employee, was standing on the steps of City Hall around 6 p.m. last week when the bell in the building's cupola exploded into a tumultuous tintinnabulation. The bell pealed out ring after ring, continuing for several minutes. "After it finished," Scheff said, "I thought, I wish I had counted. I would have liked to have known how many rings. "Lo and behold, it started again." This time, it rang 472 times. "I was wondering if people were going to start showing up for a town meeting," Scheff said jokingly. The bell has been acting wacky for the last year and a half, said Orange City resident Al Blue, who approached the City Council about the situation at its last meeting. "It's an ongoing problem," he said. "It starts on its own volition. After it goes berserk, then it doesn't ring at all for some number of days or weeks." When the bell, audible blocks away, tried to set its own world record last week, it was finally stopped by city firefighters, who used a ladder to get to the timepiece. The problem, Blue said, is that nobody is actually responsible for fixing the bell when it goes clapper-happy. "There's nobody to contact when it occurs," he said. The bell is supposed to ring out the number of the hour on the hour and ring once on the half hour. When things go haywire, it lets out a random number of rings whenever it takes the notion. Residents have noticed the clock slipping for a while, but last week's display was unusual. The city has been looking at fixing the bell for more than a year, City Manager Bruce Behrens said. Options are somewhat limited, though, because of City Hall's status as a registered historical site. "(The bell's) an historic asset to the city and it provides the ambience of a quaint community," Blue said. "It provides the atmosphere and quaintness for the city." Although officials considered upgrading the bell's inner workings to an electronic system, experts have recommended retaining and repairing the original system. The bell was installed when City Hall was built in 1929. "It's an old bell," Behrens said. "It's an old system." Blue said he and a friend who has experience at bell repair have volunteered to help fix the bell an offer which Behrens said the city is considering. But the duo aren't promising anything yet, since neither they nor city officials have actually looked at the workings of the bell. |
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Sunday, May 2, 1999 Timothy J. Gibbons DELTONA -- "Pipe bombs are some of the easiest and deadliest ways to kill a group of people or destroy a few things. First off, we will talk about the pipes. Second will be the explosives and last will be the shrapnel." Only 23 seconds after connecting to the Internet, these cyber-instructions burst onto the screen. A point-by-point description of the proper way to construct a bomb followed the Web page's opening paragraph, detailing where to get gunpowder and how to buy pipes without arousing suspicion. "Shrapnel is very important if you want to kill and injure a lot of people," the site advised. And, when explaining the proper way to remove gunpowder from fireworks: "Be sure you have plenty of newspapers down because accidents do happen and if you have a big black stain on yer carpet, mom and dad might ask some questions." The easy availability of such information, especially via the Internet, is garnering attention and blame in the aftermath of the killings at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo. "There's too much information getting out," said Lt. Joseph McDonald, commander of the Volusia County Sheriff's Office Division of Special Services, which includes the county's bomb squad. "I think it's something this country needs to start worrying about." After the Littleton shootings, experts speculated that kids could get bomb-making information on the Internet in an "hour or two." That would be generous. A casual search of the Web on Friday turned up general information on pipe bombs in less than 30 seconds. Detailed instructions several versions of the infamous "Anarchist Cookbook," for example were procured in about 70 seconds. Within seven minutes, a reporter tracked down precise instructions on the construction of bomb detonators and portions of the U.S. Army field manual on explosives and demolitions. The availability of such information opens the door for more deadly violence, experts fear. "I think we're going to see more and more of this type of tragedy as information is made available," said David Burt, president of Filtering Facts, an Oregon-based nonprofit organization that promotes the use of filtering software to limit access to certain sites, especially on library computers.Filters are programs that do not allow Web surfers access to certain sites based on content. But the information is already available, say free speech advocates, who believe people like Burt are proposing censorship. "People