Mug: Jon D. Rashotsky

By Angie Francalancia
    
    A yearlong investigation by Delray Beach police resulted in the arrest of former Mizner Grande Realty agent Jon D. Rashotsky, suspected of misappropriating more than $2.8 million in escrow funds from 83 clients. Rashotsky was scheduled to be arraigned April 2 on felony charges of money laundering and fraud.
    The Delray police investigation alleges that Rashotsky used money from escrow accounts of his real estate clients via payments to three women, including his wife and a woman he met through a dating website.
    None of the women has been charged and may have been unaware of the illegalities, according to the police.
    Between July 2010 and November 2011, Rashotsky had misappropriated $1,130,760 from the escrow accounts, according to the probable cause affidavit. Rashotsky had directed the Boca Raton attorney who held the escrow account to distribute money to the women. It wasn’t until money was not available for a closing in mid-November 2011 that the fraud was discovered.
    Alerted by prospective buyers that their money was missing from escrow, Mizner Grande broker and owner Ari Albinder fired Rashotsky.
    The affadavit alleges that Rashotsky spent the money on shopping, tattoos and entertainment for a woman Rashotsky met through the website seekingarrangements.com. Rashotsky also had used $5,416 for that woman to stay in the Seagate hotel for three and a half weeks. In total, Rashotsky had caused $58,760 to be distributed to her; $304,996 to be distributed to his wife, and $776,003 to be distributed to an acquaintance Rashotsky hired as a real estate clerk.
     Mizner Grande Realty has filed suit against Rashotsky to recover the stolen money. And Mizner Grande faces lawsuits from three clients alleging the firm was negligent in employing Rashotsky.
    Albinder referred comments to Ted Mortell, who represents the company’s insurer. Mortell didn’t return a message left at his office.

By Rich Pollack
    
    Highland Beach’s 18-year-old firetruck has been out of service since the end of October because of needed repairs and should be replaced as soon as possible, town commissioners were told during a workshop meeting last month.
    While Delray Beach Fire-Rescue, which has a contract to operate Highland Beach’s Fire Department, is providing a backup ladder truck at no cost, fire officials say the town’s truck is long overdue for retirement.
    “This truck is worn out,” said Delray Beach Fire-Rescue Assistant Chief Kevin Green, adding that most departments take similar ladder trucks out of daily service after about 10 years. “It’s at the point where it needs to be replaced.”
    Replacing the truck, which could cost as much as $847,000, is likely to be a main topic of discussion in coming months as the Town Commission considers its five-year capital improvement plan.
    During the recent discussions, Delray Beach Fire-Rescue Chief Danielle Connor told town commissioners that the truck, built in 1995, has undergone a series of repairs and maintenance, ranging from brake replacement to extensive electrical and drive-shaft work.
    “I cannot emphasize enough that time is of the essence,” Connor said.
    Commissioners, during the workshop meeting, also heard that progress is being made on a proposed $3.5 million sale to a private developer of two parcels of town-owed land in northern Boca Raton once used as well fields for the town.
The parcels, including an 8.5-acre tract and a 2.16-acre L-shaped tract with frontage on Federal Highway, became available after the town built a reverse osmosis plant behind Town Hall in 2004.
    Town Manager Kathleen Weiser said she is waiting to hear back from the city of Boca Raton, which has first right of refusal on the purchase of the larger of the two parcels, before the proposed sale can be brought to the commission for approval.
    The town, Weiser said, is also exploring whether it is legally obligated to use money from the land sale strictly to pay off a portion of the millions of dollars borrowed for construction of the new plant. Town officials, at the time of construction, planned to use land-sale proceeds toward reducing the debt, she said.
    In other news, commissioners learned that work was expected to begin this week on repairs to the town’s 2.7-mile stretch of sidewalk along State Road A1A.
    Responding to residents’ complaints, commissioners in February voted unanimously to approve a contract that would enable Kilbourne & Sons to remove roots that have created about a dozen uneven spots along the path, and repair those spots using lime rock and asphalt.
    The town initially explored the possibility of putting a one-inch asphalt overlay along the full length of the walk path, which runs on the west side of State Road A1A for the length of the town. That option was ruled out when estimated costs approached $300,000.
    The approved repairs, town officials say, are a temporary fix until a proposed large-scale streetscape project is undertaken, including an overhaul of the walk path and landscaping efforts. Those plans are still in the early discussion stages, and could be years away. Any streetscape improvements would need to be approved and funded.

