“About every Coast Guard station from here to God knows where knows me by first name, and I have them on speed dial,” Sturridge said in an interview.

The 52-year-old Flagler Beach man is an amateur radio operator who volunteers for several monitor-and-assist organizations such as the Flagler/Palm Coast Amateur Radio Club, the Maritime Mobile Service Network and the Pacific Seafarers Net.

Amateur radio operators are called “hams.”

Their high-frequency radio equipment can often reach thousands of miles. Amateur radio volunteers fill a gap in emergency monitoring for the US Coast Guard and other rescue agencies.

“Your chances of reaching the Coast Guard once you’re 70 miles out is zero,” Sturridge said.

But that doesn’t mean boaters are out there alone, either.

“There’s about five or six of us listening at any time,” he said.

Sturridge got into radio operating in the late 1990s, shortly after moving back to the area.

He was rehabilitating from a service accident that left him with a spinal-cord injury. The London native spent time in the Daytona Beach area in the 1980s.

“When I came back, I thought this would be a good place to be married and raise children,” he said.

In the early 1980s, Sturridge came to the United States with a racing team and ended up building racing cars for others. He was enjoying the work, but got a letter from the government.

“The Americans said, ‘By the way, you’ve been here six months. It’s time to go,’ ” said Sturridge.

He headed back to England wishing he could have stayed. His mother was an American citizen, which helped him get residency.

“When I signed the paperwork, there was a little piece of paper that said, ‘In case we fight a war, would you sign on,’ ” said Sturridge.

Sturridge signed, figuring the Cold War was over and there wasn’t much chance he’d have to serve in the military.

Then the Gulf War came along in 1990.

“I ended up on a tank,” he said.

However, Sturridge enjoyed the Army and served until 1997, eventually getting into explosives disposal. By then he’d applied for and received American citizenship. Sturridge’s service ended with a medical discharge.

After he married and had three stepchildren, the family got involved with a local Radio Emergency Associated Communications Team. REACT members use citizens band radios to help local, state and federal emergency responders, emergency-services organizations such as the Red Cross, and law enforcement in search and rescue and other operations. Sturridge acted as a base station to coordinate mobile REACT teams.

North Carolinians Davie Moore and Virginia Wilcox met Sturridge on the radio a year ago. The couple was sailing the Nantascot from the Carolinas to Bermuda when their mast broke, which can cause a boat to roll over. Sturridge heard their call for help, but the couple was too far out for assistance. He stayed in contact with them until they safely docked.

After repairs were done, Moore headed onto the Azores when he hit a violent storm with hurricane-force gusts. Fortunately, continued contact with Sturridge helped Moore get ready.

“It wasn’t a hurricane, just a freak storm coming from the Boston area,” said Moore. “I was well prepared because of (Sturridge). Because of him, I knew it was coming.”

“It’s like they drove down one road and decided at random to knock the tops down,” said Pam Mosher who works at the city-owned cemetery. “We’re lucky that none of (the headstones) broke, but it’s still sickening that somebody would do this. I can’t imagine why anyone would do that.”

The city is paying to reset the headstones, said Teresa Allen, the city’s public services administrator. The cost is estimated at $1,000.

Police Chief Herb Gillis said his department has stepped up patrols in the cemetery in response to the vandalism.

“The officer assigned to that area will randomly drive through the grounds,” Gillis said. The K-9 unit on that shift will be available for patrol as well, he said.

The city recently installed security lighting in the cemetery, he said.

Although the cemetery sits along the west side of U.S. 27 just south of State Road 60, the area where the vandalism occurred can’t be seen from the highway, Mosher said.

Crews with Quality Vaults Inc. in Lake Wales began repairing the headstones Tuesday and are expected to complete the job today, she said.

“One of those headstones weighs about 1,500 pounds,” she said. “It took more than one or two people to push that one off its foundation.”

Mosher said she discovered the damage Monday morning when she got to work.

