I drank cool water from a clear plastic bottle and tried to get down some trail mix. It was probably 2:30 in the afternoon and I hadn’t had anything to eat all day, so I should have been hungry. But it’s amazing how the stomach takes to itself at the…
Michael Maroone sits atop AutoNation, the largest automobile-retailing company in the world. When he’s not starring in commercials with Dolphins quarterback Dan Marino, he’s overseeing the growing empire of 412 car dealerships, which he joined after selling his own auto plaza to AutoNation boss Wayne Huizenga for $200 million in…
Bordered by plywood and chainlink fences and occupied by a large trailer, the heart of the Deerfield Beach Middle School campus might seem like a construction site. But it’s really a destruction site. While the school is packed with 1500 seventh and eighth graders, it’s undergoing what the School Board…
When a golfer pulls up to the Orangebrook Country Club in Hollywood, he can go first class for a buck. The dollar gives him access to the preferred-parking lot, which is the closest lot to the clubhouse and comes with an attendant who dutifully ferries golf clubs to the first…
Penned in 1892 by a socialist minister turned journalist named Francis Bellamy, the Pledge of Allegiance originally read: “I pledge allegiance to my flag and to the republic for which it stands — one nation, indivisible — with liberty, and justice for all.” But Broward County’s public schoolchildren — who…
Last December 4 began as a typical day in the short life of Dawnia Hope Dacosta. By 10 a.m. that Friday, the 21-year-old choir singer was at Broward Community College studying to become a pediatric nurse. That afternoon she worked at American Express as a customer service representative. After punching…
Who’s the Broward teacher who works only about 18 weeks a year and doesn’t teach but gets a $48,266 annual salary? Hint: He gets lots of paid time off because he has other employment at the state capitol doing another job — which pays him an additional salary, this one…
Movie producer Mike Dodsworth, with a voice full of native New York, talks at the speakerphone in his Pompano Beach film company headquarters, proudly telling his new starlet about a recent media blitz. “Esquire magazine called, and they want to do a story, so we’ll have to set that up…
The construction firm of Church and Tower, founded by the late Cuban exile leader Jorge Mas Canosa, may as well have been branded with a scarlet letter b. For bad, as in bad news. Even though the firm was a financial success, the press was terrible, and its reputation suffered…
Former Plantation mayor Frank Veltri secretly ordered city staff to issue him checks for $44,000 worth of possibly illegal vacation and sick-leave payoffs — including a whopping $20,790 payment just after he left office in March, according to city hall records. A preliminary investigation by city attorney Donald Lunny, Jr…
Billing itself as the largest dealer of exotic cars in the world, the Toy Store Group in Fort Lauderdale sells automotive dreams to wealthy and famous customers — Bruce Willis, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Jay Leno among them. The gleaming sports and luxury cars — from regal Bentleys to sleek Ferraris…
illing itself as the largest dealer of exotic cars in the world, the Toy Store Group in Fort Lauderdale sells automotive dreams to wealthy and famous customers — Bruce Willis, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Jay Leno among them. The gleaming sports and luxury cars — from regal Bentleys to sleek Ferraris…
He calls himself a “DMV Specialist,” but his clients call Randolph Williams “the Title Man.” Williams’ numerous customers hire him to obtain Florida titles — legal documents of ownership. And for a $150 fee, he has an uncanny ability to get the documents quickly and easily, be they for a…
By day Fran Klauber is the Broward County School Board’s full-time intergovernmental affairs specialist, a job that pays her $57,896 a year to build good relations with the many cities that deal with the board. During her spare time, she’s also a Sunrise city commissioner, paid $20,000-plus to steer that…
Former Florida House Speaker Bolley “Bo” Johnson was portrayed by prosecutors in federal court last week as a crooked Florida politician profiting off his influence and the public trust. Prosecutors claim Johnson took more than $1 million from special interests in a four-year period, much of it while he was…
A giant white poodle named Gucci sits tall on a blue cabana chair on the porch, peering suspiciously through the sliding-glass door into the sparkling Deerfield Beach kitchen. The dog seems to trust only the aging mobster sitting inside in his blue pajamas. Save a few loose, barely visible strands…
It looks like Hamilton Forman, Broward County’s chief political potentate, was right: His bill requiring that every elementary school student in Florida be taught “character education” will likely be passed into law by the state legislature. But the multimillionaire was wrong about one thing: His favorite character-training curriculum, Character First!,…
With a mentholated cough drop in his mouth, Frank Veltri sits at his old kitchen table in his old house in old Plantation. Beside him, on a table full of files and city papers, are five or six tightly twisted wrappers, the vestiges of the lozenges he’s already consumed. Veltri’s…
The defense attorney wants to put the young man in a mental institution. The prosecutor wants to put him in prison for life. The court is trying to determine if he’s mentally competent to stand trial. Psychologists are delving into his mind, trying to figure out what triggered his murderous…
The founder of the Circle of Sharks spoke of suicide. “I’m not going to prison,” Rusty Feder said to me as he sat in the North Broward Detention Center behind a thick pane of jailhouse glass. “I’ll die before that happens.” His lawyer was working on a plea, but Feder…
One of the lessons for today is obedience, and the first graders at the school inside the First Christian Church building in Fort Lauderdale sing about it quite obediently. While the students at the Charter School of Excellence are divided fairly evenly between blacks and whites, they dress alike, with…
Rusty Feder sits behind a steel-encased pane of soundproof glass, his deep blue eyes flashing. He says he hates living with 43 other guys on a piece of tiled floor about the size of a single-family home. Corn flakes and bologna are getting old. Feder used to have a strict…