By Thom Smith

    For two days in October 1969, several hundred students camped in the quadrangle west of the Florida Atlantic University administration building during the nationwide moratorium to protest the Vietnam War. No incidents save for raising a flag bearing an image of Mickey Mouse instead of the Stars and Stripes.
    The next spring, a group of students protested the dumping of waste from Boca Raton’s overworked sewage plant into the El Rio canal. The city scrambled and came up with $50,000 to mitigate the stench until an ocean outfall was finished. Soon thereafter, a new plant was built at the southwest corner of the FAU campus that remained quiet during the years when GEO founder and chairman George Zoley attended.
    For most of its half century, the student battle cry at FAU has been “Get a degree, get out and get to work!” Considering the turnout at sports events and the occasional on-campus entertainment, the administration had little reason to expect any opposition to the school’s $6 million stadium naming deal with commercial incarcerator GEO Group, the world’s second-largest for-profit prison company.
    But for the first time in 40 years, students actually protested.
    And when several dozen actually confronted Florida Atlantic University President Mary Jane Saunders in her office, an “occupation” of sorts, their efforts seemed to bear fruit as she agreed to answer questions a few days later. But that and subsequent sessions with students generated more questions than answers. She preferred to play softball, speaking mainly about opportunity — the opportunity to discuss the pros and cons of commercial prisons, the opportunity to raise much-needed money for the school and the opportunity to cheer for the football team in September.
    Her responses left students and some members of the FAU community who attended shaking their heads. The faculty senate voted 25-9 to oppose Saunders for making administrative decisons “without participation or input from faculty, staff, or other FAU stakeholders.” Students, faculty members and fans began canceling season ticket orders.
    Finally, on April 1, the deal was scrapped — by Zoley, not by FAU.
    So what could GEO have hoped to get out of stadium naming rights? American Airlines sponsors the arena in Miami because it wants people to fly on its planes. The only folks wanting to do business with GEO are state legislators.
    Possibly school spirit did play a role. Zoley, the FAU grad, became Zoley, chairman of FAU’s board of trustees — which includes two other GEO board members: Clarence Anthony, FAU alumnus, one-time South Bay mayor and president in 1999 of the National League of Cities, and real estate attorney and Boca Raton Regional Hospital trustee Christopher Wheeler.
    Perhaps GEO wanted to tout more about its “innovative programs and ground-breaking treatment approach.” At Walnut Grove Youth Correctional Facility in Mississippi, the innovation included staffers who were known gang members.
    Even TV pundit Stephen Colbert joined the fray, “It’s just like Bank of America Stadium, only this company believes in punishment for crime.”
    As reproductions of various news stories about GEO flashed across the screen, Colbert also recounted accusations of “cruel treatments” of children detained in its facilities, “unnecessary deaths of people in their custody,” and a “pervasive level of brazen staff sexual misconduct” at its Walnut Grove facility.
    When GEO took over Walnut Grove in 2010, more than half of its inmates, some as young as 13, were doing time for nonviolent offenses. In his order approving a settlement of one suit in February 2012, U.S. District Court Judge Carlton Reeves cited “systematic, egregious, and dangerous practices exacerbated by a lack of accountability and controls,” sexual misconduct by staff and youth-on-youth rapes “among the worst that we have seen in any facility anywhere in the nation” and “a picture of such horror as should be unrealized anywhere in the civilized world.”
    GEO and the previous operator and prison managers, the judge wrote, were “derelict in their duties and remain[ed] deliberately indifferent to the serious medical and mental health needs of the offenders.”
    GEO agreed in the settlement to move young inmates to more suitable locations. Two months later, the state of Mississippi, with the Justice Department breathing down its neck, canceled all of its contracts with GEO.   
    GEO facilities in Texas, Indiana, Pennsylvania and even Pompano Beach have come under scrutiny.
We won’t know for a while if FAU will outlive its new nickname — “Owlcatraz” — but of greater concern should be the way the deal was handled before, during and after. Scuttlebutt around FAU’s administration building suggests that Saunders only saw dollars, not sense. Money from the Legislature is scarce, and it hasn’t been discovered in any owl burrows. Zoley, a forceful presence who had run the board, had deep pockets.
    Did FAU’s Saunders know about GEO’s reputation and ignore it? If she didn’t know, and no one in her inner circle bothered to check and at least present the pluses and minuses, well …
    This is the kind of embarrassment that state officials don’t like. Her predecessor, Tony Catanese, drove away in a Corvette. She might be lucky to find a rail.
    Too bad Zoley threw the switch. Think of the possible souvenirs GEO could have given to each fan at the first game — an Owlcatraz license plate or perhaps a “get out of jail free” card.

Judy Collins (left) with CARP luncheon chairwoman Barbara Katz.

Photo by Paulette Martin

***
                                     
“I wanted to get this out of the way right now …
Bows and flows of angel hair
And ice cream castles
in the air
And feather canyons everywhere
I’ve looked at clouds that way.”
    
    Her once long brown hair is now a flowing white mane, and the notes floated flawlessly across the room at the Ritz-Carlton Palm Beach in Manalapan as Judy Collins — “sweet Judy Blue Eyes” — began a tender, wrenching, emotional, cathartic hour with guests at the annual spring luncheon of CARP,  the Comprehensive Alcohol and Rehabilitation Program.
    Collins was the perfect choice. She’s seen both sides of life — as triumphant artistic icon and as desperate drunk. Fortunately, she recognized her problem and dealt with it. The recovery took years, but thanks to her own fortitude, and the concern of others, including her second husband, whom she met a week before she entered rehab.
    “I was dying,” she said. “I knew I was an alcoholic. I knew I was drinking myself to death, but somehow the consequences or the connections hadn’t been made.”
    The alcohol contributed to a rare tumor on her vocal cords. It was benign, but had she not dealt with it, she “couldn’t do what I was doing here; I could not sing.” Yet the night before her operation, she polished off most of a bottle of booze. In spite of herself, during a year of recovery from the surgery, “somehow, some way, AA began to come into my consciousness. … I didn’t know what to do, didn’t know where to go.”
    One day she noticed that a New York actor friend, a fall-down drunk who was notorious for his bar brawls, was no longer making the papers. He’d stopped drinking. They talked. He suggested a doctor, an internist, who was at the forefront of treating alcoholism as a disease. Three days before she began rehab, at a fundraiser for the Equal Rights Amendment, she met Louis Nelson, a designer. They’ve been together ever since, although they didn’t marry until 1994.
    “He didn’t know how drunk I was. How would he know?” Collins said. “He was totally not my type. He was considerate. He was thoughtful. You know what I mean … we attract, as we go down, the kind of people that will allow us to behave the way we behave. The next morning I went to Pennsylvania. The 19th of April, 1978, I took my last drink, and since then I have not found it necessary to drink or use drugs.
    “On this wedding ring is the date, the 16th of April 1978, that I met him. I’ve been with him 34 years, which I think is a record for a hippie.”

***

Natalie Cole (center) with sisters Casey and Timolin, after her Nat King Cole Generation Hope event

at Lynn University brought in $170,000 for music education.

Derek and Lisa Vander Ploeg of Boca Raton also attended.

