| LIVING |
Mark Begelman
Oliver Bernstein
Carlos Betancourt
Beth Boone
Eileen Nexer Brown
Michael Carricarte Jr.
Adrian Castro
Carlos Cisneros
Billy Cypress
Roberto Del Cristo
John de Leon
David Lee Harden
John Henry
Leonie Hermantin
Michael Kenny
Stephen Leatherman
Alberto Milian
Samuel Morrison
Debbie Ohanian
R. Donahue Peebles
Alex Penelas
Jorge Perez
Audrey Peterman
Frank Peterman
Kike Posada
Craig Robins
Kitty Ryan
Cristina Saralegui
Debbie Wasserman Schultz
Mark Soyka
Gail Thompson
Andrew Tobias
Amy Carol Webb
Thomas Wenski
40 TO WATCH
We're not sure what it all means for the millennium, but our list of 40
South Floridians who will help lead the way into 2000 coincidentally
includes People Magazine's ``Sexiest Politician,'' ``Sexiest
Philanthropist,'' ``Sexiest Wrestler'' and ``Most Beautiful Artist.''
Maybe it means lots of sex and beauty in the next thousand years.
But that would just be a bonus. What the extraordinary 26 men and 14
women featured in this special issue of In South Florida promise is
progress -- economic, artistic and spiritual. Though most of them are
young -- and some of them aren't widely known -- they are 40 who are going
to make things happen, 40 whose time has come.
Mauricio Abaroa
The year 2000 will bring the first-ever Latin Grammys, organized by the
National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences to recognize excellence in
Latin music and broadcast it to millions around the world.
But the Latin Grammys might have never been, were it not for the
tenacity of a Mexican architect with a passion for music who felt he was
destined for Miami and the Grammys. ``I always thought this job couldn't
be for anyone else but me,'' says Mauricio Abaroa, senior vice
president/executive director of LARAS, the Latin Academy of Recording Arts
and Sciences.
A songwriter/composer (one of his songs will be on Oscar De La Hoya's
upcoming album) and former record executive who also managed superstar
Luis Miguel's career, Abaroa has embraced his role as ambassador of the
Miami-based LARAS, which he describes as a ``mini-musical United
Nations.''
As a child, he was part of La Familia Musical Abaroa, a musical group
that included his parents and five siblings. Five of the Abaroa children
developed careers related to music. No wonder Abaroa hopes, through LARAS,
to pave the long road for Latin music's development, one that eschews
shortcuts in favor of lasting excellence.
``Today's musical thermometer is set by Latin music. That's a privilege
and a great responsibility.''
Pamela Adams
In Broward County's predominantly white community power structure,
there is Pamela Adams -- bringing to the boardrooms the voice of blacks
and women.
As senior vice president for corporate development for HIP Health Plan
of Florida, Adams serves on a multitude of community-service boards -- for
Fort Lauderdale's Chamber of Commerce, the Broward Public Library
Foundation, United Way, the Florida Philharmonic, the Grand Opera -- you
name it, she's been on it.
``One of the things I realized,'' she says, ``I was the only black
woman. In all of these committees and organizations, there were no other
black women. Even in a community as diverse as South Florida, there was
nobody who looked like me.''
So this is the role she has chosen -- to break the color/gender
barrier. ``I have passion about the United Way, but the United Way needs
people of color who can get the message out that it is not just an old-boy
network. I want to make sure I'm part of the process of an equitable
distribution of dollars. If we sit back and don't participate it will be
an old-boy network. The decision-making elan needs to look like the people
who they are making decisions about.''
Marleine Bastien
``I think Miami is poised to be the most important city in the United
States, if we can get past the fragments and polarization,'' says Bastien,
40.
Bastien has been active since she came to Miami in the early 1980s,
starting with the Haitian Refugee Center, and is now one of the power
brokers of Little Haiti. When U.S. Rep. Carrie Meek wants to gauge the
feelings of Haitians in her district, she calls on Bastien. And when it
was time to organize a Miami-Dade delegation for the women's international
conference in China, it was Bastien who stepped up.
Her name comes up as a possible candidate for state representative.
Will she run? Her answer is just right, revealing without revealing.
