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Published by Vero Beach 32963 Media, 2016-08-18 14:37:03

VB32963_ISSUE33_082516_OPT

VB32963_ISSUE33_082516_OPT

Accused South Beach killer
to defend himself. P8
Food Jam helps
Haiti Partners. P15

School health insurance
deficit unresolved in budget. P10

For breaking news visit

MY VERO Rendell spurns
NAACP in favor
BY RAY MCNULTY of ‘consultants’

Vero businesses hit by BY KATHLEEN SLOAN
a rash of ADA lawsuits Staff Writer

My moral compass has only Indian River Shores Public Safety officers stop a van flagged by the new license-plate camera system. PHOTO BY PHIL SUNKEL Once again, Indian River
two directions – right and County School District Su-
wrong – so columns like this License-plate cameras now alerting Shores officers perintendent Mark Rendell is
tend to get me in trouble. choosing to work with distant
BY LISA ZAHNER cameras posted at the north stopped 17 drivers over the “consultants” instead of the
This is especially true when I Staff Writer and south entrances to the weekend in response to “hits.” local NAACP on closing the
take sides on an important so- Town, notifying them of infrac- Only three were cited for vio- academic achievement gap
cietal issue that is personal and As of last Friday, Indian Riv- tions as minor as an expired lations, the rest were given for black high school students.
emotional to many of you, and er Shores Public Safety officers tag and as major as stolen ve- warnings.
when compelling arguments are receiving alerts in real time hicles and felony warrants. The achievement gap is at
can be made on both sides. from the license plate reader The $70,000 system in- the heart of a federal desegre-
Lt. Mark Shaw said officers gation order that has hung over
Such is the case with the re- CONTINUED ON PAGE 4 Indian River County schools
cent rash of federal lawsuits for almost a half century.
filed by two out-of-towners
against Vero restaurants, ho- The federal court order re-
tels and shopping plazas. quires the district to work
with and report to the NAACP
Some of you, I'm sure, see on various matters, including
the Americans with Disabili- how to close the achievement
ties Act as sacred and, because gap. But Rendell ignores it,
it was enacted more than 25 making unilateral decisions
years ago, believe it should about how to address inequity
offer no leeway to businesses in the district and bypassing
that still fail to comply with it.
CONTINUED ON PAGE 9
Others, while fully embrac-
ing the spirit and protections Scampi Grill moving to new location
provided by the ADA, believe
a flaw in the law is being ex- BY MICHELLE GENZ
Staff Writer
CONTINUED ON PAGE 2

‘Big Red,’ county
rec center, debuts

BY SAMANTHA ROHLFING BAITA If the devoted fans of Vero’s
Staff Writer Scampi Grill have one criticism
to offer, it would be the restau-
The re-branding of Indi- rant’s location, squeezed into a
an River County as (drum worn-out building on the dog-
roll) “Your Sports Destina- leg of U.S. 1, with a hard-to-ne-
tion Paradise” received a gotiate, hodgepodge of parking
boost this week with the of- in the dingy lot behind it.
ficial opening of the long-
That complaint is about to
CONTINUED ON PAGE 9
CONTINUED ON PAGE 6
Chef Alex Amelio. PHOTO BY DENISE RITCHIE

August 18, 2016 Volume 9, Issue 33 Newsstand Price $1.00 Friends After
Diagnosis: Support
News 1-10 Faith 47 Pets 48 TO ADVERTISE CALL for survivors. P18
Arts 21-26 Games 49-51 Real Estate 63-72 772-559-4187
Books 44-45 Health 27-32 Style 53-55
Dining 56 Insight 33-52 Travel 46 FOR CIRCULATION
Editorial 42 People 11-20 Wine 57 CALL 772-226-7925

© 2016 Vero Beach 32963 Media LLC. All rights reserved.

2 Vero Beach 32963 / August 18, 2016 Your Vero Beach Newsweekly ™

NEWS

My Vero seized upon the ADA's minutia-filled ally hadn't seen them in more than 10 against: Kelly's Irish Pub; Brain Freeze
regulations and attorney's-fees provi- years," he added. "The law was revised Cafe; Beef O'Brady's; Arby's; and In-
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1 sion to file, without consequence, clus- in 2010, so maybe that has something dian River Plaza, located on U.S. 1 at
ters of lawsuits against unsuspecting to do with it. If you look at the places 15th Place. His suits were filed between
ploited and abused by opportunistic businesses, including many that didn't that have been sued, they started in June 16 and Aug. 2. And, as Odom said,
lawyers working in cahoots with plain- know they were not in compliance. South Florida and have moved north. more could be coming.
tiffs whose motives may not be exactly
pure. But that's what's happening. "Obviously, they're here now, and Poschmann, whose leg was ampu-
"ADA lawsuits have become a cot- we're probably going to see a lot more tated because of a medical condition,
Count me among the others. tage industry," said Vero Beach attor- of them." was seen dining at another Vero Beach
The ADA was intended to provide ney Jason Odom, who is representing restaurant last week, prompting spec-
equal opportunity for persons with dis- half of the 12 local businesses who Hoyt filed ADA suits in July against ulation that he's not done checking
abilities in employment, government have been sued in the past two months seven local businesses: Vero Beach local businesses for ADA compliance.
services, public accommodations, com- by either Janet Hoyt of Deerfield Beach Hotel & Spa; Islander Inn; Bobby's
mercial facilities and transportation. or David Poschmann of Port St. Lucie. Restaurant & Lounge; Mr. Manatee's "I doubt his visit was a coincidence,"
It was not intended to provide a "I've handled about 15 of these suits Casual Grille; Lemon Tree; Chive; and Odom said. "Since we found out about
revenue stream for lawyers who have over the years, but until recently, we re- Hampton Inn & Suites at Miracle Mile. these recent suits, I've been calling cli-
ents and friends who own businesses
Poschmann has filed ADA suits locally and alerting them to what's go-
ing on."

Poschmann has filed nearly 90 ADA
lawsuits in addition to those in Vero
this summer, all of them in the U.S.
Southern District of Florida, with
Boca Raton-based Drew Levitt as his
attorney. Hoyt has filed 51 such suits
in total – 43 of them in the Southern
District, eight in the Middle District –
represented by the Weiss Law Group in
Coral Springs.

Almost always, the businesses they've
sued have opted to settle the cases, agree-
ing to make the necessary upgrades and
pay the plaintiffs' attorney fees.

Odom expects the same to hap-
pen here. “All it takes to get sued is to
have one mirror or paper-towel dis-
penser too high, or not have enough
handicapped-parking spaces, or it
could be any one of a bunch of other
things required by the law," Odom
said. "So unless you're absolutely sure
you're right, you're probably not go-
ing to spend $25,000 to $30,000 to hire
someone like me to fight it.

"If you fight it and lose, you're also
going to pay the plaintiff's attorney's
fees, as well as the costs of the up-
grades to the building," he added. "It's
a losing proposition."

It's easier, and a lot less costly, for
business owners to simply agree to
make the necessary improvements
and pay the attorney's fees before they
get too high. And that's what Odom
usually advises.

If the client agrees, Odom said he
immediately tells the plaintiff's attor-
ney to stop working on the case, be-
cause the defendant agrees to bring
the business into compliance and pay
$1,500 in legal fees.

"If all that's been done is filing a
lawsuit, you couldn't possibly have
spent more than that," Odom said.
"I've heard of some attorneys who ask
for $10,000 or $15,000, but that's prob-
ably if you try to fight it for a while.

"But if you're willing to settle right
away and agree to have everything
fixed in 30 days, no judge would give
the attorney that much money. I don't
know how you could justify it."

No one at the Weiss Law Group

Your Vero Beach Newsweekly ™ Vero Beach 32963 / August 18, 2016 3

NEWS

would comment on Hoyt's lawsuits to meet the ADA's standards. with no prodding or financial incentive. Levitt, but Poschmann didn't call. And
against the Vero Beach businesses. "The Justice Department can bring "This may be hard to believe," Levitt that's too bad.

Levitt, however, said Poschmann is ADA compliance cases, but they don't said, "but David doesn't get up in the There's a question I really want to
one of "five or six" clients who pur- have the manpower to go into every morning looking for places to sue." ask him: If all he cares about is making
sue ADA cases. He refused to say how business in the country" Levitt said. "So sure our restaurants, hotels and other
much his firm seeks in attorney's fees they depend on private citizens . . . to He's right: It's hard to believe, given businesses are ADA compliant – if this
when cases settle. enforce the statute by bringing cases." how many lawsuits Poschmann has isn't about the money – then why does
filed and settled with businesses from he immediately file a lawsuit?
"It can be a big range," he said, "de- That, he added, is what Poschmann South Florida to Vero Beach, where he
pending on a number of factors." does "as he goes about his daily routine" might be just getting started. Why doesn't he first take his con-
– at his own expense, with no set plan,
I'm guessing the size and success of I made an interview request through CONTINUED ON PAGE 4
the businesses being sued are among
those factors, but that's because I don't Exclusively John’s Island
believe the plaintiffs in these ADA cas-
es are well-meaning do-gooders filing Affording beautiful, expansive fairway views and a central location is this
these suits simply to make America a exceptionally renovated 4BR+study/4.5BA retreat. Enjoy entertaining on the
better place for the disabled. lush, tropical poolside terrace with spa and fire pit. Brilliantly designed by Moulton
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Instead, I believe the ADA is a flawed GSF home. Unsurpassed features include an open living room with fireplace
law that's being exploited and abused adjoining the sun-filled lanai, gourmet island kitchen, elegant master suite, study
across America by lawyers who have with built-ins, and a 1BR/1BA cabana. 351 Sea Oak Drive : $2,950,000
nothing to lose and lots of money to gain.
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firms filing hundreds of ADA lawsuits
on behalf of the same clients, none of 772.231.0900 : Vero Beach, FL : JohnsIslandRealEstate.com
whom are eligible to receive monetary
damages from the court?

Are we supposed to believe that it's
mere coincidence that the same dis-
abled plaintiffs just happen to find
themselves in restaurants, hotels and
other businesses – sometimes an hour
or more away from their homes – that
aren't ADA compliant?

Are we really supposed to believe
these repeat plaintiffs are doing this
for purely altruistic reasons and aren't
being financially compensated?

Levitt, for one, said he doesn't be-
lieve it would be illegal or unethical
for lawyers to give ADA plaintiffs a gift
or a consultant's fee after cases settle.
But he said his firm doesn't pay clients
and has encountered no problems
with the lawsuits it has filed.

"He's got a lot of cases, but he's not
looking for them," Levitt said of Pos-
chmann. "If he sees something when
he's out and about, he'll call us and we'll
check it out. If it's something minor, we
won't do anything. But if it's something
significant, we'll file a lawsuit.”

What's significant?
Levitt cited the ability to park and
enter the establishment, sit in the
same areas as able-bodied customers
and have full access to restrooms.
"Bathrooms are a huge problem,"
he said, adding that many non-
compliant businesses don't provide
enough room to maneuver in wheel-
chairs, have urinals, mirrors and
soap/paper-towel dispensers that are
too high to reach, and fail to properly
position grab bars in stalls.
Indeed, bathroom problems –
something Levitt said can be "degrad-
ing" to disabled patrons when they're
in public establishments – are among
the non-compliance issues identified
in many ADA lawsuits.
And without private citizens filing
lawsuits, Levitt said, many of these
businesses would not make the effort

4 Vero Beach 32963 / August 18, 2016 Your Vero Beach Newsweekly ™

NEWS

My Vero choose to ignore them until they're Shores license-plate cameras also catch up to and locate the vehicle
sued. He said warning notices also CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1 at the same time. Mooney said he likes
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 3 would be ignored. to move around a lot when he’s on pa-
stalled and supported by L3 Communi- trol, and that he’s still trying to deter-
cerns to the owner or manager of the Bobby McCarthy, owner of Bobby's cations captures clear photos of license mine what the best strategic location
non-compliant establishment, iden- Restaurant & Lounge, said he's tempt- plates and vehicles and runs the plate is for nabbing drivers in response to
tify the deficiencies he encountered ed to fight Hoyt's ADA suit, which he numbers through the Florida Depart- hits on the camera system.
and then give the place a reasonable called a "shakedown tactic." He said ment of Law Enforcement and National
amount of time to address them? he addressed the necessary improve- Crime Information Center databases, Drivers caught by the south camera
ments "six or seven years ago" and returning alerts on pop-up screens at heading southbound into Vero are typ-
Why not try to correct the problems had no idea he wasn't compliant. Lt. Shaw’s workstation and directly to ically un-gettable as they’re swiftly out
without going to court? officers’ on-board computers. of the Shores’ jurisdiction, but if the
Hoyt's suit cites the positioning of alert returns a felony warrant or some-
"Those are very good questions," mirrors, flush controls and dispensers It took the Shores police several thing like a stolen vehicle, the Shores
Odom said. – toilet paper, toilet-seat covers and weeks to figure out how to get the can radio over to the Vero Beach Police
paper towels in the restroom – as well camera system working, overcoming Department to be on the lookout for
They are questions we probably as the restroom itself. It also mentions technical challenges and government the vehicle.
don't need to ask Hoyt, who, according improper counter heights and inad- red tape, but now that the cameras are
to Odom, visited Mr. Manatee's, Chive equate access to seating at the bar. linking-up live with the “hot list” data- Drivers caught on the north camera
and Lemon Tree in a three-hour period. bases, nothing much gets past Shores heading north are similarly headed
"All of a sudden, she walks in and I'm officers. out of the Town and if an alert re-
They are questions we do need to no longer in compliance?" McCarthy turned a major concern, the Shores
ask the Justice Department, which said. "She's got to be making a living In fact, alerts are coming in so fast could alert the Indian River County
Odom said could tweak the ADA to in- off this, and so are the attorneys. Why at busy drive times – when Shores res- Sheriff’s Office to keep an eye out for
clude a notice provision, so that busi- else would she be up here, going to all idents are going to or returning from the vehicle in their north zone on A1A,
nesses would be given the opportunity these places and nit-picking, looking work or errands and construction and or going over the Wabasso Causeway.
to come into compliance with the law for problems. service workers are entering or leaving
before a suit could be filed. the Shores – that it’s impossible to fol- Drivers caught on the south camera
"This should work the same way as low up on every alert. heading north, or the north camera
"You should have to give notice, the Health Department," he added. "If heading south, present the best oppor-
even if it's only 30 days, so that these there's a violation, they notify you and Monday morning Chief Rich Rosell tunity for Shores officers to do an in-
businesses have a chance to address you take care of it. And if you don't, authorized 16-year Public Safety Offi- fraction stop. On Monday’s ride-along,
the deficiencies," Odom said. "If there then they lower the boom." cer Tedd Mooney to take a Vero Beach Mooney and his fellow officers made
were such a provision, you'd rarely see 32963 staff writer and photographer two such stops – one for an expired driv-
ADA suits filed. That's how it should work, but it on a ride-along for a couple of hours er license and one for an expired tag.
doesn't. Or as my moral compass tells to see the camera system in action.
Levitt said the lawsuits are neces- me: The ADA is doing what's right, The expired driver license was
sary – because, he argued, most non- but in too many cases, it's doing it the “To me, I think it’s great; it’s such a linked to a tag on a white cargo van.
compliant business owners are already wrong way.  useful tool to see who is going in and Three such vans passed Mooney on
aware of the ADA requirements but out of the Town, and if you do have an the road after the computer hit. For-
auto burglary or a burglary or some- tunately, the image on his on-board
thing, it’s going to help,” Mooney said. computer screen was detailed enough
to show the bumper-stickers and win-
As a senior, triple-trained firefighter, dow decals of the van, so he knew
paramedic and law enforcement of- which one to follow after he verified
ficer, Mooney is sometimes assigned the hit by running the tag.
to train new fulltime staff or new per
diem law enforcement officers. “It’s A second patrol car, with a pair of
great for training,” Mooney said of the officers on a training mission, got the
camera system. “You’d never get this same alert and actually caught up to
much activity normally.” the van first and pulled it over, fol-
lowing the driver just inside the west
Mooney and his colleagues must A1A entrance to Bermuda Bay. As is
double-check the alert from the customary in the Shores, Mooney
cameras by running the tag number pulled up behind the other patrol car
through the system manually before as backup.
pulling over the vehicle. This can cause
quite a juggling act, as the officer must The expired tag stop was on a Shores
resident driving a Subaru. Mooney