think there's some great evil out there," said Shari Steele, an attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a San Francisco-based Internet civil liberties group. "(The Internet is) just a new communication tool." Indeed, much of the information available on the Web came from books, and many sites include bibliographies, providing a guide to more in-depth and perhaps more accurate information. Such books are easy to obtain. A search at the Amazon.com online bookstore turned up more than 20 books on bomb making, including an $11 guide to making C-4 explosives that visitors to the site wrote they wanted banned. "It's because of books like this that kids are able to learn how to make bombs,'' one visitor wrote, "and go on murder sprees like the one that occurred in Littleton, Co. This book should be restricted to adults only.'' You don't even need an Internet connection to obtain the books: Local book shops can have them in hand in a week. Although the Volusia County library system doesn't stock such books, the Denver public library, near Littleton, carries "The Poor Man's James Bond" and the "Anarchist Cookbook," Burt said, tomes that include, among other information, bomb-making recipes. The presence of such books leads free-speech advocates to resist the singling out of the Internet. "The knee-jerk reaction of condemning such material on the Internet is really scary," Steele said. "The Internet shouldn't be treated differently than any other media. We don't limit our speech to only that that sane, capable, responsible people can hear. It's sad that people are so willing to immediately give up their liberties." Burt, however, argues that shielding children isn't censorship, but recognition of differing maturity levels. Both the Littleton and Denver public libraries offer unshielded Internet access, he said., which allows children too much access for their age. "They think that minors have the same rights adults do," Burt said about libraries with unshielded computers. "They say there should be no discrimination based on age. That's just ridiculous. Children are not adults." But filters aren't the way to make sure children are raised properly, civil libertarians say good parenting is. The presence of bomb threats on the personal Web page of one of the Colorado shooters, for example, should have been a warning flag for his parents, Steele said. "There is information out there that children shouldn't have," she said. "But rather than filters, I'd prefer there to be rules. As a parent, I would hope you would be teaching your children in such a way you can trust them." Trusting or not, filter proponents say, children just shouldn't have easy access to some information. "I can't think of a valid reason why children should have access to info about pipe bombs," Burt said. "I don't see any valid arguments." Nevertheless, Steele said prohibiting the flow of information isn't the answer. ``The only time it gets to be a problem is when people explode bombs in school,'' she said. ``It's not a speech issue, it's a parenting issue.'' The participation of parents is something that experts on all sides agree on. "Parents should be paying closer attention to what their kids are doing. Parents need to be a little more observant, a little more inquisitive," said McDonald, the local bomb squad leader.``We have to have time for the kids.'' Webmasters who provide bomb- making information are not unaware of their readers, but see their sites as more informative than destructive. "For all I know, my site could have helped them hurt innocent people," one page read, referring to the Littleton killers. "By entering this site, you are promising me you will never hurt anyone with this information. I made this so people can learn and create, not destroy." Another site railed against those who blame ``the Evil Internet which fosters these ideas.'' "If information (or lack thereof) on building bombs is the only thing keeping kids from killing each another, than the shooting is only a prelude of what is to come,'' the webmaster wrote. ``I assure you that (throwing) away our First Amendment rights is not the solution to our problems.'' Another site asked surfers to ``be responsible'' with the information provided. "I want you to remember the sadness felt by millions," another webmaster wrote, "and promise yourself never to involve yourself in hurting other people. Be responsible and stay cool." But experts don't see such pleas as effective. "They don't do anything," McDonald said. "I don't think anybody even reads disclaimers." |
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Friday, February 4, 2000 Timothy J. Gibbons DELTONA -- King Chicken began his journey to the underworld Thursday. After month of preparation, pupils at Discovery Elementary finally laid to rest a chicken perhaps one of the most honored chickens in the history of poultry.