“We routinely do a morning check, looking for garbage and flowers that have been knocked over,” she said. “That’s when we found the headstones.”

The dates of death range from 1969 to 2000, she said. City officials are researching records to contact the families of those decedents.

City administrators didn’t want families who were visiting the cemetery finding the desecration.

“It’s hard enough to visit a loved one’s final resting place,” Allen said, “but then to see that someone’s been disrespectful to it.”

Allen said city employees will be checking the headstones closely to ensure there was no other damage.

“Right now, there doesn’t appear to be any,” she said.

Lake

The Lake Wales Youth Chorale, under the direction of Mrs. Cathy Montero, Director, meets once a week at the Lake Wales Arts Center, 1099 SR60 E, Lake Wales, FL. Performances include winter and spring concerts and special concerts joining the Lake Wales Adult Chorale.

Auditions for the 2010-2011 school year will be held on Thursday, September 2nd from 6:00-8:00 pm and Saturday, September 4th from 10:00 am to 12:00 noon at the Lake Wales Arts Center, 1099 SR 60 E, Lake Wales. Students do not need to read music to audition and do not need to prepare a song of their own. The auditions will take about 10 minutes and will be given in order of arrival.

For more information, please call the Lake Wales Arts Council, Inc. at 863-676-8426 or email at info@lw-arts.org.



No one was stung, and a bee removal company was called in to deal with the swarm.

“Fortunately, we didn’t see them,” Nationals reliever Drew Storen said. “I’m obviously not a big fan of bees — brings back bad childhood memories. It would have been a bad distraction.”

Said Marlins left fielder Chris Coghlan, who spotted the swarm while he was stretching before the game: “There were a whole bunch of them. I didn’t see any during the game.”

At least for one night someone was there to see the Marlins play.

The confrontation near Cocoa started more than a decade ago and has led to violation notices, court-ordered cleanups and liens against the property.

Photo Gallery: Cocoa code complaint

Now, a trial is in the offing, maybe as soon as today – in connection to criminal charges filed by the state after Biel allegedly confronted code enforcement officers in February 2007 when they came to photograph and check on his property.

“I have never prosecuted a case like this before,” said Assistant State Attorney Rob Parker, a prosecutor for more than two decades and a division chief with the Brevard State Attorney’s office.

“There has been a history of filing and various actions. It goes back to the ’90s.”

It is one of the few code enforcement cases in the county that ballooned into criminal charges being filed.

Bobby Bowen, county code enforcement manager, declined to comment because he is a witness in the case. Calls to Biel, 55, were not returned, nor was a call to the Public Defender’s Office, which is representing him.

According to a letter Bowen wrote in 2007, Biel allegedly attempted to slap a camera from an officer’s hand and then tried to hit to hit another officer with a metal gate.

He faces third-degree felony charges of commercial dumping of more than 500 pounds and battery on a code enforcement officer. Both are punishable by up to five years in prison and a $5,000 fine.

The first code enforcement complaint against Biel was filed in June 1995, according to FLORIDA TODAY archives. In time, the county fined Biel more than $50,000 and put three liens on his property.

Other Lake Drive residents too have had problems with code enforcement over the years.

“It’s kind of the culture for that particular area,” Bowen said in an interview in 2006. “It’s the old broken-window theory, ‘If everybody else is doing it, why can’t I?’ ”

A letter Bowen sent to the state attorney’s office in 2007 about the Biel case said: “For more than 10 years the county has attempted to get the two property owners into compliance, without success. In 2003, the county entered Mr. Biel’s and (a co-owner’s) property at 1331 Lake Drive to clean the property under a court order.”
Brevard County calls the cars and other stuff parked and piled on Robert Biel’s Lake Drive property junk. Biel has maintained they’re his livelihood.

The confrontation near Cocoa started more than a decade ago and has led to violation notices, court-ordered cleanups and liens against the property.

