TOP: ADMA Biologics won the heavyweight division in the second annual Boca Helping Hands Corporate Challenge Hunger Games. L-R: Ryan Bertalotto, Jomarie Ramirez, Cassandra Hugelmeyer, Marie-Chantale Simard, Joel Robinson, Christina Odai, Patricia Fox, Majdulin Dawad and Kaitlin Kestenberg. MIDDLE: Woolbright Development won the middleweight division. Standing, L-R: Yitzy Rosenberg, Tara Patel, Makarena Osorio, Kerry Silver, Tracy Rosario, Cristina Stiller Johnson, Jo-Anne Roggin, Rich DiChiara, Jason Wisgo, Pablo Ramos, Avery Archibald, Yailen Chenlo, Liz Hoyer and Sophia Scroggie; kneeling, L-R: Luis Ramos and Mauricio Abela. BOTTOM: SouthState Bank won the bantamweight division. Back row, L-R: Lauren Nanni, Rachel Ritter, Lisa Rodriguez, Lisa Rabinsky, Sadith Isla, Evelyn Madera, Simone Politakis; front row, L-R: Sanja Langley, Michelle Adams, Kayla Stellabotte and Sean Chaderton. Photos provided
By Christine Davis
Thanks to Boca Helping Hands’ second annual Corporate Challenge Hunger Games and the 11 local businesses that took part in the July competition, more than 19,000 additional meals were made available to local families in need.
“We had 22,879 pounds of food that we wouldn’t have had,” said Bill Harper, senior director of operations at Boca Helping Hands.
“Food drives are plentiful in the spring and fall,” he said. “People want to help us out. But every summer, our donations go down. Because people go on vacations, we don’t get food drives from churches, synagogues and mosques. We don’t get them from schools, and for businesses, with people going on vacations, they don’t think about it.”
The Hunger Games challenge started last year to fill the gap.
To get it going, Harper contacted 76 businesses this year. In 2024, seven businesses rose to the challenge. This year, 11 took part. “Next year, we’ll get more because of how popular it was this year,” he said.
Harper tied the theme of the challenge to wrestling, focusing the competition on businesses gathering food for Boca Helping Hands during July.
“In wrestling, there are weight divisions: bantamweight, middleweight and heavyweight. And we had three different size businesses. Companies with 50 employees or less would be in the bantamweight. Companies with 51 to 100 employees would be in the middleweight, and in the heavyweight division were companies with 101 employees or more.”
The Corporate Challenge bantamweight winner was SouthState Bank. The middleweight winner was Woolbright Development. The heavyweight winner was ADMA Biologics.
Boca Helping Hands was formed 27 years ago. The new competition will help the organization in its mission to serve more than 35,000 people in South Florida.
Its programs include hunger relief, job training, health care, emergency financial assistance, child care, and weekend meals for Palm Beach County schoolchildren.
In 2024, Boca Helping Hands distributed 5.2 million pounds of food to local families, Harper said.
“This year, we were down 40 percent going into this summer. We are still struggling and running 35 percent down from last year and we are heading into the holidays.”
According to Harper, one in nine individuals in Palm Beach County is experiencing food insecurity — about 160,000 individuals.
Boca Helping Hands has these events in October:
• Trick or Treat So Others Can Eat, 5-7 p.m. Oct. 25 at Town Center of Boca Raton. Halloween-costumed children will bring nonperishable food donations to participate in various fun events.
• Thanksgiving Box Brigade includes preparations during October to provide Thanksgiving meals to families.
Individuals interested in donating items, delivering meals or becoming sponsors may visit bocahelpinghands.org/thanksgiving.
Boca Helping Hands is also open for donations at 1500 NW First Court, Boca Raton, from 8:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.
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Glades 95th Owner LLC, a partnership among Schmier Property Group, Giles Capital Group, Rosemurgy Properties and Wheelock Street Capital, sold Uptown Boca for $118.5 million.
Uptown Boca is a 194,927-square-foot shopping center at 9536-9704 Glades Road, west of Boca Raton.
The buyer was an affiliate of Stockbridge Capital Group. Uptown Boca is fully leased to tenants that include Whole Foods Market, REI, HomeSense and Sephora, with Life Time Fitness to open soon. JLL Capital’s Danny Finkle, Jorge Portela and Kim Flores represented the seller.
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The Adrian and Mary Sandra Zaccaria 1988 Family Trust, with Mary Zaccaria and son Justin Zaccaria as trustees, sold the 11,799-square-foot home at 166 W. Alexander Palm Road in the Royal Palm Yacht & Country Club, Boca Raton, for $17.5 million.
The new owner is KM Revocable Trust, with Kelly Martin as trustee. The seven-bedroom, nine-bath home along a canal leading to the Intracoastal Waterway features a bar, an elevator, a summer kitchen, pool, putting green, an outdoor fireplace and a dock.
The late Adrian Zaccaria was an executive with the Bechtel Group Inc. The home last traded for $10 million in 2018.
Matthew Quattrociocchi of Century 21 Tenace Realty represented the seller in the deal. Marcy F. Javor of Signature One Luxury Estates worked with the buyer.