Your Vero Beach Newsweekly ™ Vero Beach 32963 / August 18, 2016 5

NEWS

located the car and followed it, veri- that very day. Mooney said he deemed Shaw said one stop on Sunday net- Drive, who records indicate listed his
fied the infraction by running the tag the man’s story credible and issued a ted a drug arrest when a driver pulled occupation as “bartender” and had 10
number and pulled the man over on warning, but if the driver does not re- over for a minor infraction was found prior bookings into the Indian River
Old Winter Beach Road. The man said new the tag, he would likely pop up to have marijuana in the car. Thirty- County Jail, was arrested Sunday night
he was unaware that his tag was ex- on another alert the next day and get one-year-old Ritter Van William Cy- on charges of misdemeanor posses-
pired and that he would take care of it pulled over again. phers of the 4800 block of Bethel Creek
CONTINUED ON PAGE 6

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6 Vero Beach 32963 / August 18, 2016 Your Vero Beach Newsweekly ™

NEWS

Shores license-plate cameras Scampi Grill
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 5
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1

sion of less than 20 grams of marijua- Indian River Shores public safety officer Tedd Mooney. PHOTO BY PHIL SUNKEL be rectified. Come fall, Scampi Grill
na and misdemeanor possession of is moving to a much more accessible
drug paraphernalia. He posted bond grow accustomed to the new system Council monthly updates on activity 2,200-square-foot building on 20th
awaiting a court date. and camera system alerts become stemming from the cameras and the Street. And just to make sure it’s easy
part of their routine patrol duties, they on-board alerts, and with Shaw will to find, the building has just been
For about a week before the camer- hope to be able to follow up on more perform a monthly audit of camera painted a shade of red you could cer-
as were linking to the “hot list” in real of the alerts as they come in, but the policies and the impact on the Shores tainly call saucy.
time, Shaw had been running the list of department policy does not require public safety force.
tag numbers manually and noticed a officers to pull drivers over or to give It’s a color chef-owner Alex Ame-
reported stolen vehicle coming in and tickets for infractions that could be let As a next step, Rosell said he will lio would have seen adding a dollop
out of the Shores on what appeared to go with a warning. The policy states propose another set of cameras be of cream to a purée of plum toma-
be a regular weekday work schedule. officers are to locate and stop vehicles posted somewhere along Old Winter toes long before he started working
when time and staffing permits. Beach Road, so drivers with violations with his father Mimmo, who opened
The red pickup-truck had been re- don’t start using that as a way around Scampi across from the Patio restau-
ported stolen some time ago, and Rosell will give the Shores Town the cameras.  rant in 2000. (Scampi is just one of a
when Shaw looked up the case, he half-dozen local restaurants that have
noted that a friend of the owner had been owned at one time or another
taken the truck without permission. by Mimmo’s extended family, who
Shaw said he suspected the owner got moved here from Naples, Italy.)
the truck back, but never rescinded
the report, so he was riding around in A chip off the old block, Alex loved
what would appear to any law enforce- cooking even as a child, helping out
ment officer as a hot vehicle. Shores his mother Grazia in the kitchen.
police made contact with the owner, When he was 15, he got a job at Bri-
and cleared up the misunderstanding an Gilbert’s Black Pearl, and within
so the “stolen vehicle” alert could be weeks, was working under lead sous-
lifted from the system. chef Leanne Kelleher, now chef-owner
of the Tides.
“If he’d gotten stopped somewhere
else, like down in Miami or something, it “I lied on my application,” says Alex.
could have been at gunpoint,” Shaw said. “I said I was 16.”

Over time, as Rosell and his officers Three years later, he came home

Your Vero Beach Newsweekly ™ Vero Beach 32963 / August 18, 2016 7

NEWS

from Santa Fe Community College and Chef Alex at Scampi Grill’s new location on Route 60. meaning the catch was fresher – and intended as a beauty salon when it went
approached his dad about joining him more familiar. up in 2006 at 815 20th Street, but plans
at Scampi. To call it “asking” might be told his dad. “It actually worked awe- fell apart and it remained unfinished
overstatement; Alex was a headstrong some.” “It was rocky the first couple of with a dirt floor and no parking lot. By
child who had learned how to barge months. For me, fish has to be spot- the time the Amelios bought it several
past the edicts of his equally head- It was a little harder working with on, the right color, the right smell, the years ago, it also needed a new roof.
strong father. vendors, particular of the seafood in right portion. There’s tricks you learn
Scampi’s signature dishes. “I’m a pain over time, like if it comes from darker “It was great because it was a blank
He knew he loved restaurant work, in the ass when it comes to fish,” he waters it’s going to taste a little stron- canvas. I didn’t have to worry about
the split-second timing of the dinner says. “I’ve gone through every fish pur- ger. Now the drivers know don’t bring busting up concrete. I can do whatever
rush, the nimble people skills that kept veyor there is because most say ‘Alex, I it to me because I won’t accept it. I pay I want,” says Alex.
a staff loyal, the relentless pressure on don’t want to do business with you be- a little bit more, but I don’t mind."
vendors to deliver only the best ingre- cause you won’t accept my fish.’” He expects the new Scampi Grill to be
dients. And of course the creation of With time, Alex has enabled his fa- open sometime in October. The menu
the dishes. Finally he found a small company ther to take semi-retirement. “I went will be barely tweaked, he says – they
whose boats went out for short trips, in, and Dad went home.” will still make their own sauces, pasta,
Alex knew he didn’t fit the mold his mozzarella and duck sausage. They’ll
father envisioned for him, a life as a But it wasn’t the cakewalk some have a slightly larger dining area with
professional like his two brothers. might imagine when a son takes over 76 seats instead of the current 58. A
an already thriving family business. “It couple of areas will be separated from
“He didn’t want us to have anything was tough. The first three years? Very the main dining room to give diners an
to do with the restaurant business, tough. I can’t tell you how many times option for a quieter meal.
and I don’t blame him,” says Alex, now that anybody else would have closed
married to Emerald, his high school the doors. I was working 100 hours a The kitchen will be open, a feature
sweetheart, and father to four chil- week making less than $5 an hour.” Alex enjoys. He expects to add live mu-
dren under the age of 8. He says his sic, too.
dad knew how restaurant work im- Last week, Alex found himself hand-
pacted family life and didn’t want his striping the parking lot with a paint The Tuscan-themed decor will fea-
sons to make that sacrifice. roller – not in the new location, but ture natural wood and stone elements
in the old. “I have to do it every six against walls in a warm red-orange
“But like I said, I was never one to months. The landlord hasn’t done it in created by Alex himself. “I took two
listen to anybody anyways. Finally he 16 years. How are people supposed to paints and mixed them together. My
said, ‘Come join the team.’” see where to park?” he says. dad said it was the coolest color he’s
ever seen – the coolest warm color,” he
Alex was only 19 when he took over As for the new location, he has enlist- notes in a nod to his dad’s talent as an
the apron from his dad. From the start, ed contractor Tony Della Porta to help abstract artist.
each had his turf. “You stay out of my build it out, a process that started six
kitchen, I’ll stay out of the front,” he months ago. The building originally was “It’ll still be cozy,” he says. 

8 Vero Beach 32963 / August 18, 2016 Your Vero Beach Newsweekly ™

NEWS

Accused South Beach killer jettisons public defender

BY LISA ZAHNER selection, and how and when to object him inside the home on Nov. 3 with up capacity – in case the defendant
Staff Writer to hearsay, make motions for evidence Betts’ body rolled in a rug and her gets overwhelmed at some point and
to be challenged and request a mistrial. hands in plastic bags – said he shot wants representation – but that type
Asbury Lee Perkins, the 57-year-old Betts because she had taken money of assignment has not happened yet
man facing first-degree murder charg- The defendant is also asked if he un- from their account and because she in this case. Having an attorney follow
es for shooting his estranged wife Cyn- derstands the charges against him, the “nagged him” constantly. the case and sit in on proceedings is a
thia Betts in her Seagrape Lane home legal elements that must be proven drain on resources. “It takes time away
last November, has been granted per- to convict on those charges, and the Perkins was originally arrested on from our clients who want us to repre-
mission to act as his own attorney. maximum penalties prescribed by law second-degree murder charges just sent them,” she said.
in the event of a conviction. Along with like Deangelo, but the charges were
After what’s called a Feretta hear- all that, the defendant must be making upped when he was indicted by a Litty said she was not able to com-
ing, where the defendant is asked a the decision voluntarily, and be men- grand jury for first-degree murder. If ment about what led up to Perkins’
series of questions to determine his tally competent to make the decision – he is convicted, he could be sentenced petition to sever his relationship with
understanding of the difficult task he just as if he were taking a plea deal and to death. Under a new Florida law, 10 Assistant Public Defender Hunt.
is taking on, and to discern his level of waiving his right to a jury trial. out of 12 jurors must recommend ex-
legal expertise and general knowledge ecution as an appropriate sentence. She said she was unaware of any
of the law and rules of evidence, Judge Taylor said he remembers only one Prior to this past March, only a major- complaints Perkins might have had
Cynthia Cox ruled that Perkins be per- previous local murder case in which ity of jurors had to vote for the death about his representation. Perkins has
mitted to jettison his public defender a defendant served as his own legal penalty for it to be imposed. previous experience with the Pub-
Alan Hunt and represent himself in a counsel – Louis Deangelo, who was lic Defender’s Office, on more minor
jury trial, according to court records. convicted of second-degree murder in Public Defender for the 19th Circuit, charges, as he has a litany of about a
2008 for the 2006 killing of Joann Gray. Diamond Litty, said it’s extremely rare dozen cases in the county court system
Assistant State Attorney Chris Tay- The jury found Deangelo, then 45, had for a defendant in a death-penalty case dating back to 2010, including domes-
lor, who is tasked with prosecuting been a worker in Gray’s home when he to take over his own defense. Litty said tic violence and criminal traffic convic-
the case, said the typical questions in killed her, stole $12,000, her computer Perkins now has the right to use any tions for driving under the influence.
a Feretta hearing center around the and her car, which he used to trans- casework, depositions or other discov-
defendant’s understanding of criminal port her corpse to Wisconsin, where ery documents and evidence collected Taylor and Litty both confirmed
justice proceedings. Suggested ques- police found her frozen in the auto’s and compiled by her staff. “He now that Perkins will get no extra privileges
tions included in a resource for judges trunk months later. owns the case as the client,” she said. while incarcerated at the Indian Riv-
lists queries about whether or not the er County Jail to aid in preparing his
defendant knows how to conduct jury Perkins – who records say initially Litty said sometimes one of her at- case, taking depositions or conducting
confessed to police when they found torneys is assigned to serve in a back- research. 

Your Vero Beach Newsweekly ™ Vero Beach 32963 / August 18, 2016 9

NEWS

‘Big Red’ makes debut The project finally broke ground in
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1 March 2015, funded by the Optional
Sales Tax ($8.1 million) and Park Im-
delayed, much anticipated, $12.3 pact Fees ($4.2 million). It was de-
million Indian River County Intergen- signed by Architect Borrelli & Part-
erational Recreation Center. ners and built by general contractor
KAST Construction.
The complex at South County Re-
gional Park at Oslo Road and 20th “Patience has paid off!” says Coun-
Avenue SW was developed to meet ty Recreation Manager Mike Red-
growing demand for an indoor facility stone.
offering diverse recreational program-
ming for all ages. The complex consists of two main
structures: the gymnasium, able to
It is an impressive, state-of-the-art accommodate 793 people; and a sec-
activity hub and community venue ond building, housing multi-purpose
for recreational, competitive, educa- rooms, game room, activity rooms,
tional, social and philanthropic func- a concession area and a catering/
tions. warming kitchen. Visitors will have
access to county library computer
The County Recreation Division will stations, equipped with library cata-
now be able to offer programming, logs and E-research systems.
events and rental options previously un-
available to County residents and tour- The stylish veranda, with views
ists, including a hardwood basketball of water features, and the furnished
court, volleyball, gymnastics, martial courtyard provide pleasant spaces
and performing arts, virtual recreation, for relaxing.
large seminars, gaming tournaments
and other events and celebrations. Brown says the Recreation De-
partment staff will relocate their of-
While the County has branded the fice from the County Administration
impressive new facility as the iG, or Building to the new location, and
Intergenerational Center, others are will work with four newly-hired em-
calling it Big Red, a name likely to ployees to operate the Center. The
stick because of the building’s un- official ribbon cutting took place on
abashed barn-red color that catches Wednesday.
the eye of anyone driving by on Oslo
Road. The Intergenerational Center, pro-
claims its website, is “the latest ad-
The concept, says County Adminis- dition to the growing inventory of
trator Jason Brown, was developed 14 venues, which, together with our
years ago in 2002 but delayed repeat- extensive tourist amenities, will sup-
edly over the years by “multiple hur- port the branding of Indian River
ricanes and the economic downturn.” County as 'Your Sports Destination
Paradise.' " 

Rendell spurns NAACP low-achieving elementary and middle
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1 school students, with black and spe-
cial-education students broken out in
the NAACP and the School Board. the analyses.
The way school district finances are
The latest Rendell hiring is of Seat-
set up, Rendell, as superintendent, tle-based Equal Opportunity Schools
has the power to hire consultants and for $48,800. They have been retained
award contracts for amounts less than to increase enrollment of low-income
$50,000. students of color in Advanced Place-
ment and International Baccalaureate
Using that trump card, he hired a classes, which it is claimed will ad-
law firm, Husch Blackwell, supposed- dress the black-student achievement
ly to study what the district has done gap and the graduation rate at the
to comply with the order, stating that high school level. The company will
results of the study would be shared. charge an additional $12,500 for travel
fees, which went unquestioned by the
The law firm’s fees started at School Board even though the com-
$36,000, which allowed Rendell to bined expenditure on the contract will
hire them without oversight, but the exceed $50,000.
fees have since escalated to $150,000.
And the district also has now labeled “We were not consulted,” said
the study part of a legal strategy, en- Jacqueline Warrior, who heads the
abling it to withhold it from the public NAACP education committee. “This
on that basis. is another top-down-driven solution.
And they claim they will close the gap
Then Rendell again bypassed the in a year. What are they going to do?
School Board and hired Boston- Wave a magic wand? Our fear is they
based District Management Council will lower standards and it will look
at $50,000 a year for three years to good on paper, but nothing is really
address another of the desegrega- happening.” 
tion order’s requirements – studying

10 Vero Beach 32963 / August 18, 2016 Your Vero Beach Newsweekly ™

NEWS

School District health insurance deficit unresolved in budget

BY KATHLEEN SLOAN lion deficit. It projects the deficit will the two unions, the Communications 2015-16 is surrounded by some mystery,
Staff Writer increase to about $6 million by the end Workers of America and the Indian as school district officials don’t know or
of the fiscal year. River County Education Association. won’t say to whom the money is owed.
How to staunch the bleeding in the
Indian River County School District’s During budget talks, Chief Financial The district’s health insurance com- Does the school district owe mil-
self-insurers’ healthcare fund is left Officer Carter Morrison and Human pany has been losing money for at least lions to doctors and hospitals for
unanswered by the proposed budget Resources and Risk Management Di- five years, but it got into real trouble the medical care rendered, or has it bor-
due to the state Sept. 11. rector William Fritz said employees beginning of the 2015-16 school year, rowed to pay doctors, hospitals and
would be asked to pay 31-percent starting out with a little over $200,000 other medical providers?
The budget contemplates the dis- higher insurance premiums, which in the fund, which is well under the
trict’s health insurance fund opening would reduce but not eliminate the state-required $3 million reserve. According to Fritz, the negative
the 2016-17 fiscal year with a $3.7 mil- deficit. The district is negotiating with balance was probably paid from the
The $3.7 million deficit run up in general fund, but he’s not sure. If that
is the case, Fritz said, the district will
have to pay the general fund back.