Photos by Janet Barth
                                     
***

   Congratulations? With 2,011 votes, Jerry Taylor was elected mayor in Boynton Beach.  Cary Glickstein won 3,212 votes to upset incumbent Mayor Tom Carney in Delray by 254 votes. In Lantana, Malcolm Balfour’s 284 votes was more than enough to win a council seat.
    The number deciding Taylor’s victory was only 4.5 percent of the town’s 44,154 registered voters. Delray’s voters were a little more enthusiastic, with a total turnout of 13.7 percent, tops in the county. Of Lantana’s 6,079 voters, less than 550 voted.
    Hardly representative democracy. A candidate could tick off one homeowners association and blow the election. Last November, 68 percent of Palm Beach County’s voters cast ballots, yet every municipality now holds its elections in the spring.
Why? Proponents believe strongly those who do vote are better informed about local issues and that local candidates aren’t relegated to the bottom of the ballot, as they would be in the fall.
    Proponents of fall elections believe that more votes mean stronger mandates, plus municipalities have to spend tax money for spring votes. Boca’s Chamber of Commerce has been lobbying for a switch to November elections, but in Lake Worth, 1,333 voters (8 percent), was all it took to switch its races to March after voting for November races in 2007. Go figure.   
                                     
***

   Recent expectant visitors: Jenna Bush Hager, soon to be a mother — as Crohn’s & Colitis Foundation’s Book of Hope Luncheon at Boca Raton Resort & Club. Olympic gold medal-winning gymnast Shannon Miller, now a resident of Jacksonville — at the YMCA of Boca’s 11th Annual Prayer Breakfast also at Boca Raton Resort & Club.
                                     
***

   Boca’s tireless businesswoman and philanthropist Yvonne Boice is among 22 nominees for the Executive Women of the Palm Beaches 2013 Women in Leadership Awards. Boice is nominated in the volunteer division, as is Michelle Poole of the Community Foundation for Drug Free Adolescents in Lake Worth. Palm Beach County Tax Collector Anne Gannon of Delray Beach is nominated in the public sector, Jestena Boughton, owner of Delray’s venerable Colony Hotel, in the private sector. The awards, recognizing women with outstanding achievements, generosity of spirit, and a commitment to integrity and diversity, will be presented at a May 2 luncheon at the Kravis Center. Proceeds from the luncheon support WILA’s scholarships. (684-9117).
                                     
***

   Happy 25th birthday to the Harid Conservatory, which presents its spring recital May 24 and 25 at Spanish River High School. Founded in 1987 and endowed by the late telecommunications pioneer Fred Lieberman, Harid offers free intensive ballet training for 14- to 18-year-olds. Its dancers have performed with more than 80 professional companies.
                                     
***

   More total immersion entertainment. To build its latest XD (Extreme Digital) auditorium at its Palace 20 in Boca, Cinemark, one of the world’s largest movie exhibitors, had to raise the ceiling and dig out the floor to accommodate the huge new screen and sound system. The theater contains 285 seats, including 70 in the Premiere Level in the balcony.  
    XD is Cinemark’s new proprietary projection system, with floor-to-ceiling, wall-to-wall screen and a new Dolby 7.1 sound system.
    It’s a modest technical improvement over Imax, but the big benefit, according to Cinemark’s marketing VP, James Meredith, is flexibility. With Imax, exhibitors are locked into screenings for a fixed period.
    With XD, Cinemark can negotiate directly with distributors. “If a movie is a dog, with Imax we were stuck,” Meredith said. “With XD, we can swap it out immediately.”
    Blockbuster new releases will have preference, Meredith added, but widescreen classics such as Lawrence of Arabia will also get the XD treatment.
                                     
***

   Newly retired football star Ray Lewis has again put his Highland Beach bungalow on the market. Lewis bought the seven-bedroom, 10,890-square-foot beachfront in 2004 for $5.22 million, listed it in 2011 for $6.4 million, and last summer for $5.9 million. Now he wants $4.995 million.
    A couple of miles farther south, at Boca Inlet, One Thousand Ocean just found local buyers for two units.
    The last available two-story, three-bedroom, 4½-bath, 4,538-square-foot beach villa with private entrance, elevator and plunge pool commanded $5.15 million. A designer-ready penthouse, with direct ocean view, 14-foot ceilings, private pool-deck cabana, two-car garage, 4,142 square feet under roof and an additional 1,450 of terrace sold for $5.86 million. Five units remain — $3 million to almost $13 million.  
                                     
***

All 121 rooms of the Bridge Hotel will be redone and the hotel will move its entrance, expand restaurant space and add outdoor seating and docks.

Photo provided

   Just across the inlet, more details are emerging about plans for the Bridge Hotel, which is being completely reworked. The goal is 4.5 stars, with the resort geared to its biggest draw: the water. All 121 rooms, each with a water view, will be redone. The nondescript entrance will be moved and enhanced with extensive art and water features. Restaurant space will be expanded.
                                     
***

    Boca has a new pizza tosser, with a somewhat familiar name. Spadini Pizza opened in February in Mizner Plaza, just south of Mizner Park offering not only pies but a full menu of pasta, subs and freshly made zeppole. Running the show is Tom Sellick. Nope, it’s not Magnum; that’s Selleck. Tom Sellick hails from Long Island, where he first made pizza 15 years ago.

Thom Smith is a freelance writer and a 1971 graduate of FAU. Reach him at thomsmith@ymail.com.

John Oxendine says the Palm Beach International Film Festival

is a boon for the county’s economy. See the ArtsPaper for more on the film festival.