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Derek M. Ettinger, as trustee of the 2021 Tennis Trust, sold his six-bedroom, 9,022-square-foot residence at 311 E. Key Palm Road in the Royal Palm Yacht & Country Club, Boca Raton, for $16.5 million.
The purchasers were Philip and Alyssa Bonadonna. The deal included $6 million in seller financing, plus a $495,000 second mortgage from Royal Palm Properties LLC. The deal was brokered by David W. Roberts of Royal Palm Properties.
The home, built in 2015 on a 0.45-acre site, last traded for $12 million in 2021 as part of an agreement with federal prosecutors and a prior owner.
Prosecutors said Brian H. Sperber bought the home under his wife’s name in 2020, in part with proceeds from a pandemic-related scam, selling personal protective equipment that didn’t exist and pocketing the money.
Sperber pleaded guilty in May 2024 in federal court in Atlanta to conspiring to commit wire fraud. He was sentenced in February to two years and two months in prison and ordered to pay $14.2 million in restitution.
The 2021 sale of the Key Palm Road home to Ettinger netted about $4 million, which was to go to victims of the scam, officials said.
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The Amy & Noreen Team at Lang Realty has undergone some recent changes.
Paige Mercado is now its director of business development. Agent Gimena Dimilta has joined the team and Kerry Doyle Waite is in the process of obtaining her real estate license. Namrata Israni, an agent with social media expertise, is also part of the team.
“We are thrilled to celebrate Paige’s well-deserved promotion and to welcome Gimena, Kerry and Namrata into these expanded roles,” said Lang Realty agents Amy Snook and Noreen Payne.
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Arts Garage, in Delray Beach, recently appointed art advocates David Plaza and Paula Tishok to its board of directors.
Plaza is a managing director and wealth management adviser with Merrill Lynch Wealth Management. Tishok has held senior roles in financial operations and strategic planning at Westin Hotels, Westinghouse Electric Corporation and Tenet Healthcare.
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Delray Beach resident Chuck Halberg, founder and president of Stuart & Shelby Home Builders and president of Delray Citizens for Delray Police, received the Carl Angus DeSantis Foundation’s 2025 Catalyst Award.
Halberg is also the founder and member of Impact 100 Men of Palm Beach, past chair and current director of Arts Garage and creator of the charity event Flat Stanley Rides a Harley for Kids and Cops.
He has been involved with Milagro Center, Achievement Centers for Children & Families, Miracle League of Delray Beach, The Spady Museum, and Roots and Wings.
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Three startups joined the Global Ventures incubator program at the Research Park at Florida Atlantic University. They are: Standard Space Antennas, a company originally from Argentina that creates high-performance antennas for satellites and space missions; Inaam Botanical Sodas, a company that makes a no-calorie soda; and Milagro AI, a coding company for the medical industry.
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Lisa Brown, a teacher at Lake Worth High School, will be one of the recipients of the 2025 outstanding holocaust educator award given by Florida Atlantic University’s Arthur and Emalie Gutterman Family Center for Holocaust and Human Rights Education.
Recipients will be recognized Oct. 30 at the 16th annual awards dinner, at the Marriott Boca Raton.
For more information about the awards dinner, contact Ellen Sax at 561-297-0849.
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FAU recently began constructing its Kurt and Marilyn Wallach Holocaust and Jewish Studies Building, which is slated to be completed fall 2026.
Kurt Wallach died in 2021, a year after he and his wife, Marilyn, made a $20 million gift to the university to create the Kurt and Marilyn Wallach Institute for Holocaust and Jewish Studies, with a portion used as the lead gift to construct the building.
Within the 22,000-square-foot Wallach building will be Florida Atlantic’s Arthur and Emalie Gutterman Family Center for Holocaust and Human Rights Education; Holocaust education and Jewish studies programs; the Leon Charney diplomacy program; and the Center for Peace, Justice and Human Rights.
Also, lectures and exhibits will be offered.
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Roots and Wings raised more than $35,000 at its “Hats Off! to Teaching Children to Read” event, which was held in August at Eddie V’s Prime Seafood in Boca Raton as part of the Greater Boca Raton Chamber of Commerce’s Festival Days.
The money raised will support Project UpLift, Roots and Wings’ free after-school reading program for local students in need of literacy help. To learn more, visit rootsandwingsinc.org.
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The League of Women Voters of Palm Beach County will host a Hot Topic Luncheon, “Insights from Tallahassee,” with state Sen. Lori Berman and state Rep. Anne Gerwig.
Berman, a Democrat, is minority leader of the Florida Senate, where she represents the 86th district, stretching from Hypoluxo to Boca Raton. She was first elected in 2018 after serving four terms in the Florida House of Representatives.
Gerwig, a Republican, was elected to the Florida House last year after serving as mayor of Wellington from 2016 to 2024 and a previous six years on the Village Council.
In Tallahassee, she represents Wellington, Greenacres and parts of unincorporated Palm Beach County, and serves on the Joint Committee on Public Counsel Oversight.
The luncheon will take place from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Oct. 22 at Fountains Country Club, 4476 Fountains Drive, Lake Worth Beach. Cost to attend is $40 for league members and $45 for nonmembers. The deadline to register is Oct. 15 at lwvpbc.org.
Christine Davis writes about business and can be reached at cdavis9797@gmail.com.
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