Morrison referred Vero Beach
32963 to page 124 of the proposed
budget, which simply shows a $3.7
million deficit. He would not confirm
or deny if the general fund paid the
deficit, which is funded by tax dollars.

Making the situation worse, during
budget talks, Morrison and Fritz told
the school board the $3.7 million defi-
cit is actually closer to $4 million and
the required $3 million safe-harbor re-
serve brings the deficit to $7 million.

If employees balk at paying higher
insurance premiums, Morrison has a
plan B. He is seeking permission from
the state to pay back the deficit and
build reserves over four years, siphon-
ing $1.75 million a year from the gen-
eral fund into the self-insurers fund,
meaning the taxpayer and not the em-
ployees will make up the deficit.

Apparently, the district would not
have to pay back this taxpayer sub-
sidy, which would come on top of the
nearly $120 million in dedicated prop-
erty tax revenue the district draws
each year to fund its operation.

Employee health insurance claims
jumped unexpectedly by $1.6 million
during the 2014-2015 school year. The
same year, the district opened the
CareHere health clinic at a cost of $1.4
million. That double-whammy cre-
ated $3 million of the current deficit.
(Morrison claims the clinic is saving
the district money, but he hasn’t ex-
plained how and the savings are not
reflected in the preliminary budget.)

Other costs that have gone up in-
clude risk-management-employees’
salaries and benefits, more than dou-
bling in the last five years, from $73,000
to $179,000, and the cost of dental and
vision insurance, up by about $360,000
over the past five years.

To protect itself against large claims,
the district will pay about $1 million for
“stop loss” insurance, which is about a
$500,000 increase over prior years.

The public has a final chance to
comment on the budget at the public
hearing Sept. 8. But it’s due to the state
Sept. 11, so it’s unlikely changes to the
plan will be accepted. 



12 Vero Beach 32963 / August 18, 2016 Your Vero Beach Newsweekly ™

PEOPLE

New Salvation Army lieutenants eager to rally troops

Amy Speak, Debrah Agnello and John Corapi. PHOTOS: LEAH DUBOIS Lindsay Bass and Jessica Foster.

John and Emilie Brady.

SALVATION ARMY PHOTOS CONTINUED ON PAGE 14

Dr. Walter Janke and Dawn St.Clair. Lt. Jay and Lt. Heather Needham.

BY CHRISTINA TASCON to hit the ground running. The young couple is hopeful about HQ in Atlanta to get that moving. We
Correspondent “We know what it can be and what the future and ready to get to work. want to get in a great new place and
“We just know we want to get out maybe even open a second location
New Salvation Army Vero Beach we can do,” said Jay Needham en- there in the community and rebuild in North County with social services
Lieutenants Heather and Jonathan thusiastically, noting that the Salva- the church while we meet people help.”
“Jay” Needham are hoping to get an tion Army brand is “Doing the most in the community and get the SA’s
early jump-start on their recruit- good, for the most people, where name out there,” said Heather Need- “The [food] truck goes out every
ment efforts for Red Kettle bell duty. there is the most need.” “That is ham. day, and that is our pride and joy, but
They were helped in that endeavor at on our hearts by the calling of God we want to expand that program,”
a VIP reception to introduce them to where we have been appointed. We Jeff Smith, IRC clerk of the court said Smith. “The board is actively
the community, held last Wednesday are excited about the future here.” and SA advisory board chairman, trying to get a capital campaign go-
at the Harbor Community Bank Car- calls the Needhams “real go-get- ing so we can help more people and
dinal Drive location and hosted by The Salvation Army is an evangeli- ters.” He hopes that their first order add more programs.”
location manager Karl Steene, resi- cal Christian-based ministry that of business will be a new thrift shop
dential loan officer Amy Speak and serves the less fortunate in times of to generate operating expense rev- “Soup, Soap and Salvation is our
financial consultant Dan Gaines. crisis, when they are hungry, need enue. mission,” said John Corapi, SA di-
human comforts, or are looking for rector of development. “People need
The Needhams relocated from spiritual support. Its Mobile Feed- “Since even before we got here all faith but they cannot think about
Fort Myers on June 20, their two ing Canteen Program is considered we ever heard about was this thrift God, work or anything else when
small children, Griffin and Harper, one of its most important func- store,” said Jay Needham to groaning their stomachs are empty.”
in tow. The family had once previ- tions, providing food to 15,000 local and laughter from attendees. “It was
ously worked on a mission with local residents annually. Many homeless, ‘oh, the thrift store,’ and ‘you have “My wife and I are here to make
youth at the Vero Beach campus on homebound and retired or disabled to do something about the thrift a new progress,” said Needham.
27th Avenue, so they have been able veterans receive much needed meals store.’ So that is priority one even if “Whatever has happened in the past,
from its food trucks. we have to kick down some doors at the old is gone. We are here to make
a fresh start and we are excited.” 



14 Vero Beach 32963 / August 18, 2016 Your Vero Beach Newsweekly ™

PEOPLE

SALVATION ARMY PHOTOS CONTINUED FROM PAGE 12 Jeff Smith and Lt. Jay Needham.
Lyn and Mary Babcock with Lt. Heather Needham.
Amy Speak, Debrah Agnello and John Corapi.

Laura Moss, Michael Kint and John Corapi.

Eleanor and Don Wade. Andrew and Camie Patterson.

Bob Solari with Eric Flowers.

Your Vero Beach Newsweekly ™ Vero Beach 32963 / August 18, 2016 15

PEOPLE

What’s cookin’? A Food Jam to help Haiti Partners!

BY MARY SCHENKEL Haiti Partners, a Vero-based non-
Staff Writer profit, partners with Haitians to im-
prove Haiti through education, en-
As any dinner host can attest, party- FOOD JAM PHOTOS CONTINUED ON PAGE 16 PHOTOS: LEAH DUBOIS abling more than 1,200 students to
goers tend to congregate in the kitch- John and Merline Engle. pursue their dreams. Advanced Micah
en. Taking it to the next level, a new Scholars are also trained as advocates
interactive Food Jam to support the for the rights of exploited women and
work of Haiti Partners made an entire children.
venue the kitchen. Grind + Grape al-
lowed the dining area of their restau- John Engle brought samples of the
rant to be overrun with teams of en- handmade paper they are beginning
thusiastic chefs, whipping up various to make on the campus of the Chil-
tapas-style dishes. The event’s other dren’s Academy and Learning Center
sponsors were Daley and Company in Baocia, Haiti, out of mango peels,
Real Estate and the Bass and Shepard corn husks, banana bark and a com-
Wealth Management group of Ray- mon Haitian plant called Vertiver.
mond James.
“We’re still testing the waters,” said
The Food Jam was the brainchild Engle of this newest of their social
of Haiti Partners summer intern and businesses. “We’re creating an artist-
Vanderbilt student Noemi Monnerv- in-residence program. Artists will stay
ille, who had participated in a similar on the campus at our guest house and
event while studying Political Science work with an Argentinian paper mas-
in Cape Town, South Africa. ter to learn how to produce paper.”

“I loved it so much. It’s such a fun so- Parents must work four hours per
cial event,” said Monnerville of the ex- week to have their children attend the
perience. “Even people who can’t cook school and can earn service hours by
can do it. It’s a great way to meet other helping to teach the craft.
people; everyone’s out of their comfort
zone.” “Rather than competing with people
who make paper, we envision convert-
With ingredients, recipes and cook- ing the paper into artwork,” he said.
ing apparatus all provided, everyone “We’re recruiting artists from around
could just dive in. the world to come to Haiti, learn a new
technique and donate an original work
“It is the best of both worlds. You to the school. The idea is to sell things
don’t have to grocery shop, you don’t out of Haiti that will tell the story.” 
have to clean up and someone else
shares the work,” said Monnerville.
She later told everyone, “Don’t worry.
If you mess it up, you don’t have to eat
it!”

Monnerville had enlisted assistance
from Rick Appel, a culinary teacher at
Sebastian River High School, to choose
recipes with a Caribbean bent and cal-
culate portions. Haitian born Merline
Engle, wife of Haiti Partners co-found-
er John Engle, brought a few authentic
Haitian dishes for all to sample – pork
griot (deep fried marinated pork), and
traditional side dishes, pikliz (spicy
slaw) and fried plantains.

Before the cooking began, John
Engle thanked everyone for their sup-
port, saying, “Vero Beach has been ab-
solutely incredible. The people of Vero
have been very, very generous.”

Then, utensils and hotplates at the
ready, roughly 30 participants gath-
ered around long work tables and
the chopping and stirring began in
earnest. Dishes included a chicken,
chorizo and seafood paella, peach
and balsamic flatbreads, spring rolls,
mango “lassie” tarts, Caribbean chick-
en kabobs, prawn and sweet potato
“take-aways” and cinnamon sugar
churros with chocolate sauce. Yum!

16 Vero Beach 32963 / August 18, 2016 Your Vero Beach Newsweekly ™

PEOPLE

FOOD JAM PHOTOS CONTINUED FROM PAGE 15 Sally Daley and Noemi Monnerville.

Drew Arsenault (left) and Julianne Thomas; (right) Erica Arsenault with Mike and Audrey Mosel.

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Your Vero Beach Newsweekly ™ Vero Beach 32963 / August 18, 2016 17

PEOPLE

Julianne Thomas (left). Mike Mosel with Erika and Drew Arsenault.
Lindsay Bass and Jessica Foster. Christina Klingler, Lisa Eisele and Tiffany Reuter.

Bonnie Hebert.

18 Vero Beach 32963 / August 18, 2016 Your Vero Beach Newsweekly ™

PEOPLE

Friends After Diagnosis: Precious support for survivors

BY MARY SCHENKEL The group was founded in 2010 by
Staff Writer board chairman Lin Reading, now
a 15-year survivor and a Certified
Run by a small group of dedicated Cancer Navigator. Reading and hus-
breast cancer survivors, the support band Larry Macke, a medical writ-
group Friends After Diagnosis con- er with inVentiv Health Clinical,
tinues to broaden its reach to meet moved to Vero Beach eight years
the unique physical and mental ago to be closer to her parents, who
challenges associated with the dis- had a home at The Moorings for 35
ease. years. Her mother, who passed away

Joan Swiderski atop Elsa, Hannah Fernandez, Lin Reading, Darlene Dennis atop Picasa, and Cassie Ford.

Special Equestrian instructors Cassie Ford, Darlene were in dire need of a support group
Dennis and Joan Swiderski demonstrate a dismounting for cancer in Vero Beach,” says
Reading, referencing Fran Basso,
technique. PHOTOS: DENISE RITCHIE Maureen Walker and Tammy Black-
well.
four years ago, was fighting a sec-
ond occurrence of breast cancer at They began meeting twice a
the time. month to share experiences and
eventually incorporated monthly
“I had had cancer five years before guest speakers on a wide variety of
moving here and knew the difficul- topics.
ties associated with it,” said Read-
ing. Her father passed away recently “One of my goals is to let breast
and, while he never had cancer, his cancer survivors know that there
three sisters had breast or ovarian is a wealth of resources available to
cancer as did numerous cousins on them in the area.”
his side of the family.
An upcoming speaker will talk
To lighten her mother’s depres- about creating a comfortable space
sion, Reading called the American at home for people with chronic ill-
Cancer Society to find a volunteer ness.
job they could do together. They
suggested she start a support group. “And I look upon breast cancer
as a chronic illness. As much as
“Coincidentally, the same week people would like to think that af-
that I talked to the American Can- ter radiation and chemotherapy
cer Society, there were several other you’re back to normal, you truly
women who had decided that they never are. You’re a changed per-
son. Not only dealing with the side
effects of different medications for
the rest of your life, but dealing with
things like your annual and bi-an-
nual checkups and monographies.
The fear … a little bit of that fear
never leaves people with cancer.”

Their primary focus is breast can-
cer, but they have a close relation-
ship with the Treasure Coast Ovar-
ian Cancer Alliance.

“Quite honestly, we won’t turn
anyone away,” says Reading, add-
ing that everyone is invited to hear
their guest speakers.

Wanting to also incorporate ac-
tivities, they formed partnerships
with the Center for Spiritual Care,
which offers a variety of programs
and S.T.A.R. Pilates, which offers a

Your Vero Beach Newsweekly ™ Vero Beach 32963 / August 18, 2016 19

PEOPLE

Pink Ribbon Pilates Program. They time and her space twice a month range of motion back and works on which provides equestrian therapy
also participate with ACS events for this incredible Pilates class. And self-esteem, because breast cancer to improve mental, physical or emo-
and programs. this class is open to any breast can- is one of those cancers that shows tional disabilities.
cer survivors in the community; openly for some survivors.”
“Any of the classes that I offer are they don’t have to come through the They had one eight-week class in
always free to survivors; there is group. It’s specifically designed for Their newest partnership is Ride the spring and have others planned
never any cost to them,” says Read- breast cancer survivors. It helps get Beyond Diagnosis through Special for the fall and in January. Led by
ing. “Gini [Murphy] gives of her Equestrians of the Treasure Coast,
CONTINUED ON PAGE 20

20 Vero Beach 32963 / August 18, 2016 Your Vero Beach Newsweekly ™

PEOPLE

Instructor Gini Murphy leads a class at S.T.A.R. Pilates with Meghan Seligman, Barbara Konforti, Fran Basso and Suzanne Liggett.

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 19

Darlene Dennis, a certified instruc-
tor, the gentle horses help to heal
mind, body and soul.

Survivors interact, groom and
ride the horses, but Reading ex-
plains, “Throughout all of this it’s
not just going through the mechan-
ics of horseback riding. It’s eques-
trian therapy, so there’s a lot of talk-
ing and sharing of feelings. All sorts
of things go on, from horse hugging
to keeping a journal of your expe-
riences. And once again, similar
to the Pilates class, building self-
esteem, a sense of accomplishment
and posture, which is so important
to women and men with breast can-
cer.”

The group now hosts meetings the
second and fourth Mondays and the
third Saturday of the month at First
Presbyterian Church and the first
Saturday at Sebastian River Medical
Center, with anywhere from five to
35 people attending.

“I suggest that new people might
want to come to a small meeting
first. Sharing your story for the first
time can be difficult. But when you
get 30 we have lots of fun. It is a
very close sisterhood. Whether it’s
your first time or you’ve been com-
ing since the very first meeting, we
know that we have a bond with each
other.”

