Rebecca Blackwood looks small and grandmotherly seated before a shrimp salad at Shirttail Charlie’s Restaurant in Fort Lauderdale. A petite 63-year-old with a round, dimpled face, she seems almost dwarfed by the high-rimmed salad in a shell. The impression is quite a contrast from the image she projected earlier that…
A throng of teenage boys mills around the registration desk at the Palm-Aire Racquet Club. It’s just before 8 a.m. on a breezy Saturday in September as 32 boys, age 16 and younger, await pairing off for this weekend’s tennis tournament. A mix of tension, anticipation, and nascent testosterone swirls…
From a distance, the West Palm Beach Veterans Administration Medical Center sits there like a castle on a hill. Just west of I-95 on Blue Heron Road, the veterans hospital perches atop a man-made knoll anchored by a cavernous parking garage. A single, narrow drive curls up to the hospital’s…
On a sweltering afternoon in late June, about a dozen young men and women have pulled the bows of two small motorboats onto a wild ribbon of shore on the New River called Swing Rope Bend. The sterns bob in the river, stirred by the wake of passing yachts. A…
On a sunny Tuesday afternoon in late May, Ric Bradshaw was ready to show off the support he’d garnered for his campaign for the sheriff’s office in Palm Beach County. About 50 supporters had gathered just outside the Palm Beach governmental center in downtown West Palm Beach. Some were West…
In the early morning of May 28, 2002, Sgt. Raphael Wolfe pulled his squad car up to the chainlink fence around the Broward Sheriff’s Office auto service center in Lauderdale Lakes. He punched in the entrance code to open the gate, then drove to the fuel pumps. As he filled…
Ray McAllister has scuba-dived along the Broward County shoreline since 1964, when he helped establish Florida Atlantic University’s ocean engineering bachelor’s degree program. The sea in his backyard served as a practical classroom. His nickname, “Old Crusty,” reflects both his time beneath the waves and his sometimes gruff and always…
There be three things which go well, yea, Which are comely in going: A lion, which is strongest among beasts and turneth not away from any; a greyhound; a he-goat also. — Solomon, Proverbs 30 It’s a late April afternoon, though the sun remains far enough above the west of…
Late last summer, Lt. Jeffrey Marano got wind of fliers making their way around the Hollywood Police Department announcing the “BPO First Annual Picnic” to be held in August at Ty Park. In police parlance, BPO stands for black police officer. Marano was alarmed. After getting a look at one…
Peter Pasch’s large gray eyes almost well up with tears as he recollects what was possibly his mother’s greatest act of love. “My mother, like any other good mother, wanted to see her son make a good living,” he explains in a growly, Brooklyn accent, now thick with emotion. Back…
The voice at the other end of the line was frantic and frustrated. “Benji, we’ve got a crisis,” the speaker lamented. Emotional callers were all in a day’s work for Benji Brumberg, who for the past three years had been the ombudsman for the Florida Department of Environmental Protection (DEP)…
Talk about stepping into deep doggy doo. Authorities are still trying to piece together exactly what happened at an alleged local drug hangout in November 2002. What began as a late-night drug bust, with a scrum of Fort Lauderdale police officers poised to follow a battering ram into a marijuana…
What a difference four years makes. In 1999, some Christian conservatives were so demoralized at having failed to remove Bill Clinton from office that they were ready to drop out of politics. Moral Majority co-founder Paul Weyrich went so far as to declare that Christian conservatives had lost the culture…
Dr. Death is sweating like hell. His tree-trunk legs are planted on the wrestling-ring mat as he peers over the edge at a ruddy-faced 16-year-old named Travis. The 43-year-old’s face is leathery, and his mullet and carefully trimmed reddish beard are soaked with sweat. He’s slightly hunched forward, and his…
The mainstream U.S. media gave George W. Bush virtual carte blanche during the first two years of his presidency, but now the glaze is peeling from Teflon President II. The promised weapons of mass destruction haven’t been found in Iraq, and the Justice Department recently launched an investigation into a…
For almost a year, the Broward State Attorney’s Office investigated Broward County Supervisor of Elections Miriam Oliphant for violating the statutes that govern her office. Late last month, investigators concluded that there had been misconduct: not by Oliphant but by the Broward County Commission. Oliphant may have been guilty of…
The tech bubble had not yet burst as Hank Asher strode up to the dais in early October 1999 at the Hyatt Regency in Fort Lauderdale. Ambition and high expectations permeated the audience of more than 300 who had packed the banquet hall to kick off the so-called DevCon ’99,…
Dressed in a black Brooks Brothers suit, Michael Pecora strode into Signature Grand in Davie on Tuesday, April 29, as calm and affable as ever. Following his usual routine, Pecora had driven alone from his million-dollar home in Weston to the Grand, a two-story, salmon-colored catering center, which, with its…
Jeannine Ross felt a familiar rage roil through her when she picked up the newspaper on Sunday a few weeks ago. The 36-year-old artist and filmmaker read an account of a Democratic fundraiser in Broward County that was attended by bigwigs the likes of Nancy Pelosi and Mario Cuomo. An…
I pray that no yearning, no passionate love of sea fishing or of angling may ever take possession of you, my young friends. — Plato Frank Flynn is frantically punching numbers on his cell phone as he shuffles toward the boarding gate for American Airlines Flight 1845 at the Miami…
In the journalism world, hawking goods is a sin approaching that of plagiarism. So when the New York Times reported in May that a Boca Raton video-production firm had hired three of the most recognizable newsmen in America as pitchmen, the upshot was malodorous publicity all around. It all started…
On a sunny Saturday morning in April, Barbara Rourke gazes toward the sea out her balcony windows. Her fourth-floor condominium on Ocean Boulevard in Pompano Beach offers a splendid view, although it’s hard to tell whether she enjoys the seascape. She’s a gray-haired wisp of a woman who spends her…