Tim Stepien/The Coastal Star

By Chris Felker
    
    As a lifelong cinema buff who made a career out of assisting people, John Oxendine combines both those interests in his role as vice chairman of the Palm Beach International Film Festival.
    From 1981 to ’95, he headed Broadcast Capital Fund Inc.’s effort to diversify the ranks of America’s radio and TV station owners. Broadcap, as it was known, was directed by investors — including ABC, CBS and NBC — to find minority entrepreneurs and train them in how to succeed in the largely white-dominated media. It loaned millions of dollars to blacks and Hispanics who bought more than 40 stations, aided by Small Business Administration grants quadrupling the networks’ investment.
    Oxendine owned media outlets himself through his company Blackstar Communications, which he sold in 1998.
    When he moved to the Yacht & Racquet Club of Boca Raton that year, his reputation preceded him: PBIFF founder Burt Aaronson invited him to serve on the then-fledgling organization’s board.
    “I joined the film festival when I got here because I love going to the movies,” he said. “You forget all your problems when you go the movie theater.”
    Today, Oxendine exercises the same philosophy  that drove him at Broadcap in helping put together the annual film showcase.
    “I think that we need to be more encompassing, more democratic, more all-inclusive in what we do, and I think that my representing the minority presence will facilitate more people realizing that our film festival is not an elite experience but one that’s all-encompassing. That’s why things like the student showcase of films are very important to us,” he said.
    Oxendine derives great satisfaction from helping people achieve their dreams. The former Peace Corps volunteer and schoolteacher, who has an MBA from Harvard University, is also chairman of the Paragon Foundation of Palm Beach County, which was set up in 2006 to help establish minority businesses.
    “We try to provide training as well as financial assistance to minorities who want to start businesses in the community,” he said. “I grew up in a housing project in the Bronx, so I know what it’s like to come from nothing.”
    It makes him happy to pursue PBIFF’s mission of bringing unique entertainment to the area and using some of the proceeds for educational film and television programs throughout the county’s schools.
    He’s also very pleased that this year’s edition of the film festival, the 18th, will include several films from Russia and Eastern Europe. During the Cold War, Oxendine was a Russian linguist with the U.S. Marines’ 20th Interrogation and Translation Team.
    The Flying Elephant, a documentary about world-renowned Russian sculptor Alexander Rukavishnikov, will be screened April 8 at Muvico Parisian 20 at CityPlace in West Palm Beach. The artist and Russian film commissioner Eugene Zykov are expected to attend.
    “I look forward to meeting them,” Oxendine said, “but I can’t take any credit for that [showing]. I look forward to practicing my Russian with them.”
    Oxendine, 70, is a divorced father of three, and supports the film festival not only with his time but donations also, because it’s a boon for the county’s economy.
    “We have unique independent films from all over the world, and so our big thing is to promote people going to the movies. That’s my biggest push; I’m a big proponent of that. And to the extent that we do that, we can get people to come here and that’s great for our economy. We sell hotel rooms, we sell food, and people get to know us and we get to know them.”
    He prefers to be a background force for the film festival, though.
    “I’m kind of a sounding board for people there. I try to be a catalyst … I try to do outreach to the community, providing balances where we can, and encouraging people who are otherwise a little bit afraid to get involved in the film festival to get involved.”

Palm Beach International Film Festival
The 18th annual installment of this event showcases 37 premiere films, including features, documentaries and shorts from the U.S. and many other nations, and benefits the festival’s scholarship fund for local film students.
When: April 4-11
Where: Four venues around Palm Beach County; a range of ticket packages is available.
Phone: 362-0003. For film titles, ticket info and show times, dates and locations, see  www.pbifilmfest.org.

April 19: Join the Junior League of Boca Raton as it goes from the 18th green to a full house at its Golf Classic & Casino Night fundraiser, ‘Birdies to Black Jack.’ Time is 11 am. Cost is $225 for the Golf Classic and $65-$125 for Casino Night. Call 620-2553 or visit www.jlbr.org.

Photo: Julie Lander, with Chairwoman-Elect Anne Grigsby and Co-Chairwoman Shelley Mitchell.

Photo by Downtown Photo

Joe Griffin with conductor Sebrina Maria Alfonso.

By Rich Pollack

    If it weren’t for a last-minute birthday present from his friend Claudia Willis, chances are Joseph Griffin probably wouldn’t have discovered the South Florida Symphony Orchestra.
    Willis, knowing that Griffin was a lover of classical music, was running out of ideas for a present when she remembered she had two tickets to the orchestra’s January performance at Delray Beach’s Crest Theatre that she couldn’t use.
    For Griffin, who makes his home in Highland Beach and Mary Lou Schillinger of Ocean Ridge, his close friend, that performance was a real eye-opener.
    “I was so impressed with this little orchestra of 70 musicians,” he said. “The sound was just magnificent.”
    Now Griffin is showing his support for the orchestra through a $10,000 challenge grant, which he hopes will lead to the Fort Lauderdale-based nonprofit’s raising an additional $20,000.
    That money, he says, would go a long way toward covering the cost of the upcoming concert and helping ensure the orchestra — which is performing on April 9 at the Delray Beach Center for the Art’s Crest Theater — will be able to return to Palm Beach County next season.
    “These are world-class musicians who come from all over the country,” he said. “Once you hear them, you’ll be blown away by the quality of their music.”
    Griffin, who spends part of the year in South Florida and part of the year in Manhattan, says he’s long been a fan of classical music, having had a subscription to the New York Philharmonic for many years.
    The April 9 master concert performance, “From Darkness Comes Light,” is expected to be equally impressive, with renowned cellist Zuill Bailey as the featured soloist.
    Led by award-winning conductor Sebrina María Alfonso, the orchestra will perform works of Elgar, Brahms and Schubert.
    “Having a symphony of this caliber performing in Delray Beach is a real coup,” said Willis, who has been a supporter of the orchestra for several years and who won’t be giving away her tickets this
time.
    To find out more about the concert, visit www.southfloridasymphony.org or call (954) 522-8445.

The seventh annual charity event for Boys & Girls Club of Broward County began with a spectacular hangar party displaying exotic cars, motorcycles, boats and jets. Twenty of South Florida’s top restaurants sponsored the event and served gourmet food, fine wine and signature cocktails.

Photo: Patti Max, co-owner of Max’s Grille in Boca Raton, prepares to take a spin in a red-hot Bentley.

Photo provided

This season’s final Cultures & Cocktails event attracted more than 80 to the Cultural Council of Palm Beach County. Among the attendees were Donald Ephraim (left), Maxine Marks and Linda and Jay Rosenkranz of Boca Raton.

Photo provided

Approximately 5,500 guests were treated to a fun day in the park and on the water for the annual Boating & Beach Bash for People with Disabilites on March 16 at Spanish River Park. Entertainment included Brett Loewenstern from American Idol and Nashville recording artist Tim Charron, and there were exhibits ranging from antique cars to dozens of show cycles courtesy of Big Bike Riders Association. Everyone enjoyed a hot lunch. Photo: Event founder Jay Van Vechten (seated), with Kim (Snow White) Wick of Costume World, Lowell Van Vechten and a few favorite Action Heroes.