They also distribute gently used
or new prosthesis, often to wom-
en without health insurance who
haven’t the means to purchase
them. “I would love for every wom-
an who has breast cancer to have a
brand new prosthesis. That certain-
ly is a goal of mine,” says Reading.

While expenses are relatively
low, so is funding, which primarily
comes from individuals, honorari-
ums and small fundraisers. “So far
we’ve been able to keep going,” says
Reading. “I wish more people in the
community would donate; we do a
lot for the community.”

For more information, visit
friendsafterdiagnosis.com. 



22 Vero Beach 32963 / August 18, 2016 Your Vero Beach Newsweekly ™

ARTS & THEATRE

Rain Cat recording studio duo on track to success

BY MICHELLE GENZ Producers Jeff Coulter and Bryan Lamar at Rain Cat Studios. PHOTOS BY LEAH DUBOIS
Staff Writer

Bryan Lamar and Jeff Coulter were
walking home from school one day
when they had the sort of why-not
moment that the seventh-grade mind
is known for.

“Let’s start a band,” said Bryan.
“Nah,” said Jeff. “We don’t know
any instruments.”
But Jeff thought it over for a week
or so, and changed his mind. It was
totally doable. They just had to pick
their instruments and learn to play.
Today, their instrument is their
sound equipment, from speakers,
amps and microphones to the mixer
software on their computer. They still
play guitar and drums in their heavy-
metal band. But they also play back-
ground for many of the 100 or so clients
at Rain Cat Studios, their four-year-old
venture that is taking a lead role in Stu-
art’s burgeoning music scene.
Singer-songwriters from their
teens to retirement age are recording
in Rain Cat’s upstairs live studio or
isolation booth tucked inside a non-

descript building on a side street in out a rhythm on his tray table. They
downtown Stuart. started to chat and it turned out he
was a part-time professional drum-
Afterwards, seated at a thrift-shop mer who was thinking of opening a
vintage desk, Coulter and Lamar, both rock music academy.
29, share the tasks of producing the cli-
ents’ vocals and instrumentation, mix- He and a fellow musician took the
ing those tracks and mastering them to boys under their wing, emailing back
a reproducible, saleable product. and forth and occasionally meeting
to play face-to-face.
They also offer guidance, coaching
new songwriters through the struc- “We’d come back up here and prac-
ture of a song, or suggesting changes tice what they told us for the next six
to instrumentation. For that, they had months. We probably only went down
an example: their own mentors, a West there a handful of times. But because
Palm entrepreneur and musician. we were so young, the information
they gave us just changed our world,”
They met by chance on an airplane, says Lamar.
when Lamar, in his early teens, was
flying back from New York. The man Lamar had one musical influence
seated next to him heard him beating in his family: His step-dad was a jazz

Your Vero Beach Newsweekly ™ Vero Beach 32963 / August 18, 2016 23

ARTS & THEATRE

neers but they’ve become even bet- what kind of success the band is hav-
ter friends.” ing. People come in and see you, and
if you don’t have a CD to sell them,
Gill performed last Sunday after- they don’t have any way to listen to
noon at Fort Pierce’s Endless Sum- you when they leave.”
mer Winery’s Rising Stars Showcase.
So did Deal James – her boyfriend, it “People are going to judge you by
turns out. how your recording sounds,” adds
Lamar.
For artists like Gill and James, sell-
ing CDs can be an important way to Then there are clients like Ed Go-
generate income while getting their mez, a songwriter and story teller in
music out there. “The more CDs they his 70s, Coulter says. Gomez had a 7
sell, the more they can record,” says p.m. appointment last week to record
Coulter. “If you sell a CD for 10 bucks, one of his folk songs. “He’s an exam-
it’s not going to take you that long to ple of someone who’s loved music his
recoup your investment. And those whole live and now that he’s retired,
sales become really significant to see he’s doing what he loves to do.”  

drummer in New York. And his mom we did pretty good.”
had moved south from music-centric Their heavy metal band, Drowned
Nashville – at one point, he and Coul-
ter considered taking their studio Out, included Bryan’s identical twin
there. Instead, they stayed in Stuart, Lucas Lamar on bass. They were a
a good move considering how the big hit, including in Vero where they
scene has evolved. played to 200 kids at the Heritage Cen-
ter, one of their favorite gigs. “Word
Coulter is the son of Brenda Leigh, a got around because we were good,”
talented muralist whose work adorns Lamar says frankly. “We went on tour
a number of public buildings in Stu- right after high school.”
art. Her free spirit was the reason
Jeff was born in Tortola in the British In 2009, with a new name – Abandon
Virgin Islands; she had taken off for a – they cut their first album, “Beyond
year to cruise the Caribbean, reached Redemption,” at a Connecticut studio
St. Thomas and stayed for 17 years. in which their mentor had invested.
When her relationship with Coulter’s
dad, a boat captain, fell apart, she and Buying up used equipment to re-
Jeff headed for Texas, then to Hawaii cord their own music, in 2012 they
for five years. They came to Stuart reached out to other artists. Coul-
when Jeff was 8. ter was running open-mic nights
at Osceola St. Café, and they got the
Brian and Jeff found themselves in idea to offer a free recording to the
the same class at St. Michael’s School people playing there. By the time they
(now the Pines School). But they were opened Rain Cat, they had a client list.
not in the same social circle, at least
not initially. Anchored by the music venue Terra
Fermata, which opened around the
“I was a jock and he was a nerd,” says same time as Rain Cat, downtown
Lamar. “When we heard the new kid Stuart’s blossoming live music scene
in school was from Hawaii, we all ex- includes the growler bar Crafted Keg,
pected him to surf and be cool. Then the coffee bar Blue Door, the wine bar
Jeff shows up in a sweater vest and a Crush and the waterfront bar and res-
briefcase with his hair slicked back.” taurant Stuart Boathouse. “There’s
been a rumbling for a while from
Lamar and his snobby friends people in need of a place to go,” says
sneered – until Jeff set Bryan straight. Coulter. “Terra Fermata spoke really
“He taught me how not to be a jerk,” well to what would do well. The fact
says Lamar, using a more contempo- that people are making a living play-
rary term. He soon sidled over to Jeff’s ing music is pretty unique.”
lunch table, where he stayed until
high school separated the two. But by Among the Rain Cat artists: Deal
then, they were a band. James, a St. Louis soul-and-funk musi-
cian, often uses Lamar on the drums.
“The band is what kept our friend- Taylor Wingfield, a country artist
ship together,” says Lamar. whose last album they produced, has
become their friend in the process, and
It took three years of practice be- Coulter often plays guitar with her.
fore they finally performed in pub-
lic, at a battle of the bands at Martin Most recently, they have been
County High School. They were 15. working for four months on a six-song
By 2005, their mentor had arranged EP for singer-songwriter Summer
for them to play at a huge CD release Gill, a student at Florida State Univer-
party in Stuart’s Memorial Park, not sity who often plays as a duo with her
far from Rain Cat Studios. father Ken Gill.

“We were very nervous,” says Coul- “Their level of professionalism is
ter. “We had played in a bedroom for more than I could ever ask for,” says
so long that when we actually played Gill. “They’re amazing sound engi-

24 Vero Beach 32963 / August 18, 2016 Your Vero Beach Newsweekly ™

ARTS & THEATRE

Stunning Funk art exhibits will blind you with science

BY ELLEN FISCHER
Correspondent

Melbourne’s Ruth Funk Center for beauty subsumes the mortal coil. cine, but Chung and Rips’ art insists the forest of the brain.
Textile Arts at Florida Institute of Tech- The shows are a must-see for anyone on the humanity of their subject mat- Rips multiplied the image by six and
nology is out to prove that the beauties ter. By portraying the delicately per-
of science can be visually as well as in- who enjoys being surprised, delighted, sonal inner workings of our insides in stacked it three high and two across.
tellectually stimulating. The center’s awestruck and moved by art, but you dense machine embroidery and quilt- In contrast to Chung’s thick mats of
current exhibitions provide compel- must hurry: next Saturday, Aug. 27, is ing on hand-dyed silks and cotton, embroidery, Rips uses fine furrowed
ling evidence for that theory. the last day to view both shows. the artists remind us that these or- quilting, puckered auras that shim-
gans, tissues and bones belong to real mer in and around her subjects. In
“Radical Elements” is a traveling The large-scale artworks in “A View people – just like us. “Brain MRI,” her backgrounds and
show from Studio Art Quilt Associ- Within” find their source in the coldly brains are different shades of gray
ates, a non-profit organization devoted informative images of modern medi- In fact, some of the imagery in the mottled with hot spots of deep pink
to the development and promotion show was taken from the X-rays, MRIs, and, for the tumor within each ellipse,
of quilting as an art form. Curated by CT scans and ultrasounds of Chung green-gold.
quilt artist Jill Rumoshosky Werner, and Rips’ friends and family members,
the invitational exhibition challenged who granted the artists permission for Segueing to “Radicals Elements,”
artists to create 40 quilts based on ele- their use, says Florida Tech’s director of don’t despair if you fell asleep during
ments in the periodic table. The table collections, Sarah Smith. your college chemistry classes. The
arranges the 118 known elements in show takes a mostly light-hearted look
order of increasing atomic number. Using her own style, each artist at its heavy subject matter.
“would work from the same image and
Another traveling exhibition, “A View not discuss with the other what she was The possible exception is Daren
Within,” is the sixth in a series from Cal- doing. When the pieces were finished, Pitts Redman’s fearsome “Uranium
ifornia-based fiber artists Paula Chung Chung and Rips would come together 235.” The quilt bears a photo-based
and Karen Rips. The artists have col- to see what they had independently representation of the hydrogen bomb
laborated on works based on X-ray and created,” Smith notes. exploded over Bikini atoll in 1954.
other medical scans of the human body. Thread-painted on black cotton in ra-
The show combines both recognizable Many of Rips’ works are abstract dioactive reds and oranges, the picture,
and abstract imagery in which timeless compositions in shades of ivory, gray, long a visual cliché, still has the power
charcoal and ocher that transmit of a sucker punch. You can’t defend
something akin to the robust serenity yourself from its beauty, much less its
of Zen calligraphy. A glance at Chung’s ominous meaning.
more literal interpretation in each
thematic pairing reveals the common The artists in this exhibition were to
source of the imagery. refrain from using fabric and thread
in their quilts and to instead find al-
A few, but not all, of the pictures in ternatives not only for the quilt’s lay-
the show carry the emotional weight ers, but for the ways of fastening them
of a serious medical condition. Smith together.
mused it would be interesting to have a
radiologist’s reading of the exhibition. Gay E. Lasher’s sculptural “Last
Rays” is bolted together layers of alu-
One of the most compelling pair- minum sheets. The first is laser-cut
ings in the show centers on an MRI in a crisscrossing composition, while
of the human brain seen through the the second bears an embossed pat-
top of the skull, looking a bit like a tern of crumbly-edged squares. Both
walnut in a circlet of shell. layers are solidly inkjet-printed with
color, creating the off-message effect
Chung calls her interpretation of tangled, rust-streaked girders be-
“Brain Tumor.” In her hands the im- fore a concrete block wall.
age becomes a verdant island pro-
tected by a narrow reef; on the island’s Perhaps a better literal interpreta-
east side the tumor, blue as the sea tion of an element is found in Trisha
and shaped like an inlet, penetrates Hassler’s “The Irony of It All Was Not

Your Vero Beach Newsweekly ™ Vero Beach 32963 / August 18, 2016 25

ARTS & THEATRE

Lost on Her.” The pun tribute to iron is the periodic table). The discs, arranged quilting techniques with offbeat ma- scene, her open umbrella shelter from
“exceptionally heavy,” says Smith. in three vertical rows, might put you in terials – plastic bags, yogurt lids, iron- a snow-filled organza sky.
mind of a primitive almanac produced ing board fabric. Moore represents
It was also the weightiest to hang. by some remote cargo cult. sodium as a vast snowy landscape For this writer, the experience at the
The lushly textured object includes a of salt with two tiny sleds parked on Funk was enriched by two knowledge-
reclaimed carpet pad, a sheet of steel, Free association runs rampant in a distant ridge. The silhouette of the able docents, Diana Newman and Flo
snakeskin, palm fronds and 26 hand- the show. “The Salt Flats” by Jeannie little Morton salt girl strides along the Poor. They really knew their arsenic
cut steel discs (iron is element No. 26 on Palmer Moore combines traditional from their einsteinium. 

26 Vero Beach 32963 / August 18, 2016 Your Vero Beach Newsweekly ™

ARTS & THEATRE

Coming Up: Stuart will rock to
the Dancin’ in the Street fest

BY MICHELLE GENZ
Staff Writer

1 Brutal sun or drenching rain: It’s
hard to know what kind of weath-

er to wish for these days for an outdoor

festival. Whatever’s beating down on

the crowds Saturday, it will be the beat

of the music that counts at the Dancin’

in the Street Music Festival in Stuart.

Just as they have for the past 29 years,

thousands of people are expected rain

or shine for the best of local and re- Coming Saturday to
Downtown Stuart.
gional bands playing on five stages set

up along the St. Lucie River. The sixth

stage – in the Lyric Theatre – may well writers, and made their debut. Prestage
has crafted his own sound since then
be sold out. It’ll be hosting the Outlaws, and it packs them in.

the half-century-old Southern rock

band that started out in Tampa in 1966.

That was just a year after the Mamas 3 Dave Barry is presenting his latest
book – “Best.State.Ever” – Sept.
and the Papas’ “Dancing in the Street”

hit the airwaves. 8 in Vero. That’s a Thursday, two days

The Outlaws didn’t make it big un- after the book goes on sale, and three

til nearly a decade later, when “There weeks from now. But these ticketed

Goes Another Love Song” became their book signings, sponsored by the Vero

signature hit in 1975. The lineup has Beach Book Center but held at St. Ed-

changed plenty, but the sound is true ward’s School, tend to sell out early,

to its youth – in the same vein as the particularly in the hometown of Barry’s

Allman Brothers and Lynyrd Skynyrd old Miami Herald buddy, Carl Hiaasen.

and a hint of early pop-country. Barry gave up his column years ago.

But he still writes for the Herald – he’s

2 If you want to skip the throngs been covering the Olympics, and be-
and the festival admission price
fore that the conventions. I’m thinking

($15 to $20, not counting the Outlaws he’s going to have a heck of a Year in Re-

show), the nearby Terra Fermata has a view column this year. Maybe he’ll give

great lineup that day starting at 2 p.m. us a hint of what’s to come.

and running well into the night. First up

are the Nouveaux Honkies, a husband- 4 Here’s a retro concept if you’re
feeling nostalgic about summer
and-wife duo that are favorites in this

area. They are followed by Abby Ow- ending: Spend the afternoon in the

ens, the Indiantown-born singer/song- dark of the beautiful old Sunrise The-

writer I wrote about a couple of weeks atre in Fort Pierce, watching a movie

ago and who I’ve since realized had al- that’s free. Sunday afternoon at 3 p.m.

ready been discovered by hundreds if is a screening of “Hope Springs” with

not thousands of local fans. Owens’ set Meryl Streep, Tommy Lee Jones and

starts around 3:30, followed by the Jon- Steve Carell, which I saw when it first

nie Morgan Band at 4:30. That Orlando- came out and really enjoyed. A quiet

based group also has a solid following little comedy (Carell plays it straight –

– they played at Sunfest last year. And he’s the marriage counselor trying to

finally our Vero one-man-band won- generate some heat in the other two’s

der, Ben Prestage, who takes the stage marriage), it’s a slice of life a lot of us

at 8 p.m. The crowds should be thick by will recognize. Leave the kids at home –

then – in more ways than one. they would HATE it – and settle in with

Hopefully they will also be fawn- an afternoon cocktail if you really want

ing. Before settling in Vero a few years to escape (the Sunrise bar will be open

back, Prestage grew up on an 18-mile – I checked).

dirt road near the Okeechobee-Martin

County line and picked his first banjo at 5 Even better, head up to Mel-
bourne’s King Center for the Clas-
14. While he was still in high school, he

put together an eight-piece band – in- sic Albums Live reproduction of Spring-

cluding his fellow members of the South steen’s “Born to Run” Saturday at 8 p.m.