For the bird wasn't simply buried. Before going into the ground, it received a full regime of ancient burial rites. In a ceremony pleasing, no doubt, to both Osiris, the Egyptian god of the dead, and Anubis, the god of embalming, two third-grade classes at Discovery Elementary spent part of their morning anointing, spicing and wrapping a collection of birds destined, they hope, to become chicken mummies. The project, a brainchild of teacher Deborah Marino, was a way for the pupils to learn more about ancient Egypt and the way the dead were treated. If the third-graders were any indication, it involved a lot of cinnamon. The tang of that spice combined with thyme, rosemary and parsley filled the classroom, as the youngsters split into various groups, rubbing desiccated chicken carcasses with oil and perfuming them with herbs. Then, the birds were wrapped in cloth strips, placed in cardboard sarcophagi emblazoned with monikers like Cleo, King Tut and King Kentucky Fried Chicken and buried behind the school. Most of the work done Thursday will not actually help preserve the bodies. The real work of mummification was done by the 40 pounds of salt poured over the poultry since mid-November. The salt sucked the moisture out of the birds, drying out the flesh so decay could not set in. When the project started, the children changed the coating on the seven birds almost every day. Over the Christmas break, several parents took the birds home with them to continue the practice. But the drying process, which Marino said would take up to 70 days for a human, was completed Thursday. Now the birds had to be cleaned, anointed and wrapped. Despite having played with the birds for months, the youngsters were still eager to get their hands on and in the chickens. Wrinkling their noses at the pungent smell emanating from the opened plastic bags, the children scrambled for the salted flesh. Eagerly, the third-graders brushed and patted the chickens, striving to remove all traces of salt from the birds' skin. Marino, meanwhile, showed her group the easy way of cleaning a dead chicken: using the sink and then quickly drying the bird. The manhandling ... er, chicken- handling ... wasn't quite as respectful, perhaps, as the Egyptians' mummification process. One pupil, for example, was proud of having shoved his hand into the chicken's body cavity, a claim probably never made by Anubis' priests. "It was all wet and gooey inside," Ramon Roberts said. "But no one else was doing it, so I had to." The smell of decaying chicken was quickly masked by the spicy odors of thyme, cinnamon, rosemary and parsley. The result: a bird that looked and smelled like perfumed roadkill. The birds were buried in separate graves behind the school. Next year around this time, Marino will gather the pupils and unearth the chickens. When Marino did a similar project with a class a few years ago, two of the four birds "survived" the process, coming out of the ground a few years later as odorless bundles of chicken bones and flesh. "If it's not done right," she said, we'll find out next year." |
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Saturday, April 22, 2000 Timothy J. Gibbons DELAND -- A 77-year-old woman was found murdered in her home Friday morning, stunning residents in her quiet country club community. Madeline A. McDonough was found around 7:30 a.m. by a neighbor who regularly walked with her. When the neighbor came by Friday, she noticed newspapers lying in the driveway, authorities said. When no one answered the door, the neighbor used a spare key McDonough had given her to enter the house. Inside, she later told other neighbors, she found the 5-foot, 2-inch McDonough on her bed bludgeoned to death and the house "turned upside down." The Sheriff's Office would not confirm the cause of death until after the autopsy, which is scheduled for this morning. The victim's body showed signs of trauma, authorities said, and the death is "100 percent" a homicide. Investigators would not confirm if anything had been stolen from the house, although they said they were canvassing local pawn shops. Late Friday, the Sheriff's Office released a composite of a man they would like to speak with in connection with the murder. The man is in his 20s, 5 feet 5 inches to 5 feet 8 inches tall with a medium build. "He's an individual who had been seen in the neighborhood sometime prior to the murder," said sheriff's spokesman Gary Davidson. "He's not necessarily a suspect. He's just someone we would like to identify and talk to to see if he could give us any information." McDonough had lived alone in the one-story brown-roofed house since her husband died nine years ago. Neighbors said they last saw her Wednesday afternoon. Her death sent shock waves through the community. "I'm terrified for my children," said one resident, who declined to give her name. "How can I let them ride their bikes around the corner?" Another resident said she loaded her pistol once she heard the news. We're all upset by it," she said. That type of thing has never happened here." McDonough was well known in the area, neighbors said, with a cheery wave and smile for those she saw on her regular morning walks. "I can't believe they did that," one neighbor said. "If they had knocked on her door and asked her for anything, she would have given it to them. They didn't have to do that." McDonough had no relatives in the area, but had several children living in the North. She moved to DeLand in 1989 from Maryland. Although longtime residents said the neighborhood, adjacent to the DeLand County Club, is a quiet place, some who live there said recently there have been break-ins and late-night pranks. Most recently, the Sheriff's Office investigated a home invasion just a few blocks away, in which an intruder entered a house around 2:30 a.m. Thursday. In that case, the man who entered the house struck a woman who lived there in the face and then fled when her husband entered the room, the Sheriff's Office said. Investigators at the scene of the murder said they were investigating that call as well as "all calls from this area in the past three months" to see if there was any connection. Anyone with information about the crime is asked to call the Sheriff's Office at (904) 822-5070 or Crime Stoppers of Volusia and Flagler Counties at 1 (888) 277-TIPS (277-8477). Callers, who remain anonymous, could be eligible for a reward of up to $1,000. |
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Sunday, August 8,
1999 Timothy J. Gibbons ORANGE CITY -- They've grown old as the world waits to become young again. At the edge of a new millennium, a symbolic new beginning, some still remember the "other century" the time before computers, cars and circuit breakers. A |