Photo provided

Polynesian foods, drinks, music and a performance by a professional hula troupe highlighted the Boca Raton Garden Club Luau March 22 in the clubhouse. Proceeds of the event will go to Junior Gardening, Garden Therapy for Alzheimer’s Patients and College Scholarships.

Photo: Alan and Lenore Alford with Durk and Doris Frazier, of Boca Raton.

An enthusiastic crowd of more than 750 attended the 51st annual affair that celebrated the new Wold Family Center for Emergency Medicine and raised $1 million in the process. Guests paid tribute to Honorary Chairwoman Elaine Wold and 10 physicians.

Photo: Elaine Wold with David Kamm.

Photo provided

A celebrated roster of 81 PGA Champions Tour players took to The Old Course at Broken Sound Club for the 2013 Allianz Championship vying for a $1.8 million purse. The Moabery Family Foundation pledged an annual ‘champions challenge,’ donating $1,000 for each birdie and $5,000 for each eagle scored by the defending champion to benefit Boca Raton Regional Hospital’s Toppel Family Place Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. 2012 winner Corey Pavin’s play was good enough to secure $17,000. Allianz Life Insurance Company donated $1,000 for every birdie from golfer Tom Lehman. This raised $8,500 for Junior Achievement and the Alzheimer’s Association.

Photo: Pattie and Richard Damron, Kari Oeltjen and Ryan Dillon.

Photo provided

After running a successful business in the health-care industry,

Mike Earley is looking for new challenges on both the professional and personal fronts.

Tim Stepien/The Coastal Star

    Michael M. Earley describes his success as opportunistic.
    “I went where I saw opportunities,” said Earley, the recent chairman and chief executive officer of Metropolitan Health Networks in Boca Raton. “From 1986 through 1997, I worked for a couple of holding companies that had a lot of businesses and I had the opportunity to work with the companies that weren’t doing so well. I naturally ended up with them. In my life situation, although I’ve been married, I’ve never had family or kids to tie me down, so they’d say, ‘Send Mike.’ I  stumbled into it and  realized that I liked working in this environment.”
    Ten years ago, Earley, 57, was recruited to look at Metropolitan Health Networks and determine if there was a path forward for the company.
    “Its main business owned and contracted with primary care practices, which focused on seniors. And as you can imagine, in Florida, that’s a terrific business opportunity.”
    When he began in 2003, the company had 100 employees and revenue was about  $100 million. The company never made a profit in its then seven-year history. Ten years later, there are 1,200 employees.
The company earned  a listing on the New York Stock Exchange in 2011 and by December 2012 it had become an $800 million revenue business that took care of 80,000 Florida seniors.
    Earley, who lives in  coastal Boca Raton, has received his share of awards for his efforts. Last summer, he was selected as an Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year in the health care category. In October 2012, Metropolitan Heath Networks was named No. 5 on Forbes List of America’s Best Small Companies and in December 2012, Humana bought Metropolitan Health Networks for $850 million.
    He didn’t have a health care background, but being an outsider helped, he said. “I started to learn a lot about health care and its challenges. I began to realize that our health care system was in horrendous shape and facing problems.”
    In turning the business around, he sold or closed down other less important health-related businesses that the company was pursuing and focused on the business that owned primary care practices. He treated his employees well, and kept an open line of communication with them.
    But he also made a basic change that made a big difference. “In a single phrase, this industry calls the people it serves patients. We decided to call them customers,” he said.
    “The health care business focuses on the physician, hospitals and technologies, but often you don’t see the focus on the patient. We tried to do everything that we could do to put the customers in the center of the business model, and to make this a better experience for them. That triggered a lot of operational change in the business.”
    Those included customer-service training courses and measuring the quality of service.
    A complaint he received about a doctor telling a patient to get out and stay out of his office is what got him thinking, he said.
    “I sat down with this doctor, a terrific physician but with a relatively short fuse, and said, ‘Well, I don’t think you can do that. She may be difficult but she needs care and she represents a business opportunity for us.’
    “A store manager would never treat customers that way. They’d never go back to the store and they’d tell all their friends not to go there, either.”
    After Humana purchased Metropolitan Health Networks, Earley continued to work through this February. Now he’s enjoying life while looking for new opportunities. He enjoys fine restaurants and fine wine (he recommends Ameroni and Insignia). He’s planning to dive, likes to bike, works out and loves golf.
    “I am going to take some of the focus I’ve had on my career and put it in investing in my personal life,” he said. “I admire people who have broad and interesting circle of friends and I’d like to be more like that and I’m going to work on it. I would like to have more people know me.”
— Christine Davis
 
    Q. Where did you grow up and go to school?
    A. I grew up in San Diego and earned bachelor degrees in business administration and accounting from the University of San Diego. My father was a career Navy fighter pilot from Boston and my mother an Illinois farm girl. They seemed to enjoy the warm, dry Southern California weather and lifestyle.
    
    Q. What are some highlights of your life?
    A. I’ve been lucky in my life, always working in interesting and fun business situations. I worked my way through school in the SCUBA diving business and then began my career with Ernst & Ernst (now Ernst & Young).
Like the Army, it was a great place to start.
    I spent the late 1980s as an executive with two dynamic, diversified public-holding companies based in San Diego: Intermark Inc. and Triton Group Ltd. We enjoyed the ups and downs of the financial markets, learned about a lot of businesses and ultimately sold the combined business in 1997. I was CEO at that point.
    I then did a handful of business turnaround projects, the last of which began in early 2003 in South Florida. A six-month assignment turned into a 10-year run. We fixed Metropolitan Health Networks Inc., a then struggling small public company, and dramatically grew it.
We earned a listing on the New York Stock Exchange, something I take great pride in, and then sold the business to Humana in late 2012 for about $850 million.
    It was all very exciting and I enjoyed working with a great team. I’m now enjoying catching my breath!
    