Now, a trial is in the offing, maybe as soon as today – in connection to criminal charges filed by the state after Biel allegedly confronted code enforcement officers in February 2007 when they came to photograph and check on his property.

“I have never prosecuted a case like this before,” said Assistant State Attorney Rob Parker, a prosecutor for more than two decades and a division chief with the Brevard State Attorney’s office.

“There has been a history of filing and various actions. It goes back to the ’90s.”

It is one of the few code enforcement cases in the county that ballooned into criminal charges being filed.

Bobby Bowen, county code enforcement manager, declined to comment because he is a witness in the case. Calls to Biel, 55, were not returned, nor was a call to the Public Defender’s Office, which is representing him.

According to a letter Bowen wrote in 2007, Biel allegedly attempted to slap a camera from an officer’s hand and then tried to hit to hit another officer with a metal gate.

He faces third-degree felony charges of commercial dumping of more than 500 pounds and battery on a code enforcement officer. Both are punishable by up to five years in prison and a $5,000 fine.

The first code enforcement complaint against Biel was filed in June 1995, according to FLORIDA TODAY archives. In time, the county fined Biel more than $50,000 and put three liens on his property.

Other Lake Drive residents too have had problems with code enforcement over the years.

“It’s kind of the culture for that particular area,” Bowen said in an interview in 2006. “It’s the old broken-window theory, ‘If everybody else is doing it, why can’t I?’ ”

A letter Bowen sent to the state attorney’s office in 2007 about the Biel case said: “For more than 10 years the county has attempted to get the two property owners into compliance, without success. In 2003, the county entered Mr. Biel’s and (a co-owner’s) property at 1331 Lake Drive to clean the property under a court order.”

An inventory during the cleanup found 82 junk vehicles, debris and one pig. It cost the county $9,000, the letter said.

In 2006, another court-ordered cleanup of Biel’s property cost $10,000. Code enforcement officers, sheriff’s deputies and county employees were involved in the operation. Items removed during this clean up included a dilapidated mobile home without a permit, cargo trailers and vehicle engines, doors and tires.

A report documenting the cleanup said: “Argument over the validity of what is junk, what was allowed to be openly stored and what could be removed was constant and forceful.”

“Both Mr. Biel and (the co-owner) have been openly defiant in bringing their property, they jointly own, into compliance with Brevard County’s Code of Ordinance,” said the letter, asking that Biel be prosecuted.

Biel has told county officials that they “were removing his livelihood.” His third-acre property is a zoned for mixed-use commercial.

But county officials allege in their documents that Biel has run an unlicensed automotive repair business from the address. “A junkyard is not a permitted use on (that) zoned property,” said one of the reports.

Court records show Biel has filed for bankruptcy.

LeBron James’ controversial move from Cleveland to the sunnier shores of Miami is creating a cavalcade of unwanted press. And last week his karmic conundrum continued. This time, with a diamond twist.

An Ohio woman who paid $5 for a LeBron James pendant at a yard sale brought the bauble to the International Gemological Institute, where she discovered she had the real deal – a $10,000 gem with over 2 carats of round diamonds.

Thrilled at her good fortune, Vaneisha Robinson put the piece on ebay. And that’s when her luck ran out.

Hearing about the diamond drama, Maverick O. Carter, CEO of LeBron’s marketing company, claimed the necklace was stolen from him three years ago.

Robinson says she was contacted by Carter who was willing to make an offer, and that LeBron himself would be present at the sale. Instead, she told WEWS-TV, when she showed up Carter’s home, she was forced to surrender the piece.

“I was scared for my life.”

“They pretty much accused me, they threatened me,” Robinson said. “They told us that we weren’t going anywhere until they got that pendant.”

The police have determined that Robinson was in possession of stolen property, but it is still unknown if she was personally involved with the theft. In the meantime, LeBron James can count his money in his new beach house, and Ohio continues to be on the losing end of his good fortune.