``I think people in the community see me as someone active, somebody
who could represent them in Tallahassee,'' she says. ``I think it's good
to be recognized for your efforts.''
Mark Begelman
Watch MARS, The Musician's Planet, go dot-com in a big way, with an
``edutainment'' Web site called marsmusic.com. Watch us expand our
32-store chain of retail musical-instrument and recording-equipment
emporia by 12-15. Watch the foundation that my wife, Pam, and I, started,
support music education.
The guitar-playing Begelman, 52, works in jeans and deck shoes, like
the rest of the staff at MARS, an acronym for Music and Recording
Superstore. His windowless office, adjacent to the MARS store on Powerline
Road in Fort Lauderdale, is nothing special either, except for the
guitars. They once were played by the greats: B.B. King. The Rolling
Stones. Aerosmith's Joe Perry.
A huge portrait of Jimi Hendrix hovers over Begelman, who founded MARS
in 1996 after leaving Office Depot, as its president, with $250 million.
Begelman began playing in bands in the '60s. After drawing No. 1 in the
Vietnam-era draft lottery, he served in a domestic U.S. Army tank unit. He
launched the first office-products superstore in California, which merged
with Office Depot. Then Begelman returned to his first love: music.
Last year, MARS, which gave 500,000 music lessons, produced about $110
million in revenues.
Begelman wants to see MARS as a brand ``that sells more instruments
than anyone on the face of the Earth.''
Oliver Bernstein
As a senior at Sunset High last year, he led a protest of a plan to
turn the Homestead Air Reserve Base into a commercial airport. Concerned
about potential pollution of Biscayne Bay and the Everglades, he organized
the gathering of 6,000 protest postcards among Miami-Dade high school
students.
Then the fun began. ``We wanted to keep students excited, with a mix of
by-the-book activism and some crazier stuff,'' he says. So he and others
took their protest to the Miami-Dade government center, where they
``rushed the mayor's office.''
Mayor Alex Penelas had the good fortune to be away at a funeral. ``So
we kind of piled the postcards on an aide.'' Still, he adds, ``it was very
effective.'' (The students' anti-airport position was later backed by the
Third District Court of Appeals.) And Dartmouth, where he now goes,
``liked the way I could organize something like that.''
Here's what he thinks his generation can do: ``We're the ones who need
to change environmental policies. We are a generation of kids that is very
independent, technologically advanced, that does loads of work through
e-mail, but who can put it together in our heads. We'll make good
leaders.''
Carlos Betancourt
Artist Carlos Betancourt embodies the Miami experience. His Cuban
parents left the island in 1959, he was raised in Puerto Rico, and
remembers sleeping with eight family members in one room after coming to
Miami at 14. While attending the Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale, he
moved to South Beach in 1986, at 19, drawn like other artists by cheap
space and an instinct that something would happen.
``You knew something was coming,'' says Betancourt, 32. ``Someone once
defined art as being part of something that hasn't been created yet, and
that was the feeling on the Beach back then.'' He won a statewide
furniture design contest in the early '90s and used the prize money in
1992 to open Imperfect Utopia, his gallery/studio/apartment/hangout on
Lincoln Road.
Betancourt's paintings -- pop images of local personalities, or
collages of his lost Cuba -- always seemed to be part of magazine articles
about South Beach. His vision -- bright, energized, pop and sensual --
became part of the world's image of South Beach and of Miami. It didn't
hurt that Betancourt fit everyone's physical fantasy of how people in
South Beach looked; he has been in People Magazine's ``50 Most Beautiful
People'' issue.
Betancourt just received his first major grant, from the Miami Beach
Arts Council, to install a 300-foot temporary environmental piece on the
beach in front of the Bass Museum. He has a gallery, Galleria Casa Colon,
in Mexico and in Miami Beach, and should have his first solo show in New
York this year. ``For good or for bad Miami -- not in its politics but in
its people -- is a very democratic place. It's like a new experiment. The
people -- not the politicians -- are applying it.''
Beth Boone
Now 36, she has become one of a new generation of arts leaders in just
five years. She began as an actor and director in New York, then moved
into the administrative end of the arts at AT&T. Her 1994 visit to
Miami led to a fund-raising job at the Florida Grand Opera, and in 1996,
she moved over to Wolfson. Last year she became executive director of the
Miami Light Project, one of Miami-Dade's leading arts organizations.