    Q. How did you choose to make your home in Boca Raton?
    A. The Metropolitan assignment brought me to West Palm Beach. I looked for a community that suited me, and that was Boca. I enjoy the people, the dining and shopping and the outdoor lifestyle of the east Boca community.

    Q. What is your favorite part about living in Boca Raton?
A. East Boca presents an interesting and comfortable mix of old and new. It’s easy to navigate and has a sense of community.  
    
    Q. If you could change anything in your life, what would it be?
    A. That’s a hard one. I’ve been lucky and have enjoyed my life. I used to wish I had continued my formal education but I don’t anymore. I had the opportunity to learn and grow along the way,  and I have become a continuous learner about business and about life.  
    
    Q. If someone made a movie of your life, who would you like to play you and why?
    A. Let’s just say someone who can sing and dance better than me!
    
    Q. What music do you listen to when you need inspiration? When you want to relax?  
    A. Rock ’n’ roll into alternative rock gets me going. I grew up watching all of the great concert acts in the 1970s. When I want to relax, there are a lot a great artists from the ’60s and ’70s with calming, introspective music. Think Neil Young, Pink Floyd, Mark-Almond and Cat Stevens.
    
    Q. What do people not know about you that you wish they knew?
    A. I simply wish more people knew me, that I would have a wider circle of friends. The focus on my career, my work has been pretty intense over the years. I hope and intend to spend more time on other aspects of my life as I move forward.
    
    Q. Do you have a favorite quote that inspires your decisions?
    A. One that comes to mind is one that comes out of the turnaround business: “If you want to finish first, you must first finish.”
    
    Q. Have you had mentors in your life? Individuals who have inspired your life decisions?
    A. I have been lucky enough to have had terrific mentors throughout my life, beginning with my father, Walt. He had more guts than anyone I know. I did SCUBA diving through high school and college, and I worked for the Nicklin family. They were great people and in that business they taught me how to relate to and treat customers.
    Chuck Patrick at Ernst taught me to take on the hard assignments. That opened up a lot of doorways. I met Red Scott, an icon in the San Diego community, when I was a young professional at Ernst. He hired me in the mid-1980s, and he’s taught me about life and business. Today, he’s still a close friend.
    Harvey Gelman of Broken Sound has been a steadying force for almost 10 years. I joined a Vistage group nine years ago, which meets monthly, and Harvey is the chairman of our group. Harvey and his wife, Judy, have become my South Florida family.   

Marcy Weiss throws a stick for her dog Maho, a mixed-breed dog she refers to as her ‘South African Pygmy retriever.’
Photos by Libby Volgyes/The Coastal Star

John Tomaszewski walks six beach miles every morning

year-round. He poses for a quick portrait at the end of his walk.

Eric Espanet holds his 6-year-old Chihuahua Billie at the beach.

Jason Clark, with his hood up to stay warm, hangs out on the beach across from where he works

at The Little Club golf course. ‘It’s a nice chance to get away from everything else.

Not too many people are out here,’ he said.

Scott Petrie takes a picture every morning of the sunrise to put on Facebook. ‘It’s my morning meditation,’ he says.

See stunning photos taken by dawn beachgoers Jason Clark and Scott Petrie.

By Anne Rodgers

     Coastal dwellers count numerous blessings, but surely foremost among them is the chance to make frequent pilgrimages to the ocean. Though March brought some downright chilly mornings to the area, locals weren’t about to abandon their time-honored practice of visiting the shore.
     On one of those raw, blustery mornings, we made our own trek to the beach to learn what we could about our neighbors who make viewing the ocean a daily ritual. What brings them again and again to the sound of the waves, the feel of sand beneath their feet?
     Marcy Weiss is throwing a stick that’s almost twice as long as Maho, a mixed-breed dog Weiss refers to as “a South African pygmy retriever.” She plays contentedly with her small companion, talking about how she moved from New Jersey 12 years ago and is happy now in Boynton Beach.
     Everyone comes early to the beach for the same reason, she says: “To watch the sunrise. It’s beautiful, and it’s peaceful.”
     John Tomaszewski walks six beach miles every morning, year-round. For the three decades he was a firefighter in Delray Beach, he could only indulge his routine on weekends. But when he retired a couple years back, he started coming daily.
     “This is my job now,” he says with satisfaction.
     Tomaszewski shows up early because in summer, it’s the only non-hot part of the day. “It’s cooler than usual today,” he concedes, though he’s still barefoot and wearing shorts.
     He walks with purpose, not stopping to collect shells.
     “I’m not allowed to bring home any more shells,” he says laughing. “I’ve got jars full. If I see some really great ones, I’ll pick them up and give them to kids.”
     Originally from Albany, N.Y., Tomaszewski moved to Boynton Beach 31 years ago. He talks about the variety of odds and ends he’s picked up on his walks — fishing poles, knives, a gold ring, a spear — but his voice grows warmer as he talks about the enjoyment of seeing the same people day after day. The regulars really do know one another.
     Jason Clark walks directly to the water’s edge and begins snapping photos as soon as his feet touch sand. The former Marine Corps lance corporal now works just across the street from the beach, at The Little Club golf course. He’s made beach time his daily custom for four years.
     “It’s a nice chance to get away from everything else. Not too many people are out here,” he says of the shore near Gulf Stream Park.
     Clark, 24, isn’t a surfer, but he points knowledgeably to the water, noting this stretch of the beach is known for rip currents.
“A lot of days I come over on my afternoon break from 2 to 5,” he says.
     Clark alternates his routine with visits to the Lake Worth pier as well.
     “I like to get pictures of the sunrise to post on Instagram. I did the same thing when I was in the Marines in North Carolina.”  
     Eric Espanet brings Billie, his 6-year-old Chihuahua, down to the water each morning. He’s been making the trek, one way or another, ever since his family moved to Boynton Beach from Rhode Island when he was a kid.
     These days, he lives close enough to walk down to the shore, “just to check the waves and walk my dog.”
     An enthusiastic surfer, the 46-year-old Espanet works in Ocean Ridge as a building contractor with his brother. He and Billie both love the ocean, and he shares the story of how Billie earned her nickname “sushi dog.” It stems from the successful fishing she once did on a day when hundreds of baitfish were being driven toward the shore, repeatedly jumping out of the water.
     “She was getting little salty snacks,” says Espanet chuckling. “So I call her sushi dog.”   
     And here is Scott Petrie, standing alone, totally absorbed in taking pictures of the sunrise. “I do this every morning to put on Facebook,” shares the county pocket resident. “I probably have more than a thousand pictures of sunrises.”
     A neighborhood denizen for four years (moving here from Lake Worth), Petrie runs a home restoration business.
     And why, pray tell, does he honor this ritual so faithfully, to the tune of a thousand photos?
     "It’s my morning meditation,” he says simply.                                            Ú