Fork High School Marching Band. They The evening includes supper on the ter-

all traipsed down to the Lyric Theatre’s race with fellow fans of The Boss start-

Originals Night, an open-mic for song- ing at 6 p.m. Full bar available. 



28 Vero Beach 32963 / August 18, 2016 Your Vero Beach Newsweekly ™

HEALTH

Face it: Cosmetic surgery is a $13 billion business

BY TOM LLOYD presenting her diploma.
Staff Writer Still speaking with a hint of an ac-

According to the American Society cent, Bailor recalls, “I started explor-
for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery, Ameri- ing what I could do to practice medi-
can consumers are now spending cine here in the U.S. and bought a
upwards of $13 billion on purely cos- course from Kaplan Medical Institute
metic procedures each year. to prepare me to take the medical
boards.
Those procedures include face lifts,
tummy tucks, eyelid surgery or eye “Because I didn't speak English,
lifts, breast augmentations, botox in- they provided videos along with the
jections, nose jobs and liposuction. books, so when I was sitting at home, I
could translate my books with the vid-
For a young medical school gradu- eos. I learned English by stopping and
ate in the Republic of Belarus, whose rewinding and stopping and rewind-
passion is exactly that kind of cos- ing.”
metic surgery, the United States rep-
resented a true “land of opportunity,” After that, Bailor landed an intern-
but some daunting obstacles stood in ship at Frankfurt Hospital in Philadel-
her way. phia. From there, stops in Delaware,
Maryland and the University of Okla-
For starters, Dr. Katya Bailor, who homa for more training and fellow-
practices at Vero Cosmetic Surgery ship work led to her board certifica-
and MediSpa, spoke no English. tion in head and neck surgery.

And, while medical school in her The American Academy of Oto-
home country is a six-year program laryngology Head & Neck Surgery
as opposed to the four-year require- describes the cosmetic facial plastic
ment here, she soon found out get- surgery that clearly stokes an inner
ting credentialed in the United fire in Bailor as being “performed to
States was not as simple as merely enhance visual appearance of the fa-

Dr Katya Bailor. PHOTOS: DENISE RITCHIE

cial structures and features. Common Over time the skin begins to loosen on
procedures include facelifts, eye lifts, the face and neck. Crow’s feet appear
rhinoplasty, chin and cheek implants, at the corners of the eyes. Fine fore-
liposuction and procedures to correct head lines become creases and then,
facial wrinkles.” gradually, deeper folds.

One thing all facial plastic surgeons The jawline softens into jowls and
have on their side is time. beneath the chin, another chin or ver-
tical folds appear at the front of the
“Aging of the face,” says the Ameri- neck. Heredity, personal habits, the
can Academy of Facial Plastic and Re- pull of gravity and sun exposure all
constructive Surgery, “is inevitable.

Your Vero Beach Newsweekly ™ Vero Beach 32963 / August 18, 2016 29

HEALTH

contribute to the aging of the face.” skin kept falling because there was no nerves, that move your whole face, broad review of what the aging pro-
As the American population contin- scaffolding to support its new, higher and big, big, vessels. Then, I reposition cess is, which areas can be addressed
position.” that layer. I don't just reposition it with and what [procedures are] available.”
ues to age, demand for medical pro- sutures, so I'm not relying on sutures
cedures to combat those “inevitable” Strengthening that scaffolding – to hold it in place. I rely on a scar tis- That's something of a “go slow” ap-
changes is increasing. the muscles, tendons and ligaments sue because it's a strong tissue on tis- proach but Bailor insists that fully
underneath the skin – says Bailor, sue bond.” educating her patients is her most im-
Nationwide, women are 10 times is absolutely essential to providing portant job.
more likely to seek cosmetic surgical long-lasting results and her training Still, according to Bailor, “Women
treatments than men – though Bailor in head and neck surgery allows her to don't come in asking ‘May I have a “I try to do an assessment overall
says “that number has been steadily do just that. facelift?’ They come in and say ‘I hate and see what the [patient's] goals are
changing. There are more men nowa- this, what's that, and what can you do and then arrive at solutions to be on
days seeking aesthetic services” than “Once . . . I lift the skin, then I gain about this?’ the same page with this patient. I'm
ever before. access to that layer to which all the not telling him or her, ‘You need a
structures are attached. I lift off the “I always try, on my first consulta- facelift.' I'm basically trying to come
Perhaps the most universally vital structures like nerves, like facial tion with a patient, to give them a up with a plan. That's what I encour-
known form of plastic surgery is the age people to do. Get educated. Then
facelift – or rhytidectomy – which is make a decision.”
also Bailor’s favorite procedure to per-
form. Since cosmetic surgery is rarely
covered by insurance, it’s wise to seek
She quickly adds, “When I educate a full and complete cost estimate be-
my patients about facelifts, I try to fore proceeding. Facelift prices, for in-
break the stigma that a facelifts have. stance, vary widely nationwide from
They are not the same facelifts that about $6,000 to more than twice that
used to be done.” figure.

Bailor is referring to the “wind- Bailor's skills and her overall ap-
blown” (or worse) looks that celebri- proach – along with her husband Dou-
ties such as Joan Rivers and Donatella glass' love for fishing – led the couple
Versace experienced from older forms here to the Treasure Coast, where
of facelifts. Bailor went to work with Dr. William
Frazier, who has been in practice here
The website facialplasticsurgery. for more two decades.
net explains: “When surgeons first be-
gan performing facelift surgery, they Dr. Katya Bailor can be contacted at
cut the skin on the face and pulled it Dr. Frazier's Vero Cosmetic Surgery and
back. This so-called ‘skin only’ tech- MediSpa at 1255 37th Street, Suite D.
nique wasn't exactly reliable, nor did The phone number is 772-562-2400. 
it offer the best aesthetic results. The

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30 Vero Beach 32963 / August 18, 2016 Your Vero Beach Newsweekly ™

HEALTH

Weight, it gets better: Balloon can help shed pounds

BY TOM LLOYD Marketdata Enterprises, a re- loon device provides doctors and
Staff Writer search firm specializing in con- patients with a new non-surgical
sumer spending habits, says Ameri- option that can be quickly implant-
For millions of Americans, try- cans currently shell out more than ed, is non-permanent, and can be
ing to lose weight is an annoying $60 billion a year trying to lose easily removed.”
and seemingly never-ending roller weight.
coaster ride that – in the end – often Domkowski elaborates by ex-
gets them nowhere. Sadly, most of those dollars are plaining, “The balloon treats over-
lost. Most often the weight is not. weight folks who have an interest in
It can be one heck of an expensive losing somewhere between 30 and
ride, too. Worse, the Federal Trade Com- 50 pounds. It does not treat meta-
mission’s consumer fraud division bolic disease and it’s temporary. It
can stay [inside the stomach] only
Dr. Domkowski. PHOTO: LEAH DUBOIS for six months.”

says, “More consumers fall prey to The procedure itself is done on
fraudulent weight-loss products an outpatient basis. That said, the
than any other fraud.” straight-shooting Domkowski is
quick to add that patients don’t just
Dr. Patrick Domkowski of the walk in one day and walk out many
Riverside Surgical & Weight Loss pounds lighter.
Center, and chief of surgery at the
Sebastian River Medical Center, And, unlike the “gastric sleeve”
is all too aware of the weight-loss procedures Domkowski and his
challenges his patients face. surgical partner, Dr. Jason Radecke,
also perform, the balloon proce-
A graduate of Georgetown Uni- dure is not meant to combat diabe-
versity Medical School, Domkowski tes or other metabolic conditions.
served his internship, fellowship
and residency at Duke University. The people that could benefit
He is quick to point out weight loss from this are typically females, be-
can be far more complicated than cause “nine out of our 10 patients
many people realize. are females who want to lose about
40 pounds and have had trouble
Fortunately, the Food and Drug with dieting and want to try some-
Administration gave its stamp of thing a bit more aggressive … but
approval to a relatively new, non- not surgical.
surgical approach to weight loss
called “the gastric balloon” and it is “I think it’s an interesting new
already showing impressive results technology that offers something
nationwide. for people that want to lose a mod-
erate amount of weight and want to
It’s a simple concept. be a little bit more aggressive than
A silastic or silicone rubber bal- conventional dieting, but still are
loon is inserted by endoscope (no not ready for [gastric bypass] sur-
surgical incisions are made) down gery. The data has shown it’s been
the throat and into the stomach beneficial for folks that fit that cat-
and filled with a saline solution. egor y.”
According to the FDA, the balloon
does its work by “occupying space Success with the approach takes
in the stomach,” which triggers a commitment and a team of medical
feeling of “fullness” so the patient experts, including surgeons such as
doesn’t experience food cravings or Domkowski or Radecke, dietitians
eat to excess. and sometimes psychologists. To-
The device doesn’t change the gether they work intensively with
stomach’s natural anatomy, the patients both before and after the
FDA says, but rather it allows pa- procedure in order to achieve the
tients to lose weight and – more desired long-lasting results.
importantly – keep that weight off
after the balloon is removed by fol- “During that six months the bal-
lowing a medically supervised diet loon is in, you have regular follow-
and exercise plan. ups and meetings with our team,”
The director of the office of de- Domkowski says. “The lifestyle
vice evaluation at the FDA, Dr. Wil- changes patients make during that
liam Maisel, says, “This new bal- time will last. They will be real life-
style changes rather than an ‘I’m on
a diet’ mindset.”

Dr. Patrick Domkowski is at River-
side Surgical & Weight Loss Center at
and is the surgical chief at Sebastian
River Medical Center. His office is at
14430 U.S. Hwy. 1 in Sebastian. The
phone is 772-581-8003. 

Your Vero Beach Newsweekly ™ Vero Beach 32963 / August 18, 2016 31

HEALTH

New chief operating officer takes the reins at IRMC

leaders,” and for the past year and a “developing our leaders to make sure dentials in improving patient sat-
half Patterson was helping to gener- they can take us to the next level of isfaction. As COO of Self Regional
ate those reports. excellence.” Healthcare in Greenwood, S.C., she
helped increase patient satisfaction
“These are my three priorities [at Finally, Patterson turns to the pa- scores for inpatient, outpatient and
IRMC]” Patterson says: tient experience. “We certainly want emergency care into the 90th per-
to make sure that we create an amaz- centile.
First, “I’m all about engagement, ing experience for our patients.”
so making sure our physicians and With degrees in both healthcare
our employees are very foundation- She says all three priorities are administration and accounting and
ally engaged” is vital. equally important to her.
CONTINUED ON PAGE 32
Second, the new COO points to Patterson brings impressive cre-

Camie Patterson, Indian River Medical Center’s new

chief operating officer. PHOTO: DENISE RITCHIE

BY TOM LLOYD
Staff Writer

Camie Patterson, the new chief
operating officer at the Indian River
Medical Center, says her first few
weeks at the Vero Beach hospital
have largely been devoted to “just
getting to know the people” here.

It’s a safe bet, however, that what
Patterson calls “evidence-based”
changes are coming.

Patterson is a protégé and former
employee of the renowned health-
care consultant Qunit Studer, who
founded Pensacola-based Studer
Group, which was recently acquired
by the Huron Consulting Group of
Chicago for $325 million in cash and
stock.

Becker’s Hospital Review calls re-
ports generated by the Studer Group
“must-read insights for healthcare

32 Vero Beach 32963 / August 18, 2016 Your Vero Beach Newsweekly ™

HEALTH

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 31 turn business or – at the very least
– word-of-mouth referrals for new
a stint as a COO for two other hospi- patients.
tals in the Indiana University health
systems, Patterson has the know- When asked about the recent
how and experience that Hospitals disappointing Medicare hospital
& Health Network Magazine says quality rating, Patterson minces
are essential for “mastering opera- no words in her reply. “Absolutely,”
tional issues and coordinating hos- she says, “It’s a high priority for the
pital care with physician offices.” board and all leadership and obvi-
ously for me is to work on that.”
In any hospital setting, it’s the
physicians who bring in the money. And it’s clear her tools of choice
They do that by admitting patients are “metrics.”
and performing procedures or sur-
geries. At IRMC, there are now near- “You've got quality metrics,” Pat-
ly 360 physicians on staff. terson explains. “You've got expe-
rience metrics and you've got fi-
But doctors can also be respon- nance metrics.” Those metrics and
sible for increasing the hospital’s a renewed emphasis of engagement
costs. throughout the hospital will, ac-
cording to Patterson, dramatically
For example, Medicare and other improve both patient satisfaction
insurers often refuse to pay for ex- and the hospital’s Medicare scores.
tended hospital stays or the costs
incurred from hospital-acquired in- Hospitals & Health Network Mag-
fections from urinary catheters and azine writes that “a COO needs to fit
other hospital equipment. with the team and the mission” of
his or her hospital, and after a six-
As Becker’s Hospital Review says month search, the board at IRMC
the COO is “the primary person on decided Patterson is the best fit for
the administrative team” to monitor Indian River Medical Center.
physician performance and take ac-
tion whenever there are problems. Patterson replaces former IRMC
COO Jeff Slayer, whose brief tenure
Quality care, patient safety and at the Vero hospital ended under a
patient satisfaction are important somewhat mysterious cloak of se-
to the finances of every hospital. crecy in December 2015. 
Patient satisfaction generates re-



34 Vero Beach 32963 / August 18, 2016 Your Vero Beach Newsweekly ™

INSIGHT COVER STORY

A closed and shut down paper mill in Groveton, N.H. The mill was the
heart of this town and its closing left an uncertain future for the town.