Boone is focusing Miami Light on developing local artists and the arts
scene. She has upgraded the Here & Now Festival, commissioning local
performers and moving the Festival into their showcase Contemporary
Performance Series. And the Light Box, Miami Light's rehearsal/performance
studio in its new home at 30th Street and Biscayne Boulevard, has become a
busy center.
Developing local artists and an urban community that supports them
around Biscayne Boulevard -- a real urban arts scene -- are at the heart
of what Boone hopes to accomplish in the next decade.
``For me it's Biscayne Boulevard, I think it's gonna hit really big.
I'm interested in developing an urban arts neighborhood, where artists
come and work and exchange and drink coffee and do shows.''
Eileen Nexer Brown
After Eileen Nexer Brown was divorced from her first husband 25 years
ago, she couldn't get a credit card in her own name.
``That really opened up my eyes,'' she said.
And then she met Marilynn Gladstone, an activist who had just founded
the Women's Fund, a grant-making organization that offers help to
grass-roots groups assisting needy women and adolescent girls. ``I had
found my calling,'' Brown recalls.
Gladstone hired Brown as a part-time executive director. Her staff was
a cadre of volunteers, and her ``office'' was three boxes in Gladstone's
house. Under Brown, the Women's Fund expanded, giving money to a variety
of programs, mentoring women and sponsoring the popular She-ro essay
contest among girls.
Now Brown is leaving the Women's Fund to be a consultant for nonprofits
on girls' and women's issues while also focusing on girls in the juvenile
justice system.
``There were more than 3,800 girls arrested in Dade last year,'' she
says, ``and there are only 11 residential beds. We have to do something to
stop losing them.''
Michael Carricarte Jr.
Touched by the plight of a dying inner-city Catholic school, Michael
Carricarte Jr. made the revival of Overtown's St. Francis Xavier School
his personal project in 1992. The Miami native convinced Republic National
Bank to loan him $250,000. But he wasn't content to play Mr. Moneybags. He
volunteered, taught a class, got to know the kids.
Then in 1998, at age 30, he started his own voucher program, Miami
Inner City Angels -- getting a jump on Gov. Jeb Bush and others giving the
idea lip service at the time. A huge chunk of his own cash, along with
donations, provided private-school scholarships of $1,000 to 100 Overtown
children. National benefactors pitched in another $2.5 million. Today,
Carricarte runs a program that sends 402 needy children to 91 private
schools.
Despite the politics of vouchers, he swears there's no future in public
office. Makes things ``too fuzzy.'' Carricarte is single and president of
the insurance company his father started, Amedex Insurance Group.
Oh, and did we mention that People magazine dubbed him the Sexiest
Philanthropist Alive in 1999?
Adrian Castro
An unlikely literary figure, Castro was a hip-hop kid until he
discovered Bertrand Russell and Sartre. He wrote his first poem when was
he was 19, and soon was reading at the Cameo Poetry Nights on South Beach.
Castro wants to mythologize Miami to itself.
``This place is a crossroads, not only geographically but spiritually,
politically and culturally,'' Castro says. ``I see myself as a witness and
a documenter of that whole process that we call immigration,
acculturation, mixes of people and miscegenation.''
Fittingly, Castro is also a babalawo, a high priest of the Afro-Cuban
religion of Santeria, in which he performs rituals of divination and
interpretation.
``Arthur Rimbaud said the very fact that the poet writes something down
changes reality. It's the poet as shaman -- and what are babalawos but
shamans? By writing about something, documenting something, witnessing
something, you change it forever, because you change people's
understanding.''
Carlos Cisneros
Carlos Cisneros could easily have put his cable television company in
New York or Caracas, the city where he was raised and the home base for
his family's media empire. He also could have joined any of the
enterprises in the Cisneros Group of Companies, one of the most powerful
in Latin America, which owns Venevision, a Venezuelan TV network that is
one of the most important producers of telenovelas; and one-quarter of
Univision, the dominant U.S. Spanish-language network.
Instead, Carlos Cisneros opted to form his own company, Cisneros
Television Group, within the family empire, and to put it in South Beach.