Debbie Dingle stands at Mount Kilimanjaro, where she climbed to raise awareness

of human trafficking and women forced into sexual slavery.

Members of Advent Lutheran Church raised $70,000 to help women escape.

Photo provided

By Tim Pallesen

     Debbie Dingle’s church congregation supported her last year when she climbed Mount Kilimanjaro.
     Now the members of Advent Lutheran Church are rallying to boost her up the world’s tallest mountain — Mount Everest.
     Dingle is raising awareness about human trafficking and women forced into sexual slavery.
     “I believe God is totally at work in this,” the Boca Raton soccer mom says.
     Advent Lutheran agreed with her mission last year, raising $70,000 through car washes, garage sales and other fundraisers to help women around the world escape their tragic lives in forced prostitution.
     “The congregation embraced it spiritually and financially,” Dingle said. “I felt we all went up that mountain together.”
     Dingle never imagined this would be her mission until her sister-in-law suggested she check out Operation Mobilization, a worldwide Christian ministry with 6,100 workers who rescue women from prostitution, exploitation and poverty through job training and other assistance.
     Women rescued in India gave Dingle a bracelet. “I put on that bracelet and I knew right then that I was meant to go,” she said.
     Dingle told her husband, Scott, and four teenagers that God wanted her to climb the mountain. They immediately supported her first Freedom Climb in Africa last year.
     Of the 48 women who scaled Mount Kilimanjaro, none raised more than the $70,000 that Dingle and her family raised at Advent Lutheran.
     But Dingle returned home to her normal life in Boca Raton thinking God had only wanted her to climb one mountain.
     She had heard about the next Freedom Climb in Nepal this April, but God hadn’t communicated to her about the world’s highest mountain.
     Then Dingle enrolled in a Bible class at Advent Lutheran titled “Knowing and Doing the Will of God” from the Experiencing God series by author Henry Blackaby. The message was clear.
     “I felt God was knocking on my heart,” Dingle said. “I felt an overwhelming call from him.”
     Dingle stood before her congregation at Sunday services on March 3 to announce that she will climb Mount Everest next month to rescue more exploited women.
     “God will show you where he is working and ask you to join him,” Dingle said. “When God invites us, we need to have the courage and obedience to say yes.”
                                          
***

Allison Good stands with Gov. Rick Scott at a Miami news conference

in which she told her story of being the victim of human trafficking.

Photo provided

     The Lord is using Allison Good in a much different way to bring awareness to the sexual exploitation of women.
     He’s given her courage to tell a story that began at age 5 when a relative sold her for sex.
     Good, 33, directs the women’s ministry at The Avenue Church in Delray Beach. Her turnaround came in 2004 when a former pastor at Spanish River Church in Boca Raton led her to Christ.
     “I prayed that God would deliver me from drugs and alcohol and that I could use every tear that I ever shed for his glory,” she said.
      Spanish River hired Good as outreach director one year later. But she hesitated to talk about her past. She was ashamed for her own behavior and also for leading other women into drugs and prostitution.
      All that changed when Good stood beside Florida Gov. Rick Scott to tell her story at a Miami press conference on Feb. 13. Scott warned of a worldwide human trafficking epidemic — and Good was his witness.
     Good says she went public because she realized that God is telling his story of redemption when she shares how God changed her life.
     “He has me on a ride. I’m just hanging on. This is really uncomfortable at times,” she admits. “But I want to say yes. My desire is to obey him no matter what the cost.”
     Good first found the courage to share her story to a few other women at Spanish River Church in 2009. As her confidence grew, she began speaking for Redeem the Shadows, a charity that supports victims of human trafficking.
     Good found her daily purpose is to share God’s love to other women through her job at The Avenue Church.
     “I never thought I would be a biblical counselor, but now the majority of my time is pointing women to Jesus,” she said.
     "The Lord allows me the honor to speak into their lives. I get to bring them a hope that never fails.”
     The Avenue Church invites the public to attend a forum on human trafficking at 6:30 p.m. May 10 at the Delray Beach Community Center.
                                          
***

     The public is invited to a night of music, food and wine that CROS Ministries hopes will grow into its largest annual fundraiser.
     The April 19 event at the Delray Beach Center for the Arts at Old School Square features popular local guitarist Eric Hansen.
     The interfaith food ministry operates the Caring Kitchen in Delray Beach, six food pantries and other programs with 3,000 volunteers.
     An annual walkathon raised $37,000 for the charity last October. The goal for the new Magical Evening of Music fundraiser is $50,000.
     Tickets are $75. Call (561) 233-9009, Ext. 106.
                                           
***

     Another interfaith charity that provides emergency shelter for homeless families hosts its first walkathon on Sunday, April 7.
Nineteen South County churches and synagogues open their doors to families in the Family Promise shelter program. The walk and fun day start at 3 p.m. at Pond Apple Pavilion in the South County Regional Park. Food trucks, a bounce house and dunk tank will entertain families.
     Contact Valerie Smith at 573-2360 for information.
                                          
***

     Members of a Boca Raton church win the award for the most unusual evangelism outreach.
     Motorists got a 50-cent break on gasoline for two hours on March 9 at a gas station on North Federal Highway thanks to the Journey Church.
     Church members pumped gas, washed windows and invited motorists to their Sunday worship at Boca Raton Community High School.