Tom Fitch remembers attending a community Corp. has added 65 positions, while automotive parts forth most vociferously by GOP presidential candi-
meeting one night in 1997 at the North Lake Country maker KSM Castings has taken on 189 new people. date Donald Trump and, during the primaries, by
Club in Shelby, N.C., a small city of red-brick store- insurgent Democrat Bernie Sanders. Free trade has
fronts and wide boulevards. “Up until a year and a half ago, people were still resulted in a vast number of US manufacturing op-
very much panicking about the future,” says Chris erations moving offshore.
He listened as members of the local business es- Carrigan, a sheet-press operator at a local printing
tablishment praised the North American Free Trade plant. “But it seems like since then, the work has It has caused the loss of hundreds of thousands of
Agreement (NAFTA), which three years earlier had been steadier, and things are picking up.” jobs and hit certain communities, like Shelby, par-
opened up commerce with Mexico and Canada. The ticularly hard. It has helped hold down the incomes
leaders envisioned the pact giving local businesses, An employee works in an auto plant in China. of low-wage workers, and engendered a sense of
including the textile plants that had operated in the angst among working-class Americans that has been
area for decades, millions of new customers and Shelby’s failures and fortunes represent a micro- overlooked by much of the political establishment.
boosting job growth. cosm of the US in the era of more open global com-
merce. As free trade has become a dominant issue in Yet free trade has not been universally villainous.
Not Mr. Fitch. The owner of a boutique sign busi- the US presidential campaign – perhaps more than American consumers have saved millions of dollars
ness, he already stood out amid the suit-and-tie at any time since the 1930s – it is often portrayed in by buying foreign electronics, cars, and couches for
crowd in his jeans and beaked cap. His concern was stark, one-dimensional terms: as a menace that has less than if they had been made domestically. The
that the implementation of NAFTA would flood the cost the US millions of jobs while enriching countries pacts have led to the rise of many higher-end manu-
United States with cheap imports and shutter local such as China and Mexico. facturing operations here.
mills.
There is some truth in this dark narrative, as put Free trade may have helped some American com-
He turned out to be prescient. Shelby lost 40 per- panies survive when they otherwise wouldn’t have:
cent of its factory jobs between 1999 and 2014 and They were able to compete in the new global envi-
saw the poverty rate rise to double the national aver- ronment by moving manufacturing plants to low-
age. “Here, these guys were saying how their profits wage countries and keeping better-paying adminis-
had increased, and I stood up and asked them why trative, marketing, and other operations here.
they couldn’t see what was in front of their faces: This
was going to destroy our town,” recalls Fitch. Perhaps most significant, many of the jobs that
have been lost in US manufacturing in the past 10
Yet today not all is dire. A small renaissance is years were not the result of malevolent free-trade
under way in the area, some of which is tied to glo- deals at all. They were caused by the inexorable rise
balization. Schletter Inc., the US subsidiary of a of automation, even though that fact provides little
German solar-panel manufacturer, has hired 305 solace to workers shorn of their paychecks.
people. Longtime furniture company Bernhardt has
reopened a facility with 65 jobs. Clearwater Paper “The fundamental betrayal goes beyond trade –
it’s a sense that we’re working hard and we’re getting

Your Vero Beach Newsweekly ™ Vero Beach 32963 / August 18, 2016 35

INSIGHT COVER STORY

screwed by the system ... a sense that, ‘This isn’t the Eric Mosley works on the factory floor at RoMan Manufacturing, a shrinking market, high energy costs, and competi-
America I grew up in, or the America I expected,’ ” a firm that makes electrical transformers and welding equipment. tion from Canada.
says I.M. “Mac” Destler, a University of Maryland po-
litical scientist and author of “American Trade Poli- While the presidential campaign has highlighted “We’re losing jobs in America,” says Russ Drech-
tics.” “And that’s why trade is more prominent today the backlash against free trade among Rust Belt sel, president and chief executive officer of Madison
than it’s been in any presidential campaign since, workers – who happen to live in valuable swing Paper Industries. “It’s an unfair trade. I don’t believe
well, the Great Depression.” states – the same competitive forces are roiling in- in subsidies.”
dustries elsewhere.
All this is important because the next president On a recent morning before the closure, he walked
will face major decisions about how open global Tom Fitch, owner of a sign business in Shelby, N.C. through the mill, which sits on 30 acres that hug the
commerce should be. Kennebec. A giant roll of proto-paper the width of a
In Madison, Maine, a one-stoplight town on the bus spun on cylinders, then passed through roaring
The US seems likely to retreat somewhat from the banks of the Kennebec River, the closure of a paper dryers to wring out the pulp’s water and bond the
freewheeling free-trade ethos of the past two de- mill in May has stirred debate over cheap imports fibers together. The heat required to turn logs into
cades no matter who wins the White House. Even abetted by foreign subsidies. The difference is that pulp, and then steam and dry the paper, meant that
Democrat Hillary Clinton, who has supported free the villain is not China or Mexico, but Canada. the mill consumed roughly double the power that its
trade in the past, says she now won’t support the two hydropower dams produced.
Trans-Pacific Partnership – a massive trade pact in- Container ships load and unload goods in the Port of Oakland.
volving the US and 11 other countries. Inside a control room, Mr. Drechsel talked to work-
The closure of the cavernous, blue-roofed pulp ers about their severance and benefits and asked if
The question is: How much should the US pull and paper mill with the loss of more than 200 jobs they had all the information they needed.
back from free trade – if at all? And how much has ends more than a century of paper production in
the country really been hurt by the freer cross-bor- Madison (pop. 2,630.) It’s one of several paper mills He noted that he had employees who had fol-
der flow of everything from mufflers to muffin tins? in Maine that have closed in recent years, undone by lowed their parents into the mill. One young recruit
who joined in 2015 was a third-generation millwork-
For nearly a century, Shelby was a thriving notch A woman looks at refrigerators in a store in Pennsylvania. er. Each job, local officials say, helps support as many
in a Textile Belt that ran from the western Carolinas Free trade has made goods cheaper for U.S. consumers. as five people in Madison and other towns, from res-
into northern Georgia. At its peak it had more than a taurant workers to barbers, real estate agents to me-
dozen mills that produced yarn and fabric for appar- chanics.
el-makers and other outlets, employing thousands
of workers, among them legendary bluegrass banjo At its height in the 1960s, the paper industry em-
picker Earl Scruggs, one of Shelby’s favorite sons. An ployed more than 18,000 workers in Maine. By 2011,
eponymous music center now stands downtown to that number had fallen below 6,000. Since then, four
honor the late musician. of 11 mills have closed; Madison is the fifth.

In 1970, more than 2.3 million Americans worked The company’s problems began in 2012, when the
in garment and textile factories. By 1993, the year provincial government in Nova Scotia stepped in to
President Bill Clinton signed NAFTA, that number rescue a bankrupt paper mill in Port Hawkesbury,
had fallen to about 1.6 million. providing loans and subsidized power to save hun-
dreds of local jobs.
Then came a surge in foreign fabric imports and
the rise of China as a low-cost manufacturing colos- By 2015, Madison was reducing shifts and idling
sus. Towels and bed linens sold at Wal-Mart were no machinery after a severe winter that drove up en-
longer made in American mills. In Shelby, some fac- ergy prices. Together with another paper company,
tory owners invested in new machinery to automate it filed a petition with the US Department of Com-
processes and cut labor costs. But few survived the merce seeking import duties on the Port Hawkesbury
onslaught of foreign competition. One by one, the mill for unfair subsidies. Last November, the Maine
mills closed, leaving middle-aged workers with no plants won their case: The US imposed countervail-
paychecks or pensions. ing duties of 20 percent on imports from the Nova
Scotia plant (an appeal is pending).
This decline mirrors a broader trend: Since 1970
total US employment in manufacturing has fallen by But it came too late to save Madison Paper. Drech-
nearly a third. But the trend in output is going in the sel says that even with the import duties on Cana-
opposite direction. In 2015, the US produced goods dian paper, it would be hard to compete because
valued at $2.2 trillion, up from $1.7 trillion in 2009 at the strong US dollar makes Canadian imports much
the peak of the Great Recession. cheaper.

Simply put, American factories and workshops The loss of Madison’s biggest taxpayer is a blow,
are producing more by using less labor and more but it represents only a fifth of the town’s tax base,
machinery, a process of capital investment and au- much less than in the past. The town is hoping to
tomation that has also transformed American farms. find another tenant for the mill site, though it’s more
likely that a buyer would want just the hydropower
The effect of automation on labor markets is plants.
deeper than the disruption caused by cheap im-
ports. A 2013 Massachusetts Institute of Technology “Growing up here, we were always told that the
study by economist David Autor and two coauthors day that mill closes up, we’re going to dry up and
found that inexpensive Chinese goods accounted for blow away,” says Tim Curtis, the town manager. “It
about a quarter of the decline in US manufacturing won’t be easy. It’s a loss.”
jobs between 1990 and 2007, a period that includes
the adoption of NAFTA and China’s entry into the Yet even in a struggling industry, opportunities
World Trade Organization. exist. Ever since the closure of Madison Paper was
announced earlier this year, its skilled workers have
But their data also suggest that many more jobs been getting offers from other paper mills. Those
were lost because of robots, computers, and sen- with the right résumé can get hired – provided they
sors. Combined, the forces of automation and trade are willing either to commute or to relocate to an-
competition have decimated blue-collar jobs and the other mill town.
wages they pay. In 2003, the median hourly wage in
a US automotive parts factory was $18.35; a decade For generations of Americans, this was a way to
later it was $15.83. The 2008-09 recession only added survive in bad economic times: Move to where the
to the woes of the working class. jobs are. From the gold rush to the Dust Bowl exo-
dus, pioneers, dreamers, and immigrants have built
America by migrating to the next opportunity.

Lately that spirit of mobility has diminished, un-

CONTINUED ON PAGE 38

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CONTINUED FROM PAGE 35 INSIGHT COVER STORY

dermining a key shock absorber of the rose in states such as Florida that had who has studied labor mobility. “If says Jacob Funk Kirkegaard, a senior
US economy. plentiful construction jobs. The high- [mobility] comes down, it means it will fellow at the Peterson Institute for In-
est out-migration rates during 2007-10 be a longer recovery and more pain af- ternational Economics in Washington.
No one is quite sure why. An aging were in Idaho (2.1 percent), Nevada ter each recession.”
nation might be less footloose. Cer- (1.6 percent), and Alaska (1.2 percent). In the US, federal aid for workers
tainly the rise of dual-earner families The rate in Michigan, where factory This raises the question of whether who lose their jobs because of foreign
means it’s harder for two people to up- employment took a huge hit, was only the US will need to act more like Eu- trade comes via Trade Adjustment
root and leave. Soaring housing costs 0.3 percent. rope, where mobility within national Assistance, or TAA. It offers extended
make some cities unaffordable. Un- borders has long been less prevalent unemployment benefits, occupational
derwater mortgages make other cities “The ‘worst’ places in America are – and where countries have to spend retraining, and relocation money.
hard to leave. But one theory points not the ones that are losing popula- more to retrain workers. “When you
to something deeper: Americans have tion,” says Mai Chi Dao, an economist have a less mobile workforce the need Studies show that people who take
adopted a bunker mentality as wages at the International Monetary Fund to retrain becomes far more urgent,” TAA training find jobs at higher rates
have stagnated. than people who simply look for work
while cashing unemployment checks.
“Something is shifting in how work- But older workers have less success in
ers make transitions in the labor mar- finding work and earning comparable
ket,” says Abigail Wozniak, a labor salaries.
economist at Notre Dame University
in Indiana and coauthor of a 2014 For Mohamed Moussa, a third-gen-
study of internal migration. eration autoworker, the opportunity
for retraining was transformational.
Her research suggests that fewer While working at a Ford Motor Co.
Americans find it’s helpful to move, plant, he had managed to study part
because the chances of finding a sig- time and get a bachelor’s degree in
nificantly better salary are low and radiation therapy in 2005. So when he
the chances of being laid off again are lost his job in 2008 he was ready to start
high. Without the possibility of better a new career. Five years later, he had a
work, mobility has slowed. This trend medical degree and was working as a
began in the 1970s and cuts across in- resident in a hospital emergency room.
dustries, socioeconomic classes, and Unlike many of his classmates, he was
generations. only $50,000 in debt. “It’s been a long
winding road,” he says. “I try not to lose
During the Great Recession, mobil- sight of that.”
ity did pick up. But the movement of
job seekers didn’t correspond with the Terry Hernden has benefited from
regions mired in the deepest down- starting over, too. When he was laid
turns. For example, job-related moves off in 2011 from his job at an injection-

Your Vero Beach Newsweekly ™ Vero Beach 32963 / August 18, 2016 39

INSIGHT COVER STORY

molding plant, he used TAA funds to Not everyone will have to retool erations in the area. to other businesses: Shelby now has
enroll at a community college to study their career in order to find work. As The local economic development a trendy tapas restaurant and a craft
information technology security. After some of the emerging new industries brewery.
two years, he had an associate degree in Shelby show, the story of US manu- office says that Cleveland County, of
that he parlayed into a full-time job at facturing is not all layoffs and closures. which Shelby is a part, has created Nationwide, what’s left of the US
Quicken Loans, a Detroit-based mort- Since the Great Recession, a number of 1,863 new jobs and attracted $1.8 bil- manufacturing sector is relatively
gage lender. plants have reopened or expanded op- lion in capital investment in recent healthy. In fact, in some regions, the
years. This is giving a boost
CONTINUED ON PAGE 40

40 Vero Beach 32963 / August 18, 2016 Your Vero Beach Newsweekly ™

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 39 INSIGHT COVER STORY

problem isn’t whether plants have too reason is a general shift: Tens of thou-
many workers. It’s whether they have sands of boomers are now retiring each
too few. year, and Millennials are reluctant to
take their jobs. They prefer to work in
The National Association of Manu- other industries that pay just as well –
facturers projects that more than half and that don’t come with the stigma of
of the 3.5 million factory job openings 40 years of downsizing.
in the next decade will go unfilled. The

Your Vero Beach Newsweekly ™ Vero Beach 32963 / August 18, 2016 41

INSIGHT COVER STORY

The Grand Rapids area offers a contrast to De- Terry Hernden, who went back to school after being are more apt to run a sophisticated computer sys-
troit’s gritty struggles. Unemployment is low (around laid off and now works for a mortgage lender. tem than to grease ball bearings, and recruits can
3 percent, compared with a statewide average of 5 receive apprenticeships that include free tuition
percent). Few workers are waiting for a job. And the An employee in a textile factory in China. for college classes.
need is high: 1 in 5 people works in manufactur-
ing, churning out auto parts, machinery, plastics, that promotes the virtues of manufacturing to the “[Workers] are harder to find and they have job
office furniture, and medical devices. Other indus- next generation by hosting job fairs and sending offers,” says Jay Dunwell, president of Wolverine
tries, including agribusiness and life sciences, want a mobile demonstration vehicle to rural schools. Coil Spring Company, a family-owned firm in Grand
the same workers. The talk in the area is of growing One of the group’s messages is that factories are no Rapids. “They may be coming [into the workforce],
trade and attracting foreign investment, not erect- longer dark, dirty, and dangerous. Workers today but they’ve been plucked by other industries that are
ing barriers. also doing as well as manufacturing.”

At RoMan Manufacturing Inc., a maker of electri- The competition for workers is evident in Char-
cal transformers and welding equipment, president lotte, N.C., 40 miles east of Shelby. The city is boom-
and chief executive officer Robert Roth closely moni- ing on the back of foreign trade. Nearly 1,000 foreign
tors the age of his nearly 200 workers. Five are retir- companies have taken advantage of tariff reductions
ing this year. Mr. Roth, whose father cofounded the to open facilities in the area, including a German
company in 1980, has three community-college stu- specialty chemicals company, a South Korean plant
dents enrolled in a work-placement program, with that makes sheet-metal components, and a Chinese
a starting wage of $13 an hour that rises to $17 after yarn-spinning firm. Charlotte’s population has grown
two years. by more than 50 percent since 2000. It is rated No. 5
among large cities in the country for job growth.
At a worktable inside the transformer plant, young
Jason Stenquist is trying to assemble some copper Yet many of the new workers aren’t getting rich:
coils. It’s his first week on the job. In high school, In 1999, the median household in Charlotte earned
he considered pursuing a medical career but then $5,000 more than the US average; by 2014, it was
switched to electrical engineering. “I love working only on par.
with tools,” he says. “I love creating.”
As with so much of the national debate on trade
To win over these young workers, manufacturers and globalization, how people view the issue of-
have to overcome the taint of the past. Millennials ten depends on where they started and where they
“remember their father and mother both were laid stand now.
off,” says Birgit Klohs, president and chief executive
of The Right Place, a business development agency “In these trade agreements, the winners in America
for western Michigan. “They blame it on the manu- hugely outweigh the losers,” says Matthew Gold, a
facturing recession.” former deputy assistant US trade representative who
now teaches law at Fordham University in New York.
The agency supports a public-private initiative “The political problem is that the losers know exactly
who they are, exactly how much they lost.” 

