The list of those who signed their favorite childhood books and shipped then to Stuart for a charity auction reads like a pop culture Top 100: Poet Maya Angelou; The Apprentice’s Donald Trump; golfer Tiger Woods; former First Lady Barbara Bush; her son, former Gov. Jeb Bush; chimp lover Jane Goodall; former Miami Heat star Shaquille O’Neal; Pres. Barack Obama; Nike’s Phil Knight; Hollywood stars Sean Connery, Steve Martin and Robert Wagner; TV news readers Katie Couric and Brian Williams; Palm Beach musician Jimmy Buffett; and Playboy founder Hugh Hefner, among others.

In all, a total 60 A-listers contributed. It took time, nearly two years, said organizer Karla Preissman. The first to respond to her requests was Jeb Bush, who shipped her The Travels of Babar. The last? The prez. Obama rush-mailed a pop up book of the White House two weeks ago.

What charity will benefit? For more, and the pictures of Thursday night’s preview of the auction at the Elliott, please click here.

FORT PIERCE — Just minutes before Circuit Judge Robert Belanger began Andrew Michael Gosciminski’s sentencing hearing Friday, six women walked into the courtroom and sat together.

Since September, the former strangers have endured a grueling jury selection process, listened to gory details about the 2002 murder of Joan Loughman and cried along with Loughman’s family in court as they described their heartache.

They became part of the jury that recommended last month that Gosciminski die for the crime. And on Friday, they became part of the audience that watched Belanger follow their recommendation and sentence Gosciminski to Death Row for the killing — for the second time.

“I’ve never had this happen before,” Assistant State Attorney Lynn Park said of the jurors’ presence. “Three others said they wanted to come but couldn’t make it.”

Belanger said testimony about Gosciminski’s military service and mental health problems failed to outweigh the cruelty and cold planning that justified a death sentence.

Gosciminski, who won a new trial last year after the Florida Supreme Court overturned his original death sentence, never looked at the jurors during the short hearing.
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Kobie Orande Gary, a son of prominent Stuart attorney Willie Gary, is one of three men indicted Thursday on federal charges of maintaining a grow house where authorities say they found 213 marijuana plants.

The U.S. District Court grand jury in Fort Pierce indicted Kobie Gary, 30, of Jensen Beach; Stephen Shepherd, 33, a tenant at the $125,030 home in the 7200 block of Mulberry Drive in Hobe Sound that was the alleged grow house; and Scott Daniel Gibson of Stuart. Read the rest of this entry »

ST. LUCIE COUNTY — St. Lucie County Health Department’s second vaccination station is Saturday from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. (or until vaccine supplies are exhausted) at the St. Lucie County Logistics Center, 3855 S. U.S. 1 in Fort Pierce.

A third vaccination station will be Nov. 21 at the same location and time. Read the rest of this entry »

VERO BEACH — A high-level financial struggle over the troubled Vero Fashion Outlets now may reach into an owner’s family trust, court records show.

In early October the outdoor mall filed for bankruptcy in federal court, a move that halted a foreclosure lawsuit filed by the mall’s creditor, LNV Corp. of Nevada, in Indian River Circuit Court. LNV Corp.’s attorney Kenneth Curtin contends the mall defaulted on a $32 million loan for purchase of the 329,000-square-foot mall in 2007. Read the rest of this entry »

FORT PIERCE — One person received minor injuries and two others were unharmed after a twin-engine airplane crashed after take-off at the St. Lucie County International Airport Thursday afternoon, authorities said.

About 3:35 p.m., the Albatross seaplane blew its left motor just after take off and crashed in a wooded area, according to a St. Lucie County Sheriff’s Office news release and Federal Aviation Administration spokeswoman Kathleen Bergen.
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If St. Lucie County school board members next week approve Wendy Portillo’s return to the classroom, she’ll likely be teaching students twice as old as the kindergartners she led last year to vote a 5-year-old out of their classroom.

School board officials had suspended Portillo and stripped her of her tenure for the May 2008 incident, in which she asked Alex Barton’s classmates at Morningside Elementary to vote on whether he should stay in class after he’d been disruptive.

Alex was subsequently diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome, a form of autism. His mother, Melissa Barton, sued the school board and Portillo in August, saying the “Survivor-style” vote-out caused Alex irreparable psychological harm.

By then, school officials had restored Portillo’s tenure and said she could return to teaching as soon as mid-November.

Portillo’s reinstatement is on the agenda for Tuesday’s school board meeting, joined with several other personnel matters.

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MARTIN COUNTY — Joan Bausch stood in the pavilion on Bathtub Reef Beach this week and discussed the future of the eroded beach. The Sewall’s Point resident values the natural beauty of the mangroves and the worm rock reef, and she wants to protect the popular beach from harm.

“My preference would be to let this beach heal and to not allow too many people,” Bausch said Monday. Read the rest of this entry »

PORT ST. LUCIE — A 36-year-old woman was arrested Wednesday after selling an informant nearly 160 oxycodone pills, according to an affidavit released Thursday.

Gina M. Sanchez, of the 100 block of Everglades Boulevard in Stuart, met the informant about 4:30 p.m. Wednesday in the 200 block of Southwest Port St. Lucie Boulevard.

The informant, who met earlier with a police investigator, had been given $1,020 and had been followed to the scene by members of the police department’s Special Investigations Unit.

The informant got into Sanchez’s vehicle, and Sanchez exchanged 157 oxycodone pills for the money.

Police arrested Sanchez on a felony trafficking in oxycodone charge and took her to jail.

Will Greenlee, TCPalm.com

PORT ST. LUCIE — A Floresta Elementary kindergarten teacher was removed from classroom duties Wednesday pending investigation of an incident in which she is accused of asking a 6-year-old girl to clean up another student’s urine and then rewarding the girl with play money.

Port St. Lucie police were called to the school Wednesday, two days after the alleged incident happened, when the 6-year-old’s mother came to the school “very upset,” according to the police report.

School Principal Harriett McGriff told police she spoke with kindergarten teacher Martha Ensley and that Ensley “admitted to having (the student) clean the urine and admitted giving her ‘dolphin dollars’ afterward,” the report states.

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