***

     Disabled Israeli veterans benefited when children from three Jewish schools in Boca Raton learned about caring on Feb. 27.
     More than 500 students in grades 1-4 at Donna Klein Jewish Academy, Hillel Day School and Torah Academy made cards and picture frames for the veterans as they learned about Chesed, the Jewish obligation to care for others. Fifth-graders made caps for children with cancer.
     Students in grades 6-8 told the younger students about the veterans and children they were helping. High school students planned the day with help from the Jewish Federation of South Palm Beach County.
                                          
***

Dr. W. Douglas Hood Jr., senior pastor at First Presbyterian Church of Delray Beach,

prays with parishioners at the opening of Holly House.

     The Holly House ladies at First Presbyterian are known for the Christmas wreaths, tree ornaments and other handicrafts that they make for their annual holiday bazaar.
     “But we’re not just folks sitting around making things,” group leader Regie Moorcroft made clear at the dedication of the new 3,600-square-foot Holly House on Feb. 26.
     “This is a wonderful group of people who care for each other,” Moorcroft said of the 50 or so silver-haired women who now have their own gathering place on First Presbyterian’s campus in Delray Beach.
     The women gather Tuesday and Thursday morning to make their handicrafts and pray for those who are struggling.
     “Holly House is a ministry where they reach out and take care of one another,” the Rev. Douglas Hood said, explaining its importance particularly for an elderly woman who loses her spouse.
     “They come to this group because it helps with the grieving process,” Barbara Vanderkay said. “They know people are going to be kind.”

Tim Pallesen writes about people of faith, their congregations, causes and community events. Email him at tcpallesen@aol.com.

The bloom of a bauhinia, also known as an orchid tree, lends a pop of purple at Putt’n Around in Delray Beach.

A white hibiscus overlooks the putting green of the 14th hole.

A sea turtle adorns the top of a totem pole in the midst of a firebush hedge.

Black timor bamboo.

Photos by Jerry Lower/The Coastal Star

By Deborah S. Hartz-Seeley

    Depending on when you visit, you may enjoy the purple trumpets growing among the glossy green leaves on the palay rubber vine. Hibiscus-like flowers that turn white to pale pink to raspberry over time may cover the heirloom Confederate rose that is not really a rose at all.  And after dark, you might be lucky enough to enjoy the night-blooming jasmine as its heavy sweet scent fills the air.
     You could be at any botanical garden but instead you are at Putt’n Around in Delray Beach.
     Here, Elise Johnson and her sons Nicholas, 24, and Daniel, 21, have created much more than just two 18-hole miniature golf courses.
     They’ve also planted almost 500 different varieties of shrubs, ground covers, palms, bamboos, trees, flowers and more on their 2.6 acres.
     “We feel like the garden brings out the grandparents and people who normally wouldn’t come just for the golf. They come because of the scenery,” says Daniel, who has taken over planting and maintaining the garden.
     This all started when Elise noticed hundreds of children lined up to play at a “cheesy nine-hole miniature golf course set up in the street” during a First Night celebration on Atlantic Avenue, explains Daniel.
     This was just when her job selling home warranties had crashed along with the housing market. “She came home one day with this crazy idea of starting a miniature golf course and we took it from there,” Daniel says.
     When it came to planting their golf courses for their 2010 opening, they discovered that along with the housing market the landscaping business had gone south. That meant they could get a clump of palms that originally cost $35,000 for $4,000.
     “Today it would be a whole lot harder to create this,” Daniel says pointing to the greenery.
     Take time to enjoy the garden while you tee up. Many specimens are labeled with their botanic, common and Latin names.
     Just outside the clubhouse, you’ll see three types of sea oats. They help hide the two pink plastic flamingoes standing nearby.
     Take a minute to enjoy the kassod tree with its delicately draping leaves and clusters of star-like yellow flowers. And inhale the fragrant white blooms of a gardenia.
     As you move through the course you’ll see a stand of black timor bamboo with its, yes, black stems.
     Like bamboo? Play on.
     A stand of barballata, thin blue green-bamboo, rises 20 feet in the air. And then there’s the aptly named striped Buddha belly bamboo with its chubby jointed culms.
     Two ylang-ylang trees blooming for the first time this year sport yellow flowers that look like the ribs of an umbrella. Recognize their fragrance? These are used to make Chanel No. 5. Next up is a Michelia champaca alba used to make Joy perfume.
     “Different things bloom at different times of year so every time you come the garden will have something new,” says Daniel.
     Spice is the theme as you play through some other holes. You’ll find a cinnamon spice tree as well as allspice and bay rum trees. Crush their leaves to take advantage of their aromas.
     As we walk, a golfer stops Daniel to find out the name of the plant with showy white trumpet-shaped flowers. That’s an angel’s trumpet, he tells her.
     And for those with a sense of humor, don’t miss the pony tail palm at the end of the courses.  Although it’s not really a palm, its long, thin leaves grow in tufts that resemble — you guessed it — a pony tail.
     “We’ve planted just about everything that grows in Florida and more,” says Daniel. Much more.

Deborah S. Hartz-Seeley is a certified master gardener who can be reached at debhartz@att. net when she’s not digging in her yard.

Guests of the 11th annual Tri-County Humane Society Doggie Ball were greeted by five dogs cleared for adoption as they entered the Boca West Country Club.  The ball raised over $400,000 for the 100 percent no-kill facility.

Lynn Nobil, a former volunteer at the Humane Society,

gets to know Max, a Dogo Argentino, and Virginia, a boxer mix.

Suzi Goldsmith was honored with The Jeanette Christos

Service Award for Outstanding Service for 2012.

Jay DiPietro, chief operational officer and general manager

of Boca West Country Club, accepts a donation from Maggie and Charlotte Owensby.

Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office K-9 deputy, Kenzo, receives a standing ovation

from the 450-member crowd. Kenzo was shot in the line of duty in 2012 and has returned to active service.

Photos by Jerry Lower/The Coastal Star