“Sheepish” is not a word you’d ever use to characterize Metro-Dade firefighter Douglas Jewett. During his nineteen years in the department, he has acquired a reputation as a topnotch firefighter and paramedic, but one who will step on anyone’s toes to get the job done. This is a man who,…
Jack D. Gordon Democratic state senator, 35th District “The incredibly discourteous drivers in Greater Miami, especially on the expressways. The people who try to get one place ahead by switching lanes, often without signaling. I think it’s worse here and I think that it has to do with a number…
From where he lay in the drifting, battered lifeboat, Julian Bravo could see the fat American tourists leaning over the ship’s railings eleven decks up, the lenses of their cameras and camcorders glinting in the Bahamian morning sun. And he could see the staff captain yelling urgently. But that was…
So you’re tired of the leaky ceiling in your apartment, the rodents are beginning to have their way, and your landlord has not resurfaced since he came to pick up the rent. If you live in unincorporated Dade County or the City of Miami, and your apartment building contains more…
Nine o’clock in the morning is no time for spiritual reflection in the morgue of the Dade County Medical Examiner Department. The first corpse of the day, a pallid woman with three deep gouges above her right ear, is already in place on an autopsy table and seven others are…
How much kindness can fit into convicted arms smuggler Sarkis Soghanalian’s 300-pound frame? Just ask his ex-wife, Shirley Soghanalian. “He was always bringing home anyone he could find to feed them,” she reminisced for the court during her husband’s October 23 bail hearing. “He was always giving money away until…
In 1969 a young cadet in the Baltimore County Police Department received the kind of progress reports that might have led a less determined man to start thinking about another career. In one evaluation, the trainee was criticized for failing “to support the other squad leaders” and to maintain morale…
The South Florida construction industry has been hit hard by the recession, and general contractors like Louis Forti have been happy to take on virtually any work that comes their way. So Forti, president of his own company – Forti Engineering Systems – jumped at the chance to bid on…
Rare is the adolescent resident of a high-rise who hasn’t converted his balcony into a laboratory for a detailed study of gravity. Young inquiring minds, several stories up, need only the simplest materials to explore important scientific concepts such as the parabolic trajectory and terminal velocity of a soggy toilet-paper…
Betty Sime had Key Biscayne’s first mayoral election so deep in her pocket that several of her closest friends didn’t even bother to vote. “I had people the day of the election calling me up, saying, `Well, we’re not going to be at the election party tonight, but we wanted…
The August 2 sleepover for nine-through-eleven-year-olds was one of the most anticipated events of the Miami Beach Parks and Recreation Department’s eight-week day camp. Campers at the Scott Rakow Youth Center had been promised dancing, a pizza party, swimming, pinatas, the requisite ghost stories, and a complete disregard for regular…
Can’t seem to stop your cross-dressing husband from wearing skirts to the movie theater? In search of a forum to describe how you were stripped, bound, and pleasurably tormented by four naked aerobics instructors? Seek, and ye shall find in the heart of Coral Gables, bastion of strictly regulated lawns,…
In his fifteen years as a firefighter in Dade County, Dan Corcoran has rescued charred children from a blazing apartment, pulled dead bodies from flaming houses, and saved a baby born in a toilet bowl. But he says a promising career in the job he loves was shot down by…