42 Vero Beach 32963 / August 18, 2016 Your Vero Beach Newsweekly ™

INSIGHT EDITORIAL

When you mark your August ballot, one candidate to NOT vote for

We don’t plan to make political en- Brian Barefoot, he managed to give Barefoot, a leader whose intellect have subsidized the Vero city budget
dorsements this August. There are too rise to a brief era of good feelings and and judgment we on the whole admire, to the tune of tens of millions of dollars
many local races where candidates are brokered a three-way meeting that led must be feeling slightly sick when he through Vero’s usurious electric bills,
spending dismaying amounts of mon- to a surprise FPL offer of $30 million reads those words of praise today. would give Vero a going-away dowry of
ey spreading innuendos about their for the Shores customers it does not another $20 million.
opponents. already serve. Even as the Vero Utilities Commis-
sion was voting 5-0 to recommend The only conclusion we can draw
Whether the mailings come from Suddenly, the gap between what FPL that the city approve the FPL offer, from this proposal is that Kramer – con-
Sykes or Grall, Mayfield and Work- was offering and the outrageous amount the ever duplicitous Kramer – perhaps cluding he is not going to oust County
man, or the supposedly “independent” Vero was demanding had shrunk from giving up on his dream of election to Commissioner Bob Solari – is already
(wink, wink) political action commit- $51 million to only $12.4 million. the County Commission – began pull- making plans to run for a fourth term
tees supporting them, the trash clutter- ing the rug out from under the Shores. on the Vero Beach City Council, de-
ing our mailboxes is as disheartening as The new FPL offer was to be consid- spite swearing to his friends there is
it is disgusting. When it comes to these ered this past Tuesday, and Barefoot – First, he announced that he proba- no chance this will happen.
candidates, pick your poison. in an obsequious effort to keep Kram- bly would vote “No” to the FPL offer at
er on board – sent a letter to him on Tuesday’s meeting. Then he came up But lest there is anyone left that
But we do plan to alert any who may Aug. 5th that said: “The people in both with a new proposal that he unveiled thinks Kramer is honorable, we would
have missed it to the latest duplic- our communities should know that we in a letter back to Barefoot. urge them to fire up their computer
ity by one candidate who absolutely, never would have had this opportunity and visit www.BobSolari.com.
positively, never should get your vote without your leadership, and on behalf “I would ask whether the Town
under any circumstances: Jay Kramer. of our residents I wish to thank you for might consider contributing $20 mil- You might think that what you would
suggesting the meeting at which FPL’s lion toward FPL’s purchase of our fa- get is the website for Solari, who is
For the past couple of months, Kram- offer was made. cilities and customer accounts in the seeking re-election.
er – currently finishing a third term on Shores, such that the combined price
the Vero Beach City Council and as- “Several years ago, you were among purchase price would be $47 million.” What you actually get when you go
piring to move up to the Indian River the first to suggest the potential for a to www.BobSolari.com is the website
County Commission – has been trying partial sale, and today, it looks as though This proposal is stunning in its au- www.VoteJayKramer.com.
to play the residents of Indian River that vision could become a reality.” dacity. Let’s see if we can simplify it:
Shores who contribute generously to Shores residents, who over the years How can this be? Beats the heck out
county political campaigns for suckers. of Kramer, who pronounced himself
absolutely mystified at who could pos-
Just as he fooled us in 2011, when sibly have done such an underhanded
we thought until the day he was first thing when it was brought to his atten-
elected that he favored selling Vero tion more than a month ago.
Beach Electric to Florida Power and
Light, Kramer has in the past couple of "We are trying to have this redirec-
months been suggesting he now wants tion stopped," said Kramer at the time.
nothing more than to find a fair deal "Should this persist we will file a (Digi-
for the partial sale of Vero Electric’s tal Millennium Copyright Act) notice
3,000-plus Shores customers to FPL. to GoDaddy to get the domain name's
owner and contact them to stop the re-
Until a couple of weeks ago, amaz- direction."
ing as it may seem to anyone who has
watched Kramer over the years, his lat- Kind of amazing that he has not
est charade appeared to be working. been able to get this dirtiest of dirty
political tricks halted. But almost ev-
Engaging in dog-park and Lemon erything to do with Kramer is amaz-
Tree discussions with Shores Mayor ing. Whatever else you do on election
day, do NOT vote for Kramer. 

SLEEPLESS IN … PART III your blood pressure can vary. These changes ADENOSINE AND MELATONIN
in blood pressure and heart/breathing rates
How Sleep Affects Your Health throughout the night seem to be advanta- Your body produces two substances that help
geous for your health. make you sleep.
What do the Three Mile Island disaster, Cher-  Adenosine levels build up in your blood
nobyl nuclear accident and Exxon Valdez oil spill A lack of sleep puts your body under stress which while you’re awake and break down while you
have in common? They were caused, in part, by may trigger the release of more adrenaline, cor- sleep. If you have several nights of less than
mistakes made by overly tired workers. tisol and other stress hormones during the day. optimal amounts of sleep, an accumulation of
These hormones keep your blood pressure from adenosine (along with other complex factors)
WHAT HAPPENS IF YOU DON’T dipping during sleep (remember, dips in blood may cause you to sleep longer than normal or
GET ENOUGH SLEEP? pressure at night are a good thing) – which can at unplanned times during the day.
actually increase your risk of heart disease.
Not getting enough sleep makes it hard to focus  Melatonin is a hormone that makes you feel
and pay attention. We become more easily con- Not getting enough sleep may also trigger sleepy at night. Your biological clock triggers
fused; reaction time slows. In fact, when people your body to produce more C-reactive pro- the body to produce melatonin, which helps
who lack sleep are tested on a driving simulator, tein (CRP). A high level of CPR, an indicator for prepare your brain and body for sleep. While
they perform just as poorly as people who are inflammation, can put you at risk for athero- melatonin is available as an over-the-counter
drunk. sclerosis (hardening of the arteries) which can supplement, its effectiveness and safety when
cause heart attack or stroke. used over a prolonged period is unclear.
Sleeplessness can cause mood problems. And
a chronic lack of sleep is now being linked with HOW DOES SLEEP AFFECT THE HOW MUCH SLEEP DO YOU NEED?
a higher risk for obesity, diabetes, depression, IMMUNE SYSTEM?
infection and cardiovascular disease. Sleep needs vary from person to person. When
Getting a good night’s sleep on a regular basis healthy adults are given unlimited opportunity
HOW DOES SLEEP AFFECT helps keep you from getting sick. And if you do to sleep, they sleep on average between eight
YOUR HEART? get sick, you tend to get better faster. During and eight-and-a-half hours a night. 
sleep, your body creates cellular hormones
Sleep gives your heart and vascular system a called “cytokines” that help the immune sys- Your comments and suggestions for future topics are
much-needed rest. In response to dreams, tem fight various infections. always welcome. Email us at [email protected].
heart and breathing rates can rise and fall and
© 2015 Vero Beach 32963 Media, all rights reserved

44 Vero Beach 32963 / August 18, 2016 Your Vero Beach Newsweekly ™

INSIGHT BOOK REVIEW

You might think of Robert Moor as the Roger An- He writes at a high level throughout the book, almost
gell of trail-walking. Just as Angell’s reports on spe- never settling for a shopworn expression.
cific baseball games segue effortlessly into reflec-
tions on the venerable sport itself, so Moor looks up He’s also adept at pulling in research to support
from whatever trail he may be on to see the big pic- his arguments. In an early chapter on (undisputed)
ture. Which is often very big, indeed. Not only has he animal trails, for example, he summarizes an im-
hiked some of the most out-of-the-way trails on the probable and astonishing experiment:
planet (in Newfoundland, Morocco and Malaysian
Borneo, to name just a few). He has also taken part “When researchers tasked a slime mold with con-
in a grand, ongoing effort to extend the Appalachian necting a series of oat clusters mirroring the location
Trail to Greenland and even parts of Africa, on the of the major population centers surrounding Tokyo,
dazzling theory that those locales hold pieces of what the slime mold effectively re-created the layout of
was once a single mountain chain – the ultra-proto the city’s railway system. Linger a moment over that
Appalachians – on the supercontinent of Pangea. fact: A single-celled organism can design a railway
system just as adroitly as Japan’s top engineers.”
In addition to hiking his tail off (among other
footsore coups, he has chalked up the traditional, Yet he doesn’t gobble up every flashy new scientific
Georgia-to-Maine version of the Appalachian Trail), theory. After citing such thinkers as Carl Sagan for the
Moor prepared for writing this book, his first, in un- proposition that the development of tracking and hunt-
usual ways. He herded sheep on the Navajo Reser- ing skills led to a quantum leap in human brain power,
vation. He learned to fashion a working stove from Moor expresses his own skepticism: “If tracking is a pre-
Coke cans. He boned up on the writings of the 9th- historic form of physics, then gathering plants is also
century Chinese poet Han-shan, the 18th-century an early form of botany, and cooking is a precursor to
French naturalist Charles Bonnet and the 20th-cen- chemistry.” The furthest Moor will go is to acknowledge
tury American engineer Vannevar Bush. While you’re that “hunting is an indisputably fundamental human
catching your breath, let me assure you that Moor tradition, which has shaped us in various ways.”
mixes these and other ingredients into a highly sat-
isfying whole, neatly avoiding the pitfall of preten- The book offers multiple human portraits, in-
tiousness. “On Trails” is an engaging blend of travel- cluding the hikers with whom Moor chums around.
ogue, sociology, history and philosophy that might
be summed up as a meditation on the centrality of
trails to animal and human life.

Moor starts off in Newfoundland, where he goes
to have a look at what are thought to be the world’s
oldest trails, left some 565 million years ago by prim-
itive creatures called Ediacarans but discovered only
eight years ago along the island’s coastline. Moor’s
scientific informant speculates that the fossilized
Ediacaran trails memorialize the creatures’ efforts to
regain perches from which they’d been dislodged by
waves. “The first animals to summon the strength to
venture forth,” Moor writes, “may simply have want-
ed to go back home.” But since a trail implies that
someone other than its maker might want to follow
it, Moor ultimately decides that the Ediacaran spoors
don’t make the cut. Each recorded journey was self-
contained – a kind of filmstrip of an animal on the go
but not really a trail.

Still, refining one’s subject is a useful exercise, and
Moor’s prose makes him such good company that
the reader is happy to keep pace. On the way, Moor
is menaced by a storm cloud that emits “a soft diges-
tive growl,” and soon “the air [is] crazed with rain.”

Your Vero Beach Newsweekly ™ Vero Beach 32963 / August 18, 2016 45

INSIGHT BOOK REVIEW

Thru-hikers on the Appalachian Trail get nicknames “‘If you want to finish [the trail], we’ll do whatever As for Moor, I’ll remember him not as the eru-
for the duration, and so we meet Snuggles and Doyi, we have to in order to get you there,’ Tree Frog said. dite quoter of Han-shan and Nietzsche on the same
Tree Frog and Catch-Me-If-You-Can. (Moor himself page, but as the thoughtful stylist who turns out sen-
was Spaceman, pronounced the normal way, not as “Doyi thought for a moment. He made a small, tences as simple and eloquent as this: “As they do for
insisted upon by the crackpot doctor on “30 Rock.”) pained smile. ants and elephants, [sheep] trails function as a form
The Appalachian Trail crowd makes periodic appear- of external memory.” 
ances, sometimes providing comic relief, sometimes “‘I do,’ he said, firmly.”
demonstrating an affecting solidarity with one an- Moor’s one misstep (if you will) has to do with one ON TRAILS
other. When Doyi announces that he’s on the verge of these fellow marathon hikers, a legendary trail
of giving up, Snuggles, Tree Frog, et al. shower him denizen known as Nimblewill Nomad. Legendary AN EXPLORATION
with extra food, along with tips for slimming down he may be – he dines out on the tale of having had By Robert Moor, Simon & Schuster. 340 pp. $25
his punishingly heavy pack. all his toenails surgically removed to avoid infection. Review by Dennis Drabelle, The Washington Post
But interesting he is not, and he clutters up the book’s
lengthy epilogue with subpar folk wisdom.

The relationship between humans and their pets his sister, he has told no one about them. And so the
has been a staple of literature almost since, say, the focus is on the urgency of finding Gonker. The hero
advent of movable type. So one would think that a here is Virginia Marshall, known as Ginny. She’s the
story about a lost dog would have to be pretty good daughter of an alcoholic mother who suffered unbe-
to advance the genre along. Pauls Toutonghi’s “Dog lievable emotional and physical abuse as a child and
Gone” accomplishes the feat admirably. Dog lovers of is determined to keep her family together through
the world can unite behind this book. whatever challenges it faces.

Like a good novel, “Dog Gone” is full of twists that As father and son go off to search the trail, Ginny –
keep the reader engaged until the very end. But Tou- in those pre-Facebook days of the late 1990s – orga-
tonghi, whose two previous books were novels, has nizes a social network to hunt for the dog. She con-
a real-life story on his hands, and the result is not so tacts everyone she can think of in the area, including
much about a lost dog as it is a family’s love for one newspapers. One, the News Virginian of Waynesboro,
another even amid trying circumstances. wrote a story. It got picked up by the Associated Press.
The Daily Progress of Charlottesville followed. The
The family is John and Virginia Marshall of circle of people looking for Gonker grew daily.
McLean, Va., and their two kids: Fielding, a young
adult newly graduated from the University of Virgin- Toutonghi’s narrative is well-written and fast-
ia, and Peyton, an older teen who has gone off to fin- paced, although his use of direct quotations about
ish her education at Reed College in Oregon. long-ago events is often questionable. Yet he had
amazing access to the participants, married as he is
Fielding, or Fields as he is called, is in a post-graduate to Peyton Marshall.
rut. A romance has fizzled, he doesn’t have a job, and
he does a lot of goofing off. At some point he goes to the Don’t be surprised if, at the finish of “Dog Gone,”
local SPCA shelter and picks up a puppy, a golden re- you find yourself wanting to rush to an animal res-
triever mix, and as boys and young men are wont to do, cue shelter. As they say, if you want to have a friend in
falls head over heels with the mutt he names Gonker. Washington, get a dog. 

One day after he has moved back to Northern Vir- DOG GONE
ginia and found gainful employment, Fields and a
friend decide to go for a hike on the Appalachian Trail. A LOST PET’S EXTRAORDINARY JOURNEY AND THE
Gonker heads into the brush. The big doofus of a dog FAMILY WHO BROUGHT HIM HOME
is nowhere to be found. Fields is devastated. Gonker By Pauls Toutonghi, Knopf. 252pp. $25
has Addison’s disease; left untreated, he will die.
Review by James Hill, The Washington Post
Fields has his own medical issues. But other than

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46 Vero Beach 32963 / August 18, 2016 Your Vero Beach Newsweekly ™

INSIGHT TRAVEL

Outage outrage: When IT turbulence grounds airlines

BY CHRISTOPHER ELLIOTT The Southwest systems problem the airline’s website, its smartphone “The spike in incoming volume that
suggests how fragile even the best-run app and several internal systems used this received was incredible,” says
Washington Post airlines can be. It started in the early by Southwest employees to handle Joshua March, the chief executive of
afternoon of July 20, when one of its reservations. It was as if someone had Conversocial, which offers customer-
Catastrophic computer outages that small Cisco routers, out of about 2,000 turned off the lights for half a day. service software to travel companies.
paralyze an entire airline are few and such pieces of hardware that direct the “But the really significant piece in this
far between. Except this summer. airline’s network traffic, failed. When the systems flickered back to instance was the inability to effectively
life, the problems continued. The air- scale the response.”
Last month, Southwest Airlines This router broke in an unusual way. line still didn’t have enough informa-
canceled 2,300 flights after a router in Instead of registering the error, which tion to restart all flights. Because its Southwest had no script for han-
one of its data centers failed, delaying would have allowed network adminis- systems had been down for so long, dling an event of this magnitude.
hundreds of thousands of passengers. trators in Southwest’s Dallas data cen- it couldn’t be sure whether some of
And more recently, Delta Air Lines ter to take it offline immediately and its crews had taken enough rest, as “It was really rough,” says Robert
suffered a massive computer failure, replace it with a working router, it be- required by the Federal Aviation Ad- Jordan, the airline’s executive vice
which triggered the cancellation of haved as if it was still operating normal- ministration. That forced Southwest to president and chief commercial of-
451 flights in a single morning. ly. Only, it wasn’t directing any traffic. cancel more flights on June 21 and 22. ficer, who describes the IT catastro-
phe as a “thousand-year flood.” The
A rare look behind the curtain at Although network administrators Brandwatch, a social-tracking ser- airline sent 50-percent-off vouchers
Southwest’s meltdown offers several spotted the error within half an hour, vice, charted a corresponding tsunami to passengers affected by the out-
important customer-service lessons enough traffic had backed up that crit- of anger on Southwest’s social media age, and in some cases paid for them
for passengers who experience similar ical systems needed to be rebooted – a channels. The airline drew 36,905 men- to fly to their destinations on other
delays in the future. And in an industry process that took a full 12 hours and tions in a single day on July 21, an almost airlines. All told, he says Southwest
that depends on finicky information affected critical functions, including 20-fold increase from normal levels. spent “tens of millions of dollars” try-
systems, these incidents are bound to ing to make amends.
repeat themselves. They’ve left cus-
tomers wondering how to avoid get- Southwest is still cleaning up. Rus-
ting stuck in another IT collapse, and sell’s delayed flight to Las Vegas is
what, if anything, an airline can do to among the thousands of cases still
make up for such an event. being processed. Under most circum-
stances, a full refund for a replacement
Jack Russell, who was scheduled flight would be a tall order, but these
to fly from St. Louis to Las Vegas last are not normal circumstances.
month, had a front-row seat for South-
west’s IT issues, which an employee IT disasters of this scale are unusual.
euphemistically blamed on a “soft- Back in 2012, United Airlines experi-
ware problem.” The airline’s proposed enced several days of delayed flights
fix: Fly him to Vegas four days later. and sluggish customer service as it
struggled to integrate the IT systems of
As the executive vice president of a United and Continental Airlines. Last
software company in St. Louis, Russell July, United also suffered an outage that
knows a thing or two about comput- made it cancel hundreds of flights after
ers that go on the blink. But he’s less a network router stopped working.
understanding about Southwest’s IT
implosion, which he says left him with Asked if passengers could have
little choice but to pay an extra $1,800 done anything to get to their destina-
to reach his destination. tions faster during such a systems col-
lapse, Jordan paused. So many things
“I spent twice as much money as I went wrong during the event that the
thought I would to get to Las Vegas,” normal tricks didn’t work. You couldn’t
Russell says. “If my customers had an fall back on calling the airline because
outage created by my company and I even the call-center employees didn’t
said, ‘Sorry, it was a freak occurrence,’ have access to their IT systems. “There
they would be waiting at my doorstep just isn’t a good answer,” he says. 
with their lawyer.”

Your Vero Beach Newsweekly ™ Vero Beach 32963 / August 18, 2016 47

INSIGHT ON FAITH

Break the fever! Come back to health by serving others

BY REV. DRS. CASEY AND BOB BAGGOTT
Columnists

Is a disease the same thing as an ill- in her world as by the quelling of the fe- But perhaps they needn’t keep us we could reply, “I am still waiting for
ness? Not according to a book by Bruce ver. She was healthy again. down. Perhaps the story of Peter’s those test results, but I am mentoring
Malina entitled “Social-Science Com- mother-in-law who arose from her fe- a young student today who has trouble
mentary on the Synoptic Gospels.” Of course we all come down with ver to serve provides us with an alterna- in school, and I know I can help him, so
This book claims that cultural anthro- a fever from time to time, don’t we? tive. What if we no longer allowed the that makes me feel wonderful.”
pologists distinguish between disease Fevers come and go. But we should problems that beset us, physical mental
and illness. A disease, they say, is a bio- probably not mistake the absence or spiritual, from controlling all of life? Lives engaged in service offer a mod-
medical condition. An illness, on the of an elevated body temperature for What if we got up and served, despite el for health and wholeness that tran-
other hand, may or may not have a bio- real health. Maybe we’re still suffering our troubles? scends physical impairment. In fact,
medical component, but it always has from other debilitating fevers. They some of the healthiest people we know
a social component. What difference show up in an endless and trouble- When someone asked how we are have struggled with the most debilitat-
does insisting on such distinctions in some variety, don’t they? There are fe- doing, couldn’t we make the sort of ing diseases. But they were more than
definition make? Well, it does invite us vers of grief, fevers of addiction, fevers self-assessment that looked at our pos- their bodies, more than their limita-
to recognize that health is a bigger and of resentment, and fevers of worry. On sible wholeness before God, and then tions, more than their fevers. They were
more complicated issue than we tend and on they go. These fevers, too, can respond, “Thanks for asking. My back always ready to get up, to give, to engage
to realize. lay us flat and keep us from getting up is still killing me today, but I am cook- helpfully with others, and to serve.
and engaging in the fullness, richness ing food for the homeless center this
Some of our favorite stories in the Bi- and beauty of life. afternoon, and I feel great!” Or maybe Why not take your temperature? How
ble are the healing stories. For example, healthy are you? 
there is a wonderful story of Jesus heal-
ing Peter’s mother-in-law from a fever.
The story says she was bed-ridden and
unable to get up. But when she was
healed from her fever, she immediately
arose and began to serve her family and
friends. Her life regained its balance and
her healing was apparent as much, per-
haps, by the fruitful place she resumed

48 Vero Beach 32963 / August 18, 2016 Your Vero Beach Newsweekly ™

INSIGHT PETS

Bonzo’s new bud Becca is a heckuva pooch

Hi Dog Buddies! closer. I’ll bet you fell for that ‘nose nip ol’ insurance policy any day. Becca. PHOTO BY LEAH DUBOIS
is how we say hello’ routine, right?” “When she goes to work, I stay on the
This week I had a blast interviewing run all over the place.”
a charming German Shepherd who is I nodded, blushing. porch, or inside if it’s too hot. Some- “All that exercise sure keeps you in
part of a blended family in an All-Girl “Me and my other sister, Lucy, are times me and Lucy pretend we’re fear-
Household. Besties,” said Becca. “She’s a Tabby Cat. less hunters in the jungle, and try to great shape,” I observed. “Whaddya
Real nervous around dogs, except me, sneak up on Piper. We crawl on our eat?”
Becca Stewart is a real outgoing of course. She’s probly under the bed.” tummies over to her cage, but she just
pooch with a cheerful, puppy-ish per- “Wow,” I thought. “A German Shep- thinks we’re silly. We don’t speak Bird “I’m a Vegan,” she replied.
sonality, even though she’s 6. When me herd who’s best pals with a CAT. That that well, but Piper says Dad was good “Er, I thought you were a German
and my assistant drove up, Becca was is SO 21st Century.” I turned to Becca. at it. Shepherd,” I said.
standing in her shady, fenced-in yard “So, how long have you been with your “Oh, no, silly. That means I don’t eat
with her Mom, wagging to beat the Mom and sisters?” “Me and Mom go to visit my human meat. Only veggie kibbles. My favorite
band. She had the most beautiful ears: “Mom got me from a nice kennel, Sa- brother and sister, Brad and Kyrie, in treats are broccoli and carrots.”
huge, standing straight up, flicking ble Rocks, in Wisconsin where its Super Tallahassee. They’re nurses. And my “Ah, yes, of course,” I said, feeling like
side-to-side, big, furry audio receivers. Cold. Dad – his name was Sandy – was best dog buddy, Rugby, he’s a Rottwei- a Doof.
I bet she could pick up messages from working in Ocala. (He was a doctor. He’s ler, he lives in that state that sounds like Then it was time to go. Becca and her
Sirius (the Dog Star). in Heaven now.)” She wiped her nose a sneeze. I can’t pronounce it. Mom were playing Fetch-the-Wubba as
with her paw. “Mom was down here we drove away.
“Hi, Mr. Bonzo. I couldn’t wait for you learning how to fly. So, when I was just “When Mom’s home, I play in the
to get here! Did you find my house OK? a tiny pup, I got to fly, ALL BY MYSELF yard. Everybody knows me! I bark hello Till next time,
This is my Mom, Sharon.” ON A BIG PLANE, all the way to Orlan- to all our neighbors, and the Mail Per-
do where Mom picked me up. I wasn’t son. She likes me now that she knows The Bonz
After the Wag-and-Sniff, she trotted scared or anything! I’m just bein’ friendly. I also love to
over to my assistant for a couple of wel- “I’ve been with Mom my whole life. chase squirrels. Rabbits, too. Can’t help Don’t Be Shy
coming nose-bumps. I used to nip her a lot, like me and my myself. I even ate one once. But just
littermates always did, just in fun. But that one time. Took me weeks to get the We are always looking for pets
“Come’on in and meet my sisters,” Mom doesn’t have fluffy fur like us, so fluff outta my mouth. I use to go out on with interesting stories.
she said, heading though the door and she hadda use a lot of Band-Aids. I grew the river in our flats boat with Mom and
over to a tall cage by the window. “Mr. outta that, tho. Now I don’t chew any- Dad. We’d go over to the island and I’d To set up an interview, email
Bonzo, THIS is my sister Piper. She’s a thing I’m not ‘spose to, just my Wubba.” [email protected].
Conure. Piper, say hello to Mr. Bonzo.” “Your what?”
She ran off, then returned with a
I approached cautiously, remember- mouthful of what looked like two rub-
ing a previous encounter with a feath- ber balls wrapped in purple canvas.
ered friend who nipped my nose, then “My Wubba! You should try one. It
said it was how birds say hello. But I used to squeak, but I chewed the squeak
caught him snickering behind his wing. right out of it. Anyway, me and Mom’re
Standing just beyond nose-reach, all I real close. She calls me Girlfriend. And I
could see at first were a lotta toys. Then take care of her, too. Like this one time,
I spotted a smallish parrot, with beauti- it was 2 a.m. and my ears picked up a
ful, bright-colored feathers, side-step- Suspicious Sound. I barked and barked
ping across her perch toward me. and woke Mom up. She peeked out and
saw a Strange Car parked in our drive-
“Happy to meet you, Miss Piper,” I way. She turned on the light and they
said, in my best Bird. I hadn’t spoken took off. She says I am better than any
it in a while and hoped I hadn’t just or-
dered a shoe with cheese.

I’m pretty sure she was laughing
when she said, “Don’t be afraid to come

Divine Animal Hospital Offers Concierge Medicine after their visits. We also offer housecalls. If it have a dedicated sterile surgery suite and are
is difficult for owners to get to the clinic, we able to manage major emergencies in-house.
Most of us pet parents experience frus- the doctor as pleasant as possible for both can send a doctor and a technician in our mo-
tration when we contact our own physicians pets and their parents. bile unit to your home or business. Housecalls One of our specialties is pain management
and are told we will have to wait weeks to minimize stress both to owners and pets. and we provide the most innovative options
months for an appointment. When at the When owners call to make an appointment, for pets with arthritis, hip dysplasia, disc
doctor, we often experience extended wait we will work very hard to get you in to see the We are available to pets and parents 24 disease, and other conditions and injuries.
times first in a waiting room and then in the doctor as soon as possible. We offer dropoff hours a day with after-hours on-call service. If
exam room and then only get 5-10 minutes appointments for busy parents, who can still an owner has an emergency, their pet can see In addition to providing state of the art med-
with the doctor. At Divine Animal Hospital, speak to a doctor about test results and treat- a doctor within minutes at our hospital. Our ical care, we offer boarding, and grooming with
we want to make the experience of going to ment options when they pickup. We can even clinic offers full diagnostic services including two master groomers. We make sure every pet
pick pets up at your home and drop them off digital x-ray, ultrasound, and endoscopy. We gets an ice cream cone before leaving so their
last memory of their visit is a pleasant one.

Your Vero Beach Newsweekly ™ Vero Beach 32963 / August 18, 2016 49

INSIGHT GAMES BRIDGE

NO FREE LUNCH, EVEN WITH MICHAELS WEST NORTH EAST
K 10 98754 Q2
By Phillip Alder - Bridge Columnist AKQ952 J 10 6 83
83 A K Q J 10 764
Iris Apfel said, “You learn as you grow up, if you’re intelligent — or even three-quarter Q74 — K86532
witted — that there’s no free lunch. You pay for things in various ways.”
SOUTH
This applies with a Michaels Cue-Bid or an Unusual No-Trump. First, if you do not buy AJ63
the contract, you have given their declarer as good a road map of the deal as a GPS 74
gizmo. Second, occasionally the killing defense will be more obvious — as in this deal. 952
A J 10 9
Look at the West and North hands. West leads the heart ace against four spades.
After East signals with the eight, how should West plan the defense? Dealer: West; Vunerable: East-West

North’s two-heart cue-bid showed at least 5-5 in spades and either minor. South’s The Bidding:
jump to game was a tad aggressive.
SOUTH WEST NORTH EAST OPENING
Since the heart eight must be a singleton or the higher card from a doubleton, West 4 Spades 1 Hearts 2 Hearts Pass
cashes his heart queen, to which everyone follows. What next? Pass Pass Pass LEAD:
A Hearts
West must hope that his side can score two trump tricks. It is time for him to continue
with a low heart. Then he has to hope that East realizes it cannot cost to ruff with
the spade queen. You see the effect: When South overruffs with his spade ace, it
promotes two trump tricks for West.

East should see what is required, because if South had a third heart, West would
have cashed his heart king at trick three. (This was the key point behind leading the
queen, not the king, at trick two.)

Lastly, note that if North had been the declarer, this defense would have been much
harder to find.

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50 Vero Beach 32963 / August 18, 2016 Your Vero Beach Newsweekly ™

INSIGHT GAMES & CO.

SOLUTIONS TO PREVIOUS ISSUE (AUGUST 11) ON PAGE 62

ACROSS DOWN
7 Oversized courgette (6) 1 Hamper (6)
8 Neckerchief (6) 2 Parcel up (4)
9 Hop, leap (4) 3 Sparkle (7)
10 Twaddle (8) 4 Aroma (5)
11 Ambles (7) 5 Classification (8)
13 Circular (5) 6 Small plum (6)
15 Yellowish fossil resin (5) 12 Cloudy (8)
17 Wax pencils (7) 14 Pledge (7)
20 Announce (8) 16 Border (6)
21 Vault, bound (4) 18 Integer (6)
22 Afternoon nap (6) 19 Waterway (5)
23 Prongs (6) 21 Connect, link (4)

The Telegraph

How to do Sudoku:

Fill in the grid so the
numbers one through
nine appear just once
in every column, row
and three-by-three
square.

The Telegraph


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