Launched in 1995, CTG now includes 12 cable channels and the Spanish
Internet portal El Sitio.com (http://www.elsitio.com/). It has become
one of the most visible players in the boom in Latin American
entertainment and media in South Florida.
``I don't think the explosion is just about TV in Latin America, it's
about Spanish-language entertainment,'' says Cisneros, 33. He plans to
feed that explosion. ``As far as Cisneros Television Group goes, I'm going
to spend 2000 using the various means at our disposal -- satellite,
Internet access, digital technology -- to create innovative programming
for the broadest audience we can reach.''
He is just as confident about the growth of his chosen city, where he
is on the board of the Miami Art Museum and involved in charities like
last November's Collection Rouge: Dining by Design, which benefited local
AIDS organizations. ``I think Miami is going to grow well beyond its
identity as the nexus of the Latin American entertainment community, and
start servicing the global marketplace. I'm hopeful that you'll see
resources plowed back into the community -- ideally including premiere
institutions like Miami Art Museum, Miami Light Project and the Performing
Arts Center.''
Billy Cypress
The Miccosukees now hold the hottest gambling ticket in South Florida
with their new $55 million resort hotel and gaming mecca on the edge of
the Everglades.
``We finally got people's attention about the Everglades,'' says
Cypress, 49, the tribe's 15-year chairman. ``We've started getting our
share of the tourist trade from the Beach and we're improving living
standards in our own community. We're proving we can handle our own
affairs as we always have.''
The Indian reservation, which used to be predominantly trailers and
chickees, has turned into a small neighborhood of about 100 modern-looking
homes. The chickees are still there, some now used as garages for BMWs and
Volkswagen Beetles.
Within the next two years, Cypress says, he wants to expand the resort
and add shopping and more entertainment, but the tribe will remain intact.
``In 10 years we will be in the same place, but we will have a little
bit more. We can do this and still maintain our heritage and practice
it,'' Cypress says.
Roberto Del Cristo
You're going to be hearing more about Dr. Roberto Del Cristo. He'd
rather you didn't.
Del Cristo is an emergency physician attached to Metro-Dade's Urban
Search and Rescue Team, whose specialty is disasters -- those of biblical
proportions.
Since 1985, when they helped dig out survivors of the Mexico City
earthquake, the team's 230 specially trained firefighters, paramedics and
dogs have assisted in 25 missions, including the Oklahoma City bombing in
1995, and earthquakes this year in Colombia and Turkey.
``Our future is very complicated,'' says Del Cristo. ``The larger the
world's population, the more people are going to be living in
disaster-prone areas. Also, terrorism is becoming only more common. We're
going to be even busier.
``As for me, I appreciate life a lot more. I remember digging out a
family in Colombia -- the father had died embracing his wife and two kids.
When I got back to Miami, I headed straight for my four girls.''
John de Leon
It wasn't exactly pleasant outside the Miami Arena in October, when
4,000 protesters dressed down 2,000 concert-goers hoping to see Cuban
dance band Los Van Van. But this was relative calm compared to protests in
the past against musicians linked to Castro's regime. And debate over the
airwaves prior to the show demonstrated a maturity new to Cuban radio. In
the middle of it all was John de Leon, a Cuban American who has been
preaching the merits of agreeing to disagree since he became president of
the American Civil Liberties Union of Greater Miami in 1998.
An assistant public defender by day, de Leon and his fellow
card-carrying members defended both the protesters' and the band's rights
to be there. The same lesson in Constitutional dichotomy came earlier this
year, when the chapter protested Miami-Dade's brief ban on sales of a Cuba
travel issue of Cigar Aficionado magazine, then turned around and howled
about attempts to squelch anti-Castro demonstrators at the game between
the Baltimore Orioles and the Cuban national baseball team.
De Leon, 37 and single, also is a primary mover with the new Urban
Environment League, which is fighting for more public input in political
decisions like transportation taxes, where to put sports arenas and what
to do with that ancient piece of history called the Miami Circle.
``There are major works projects being foisted on people, monumental
decisions stealthily imposed,'' he says, with an optimism and
determination that speaks of change.
Laura DePasquale
When Laura DePasquale meets inner-city kids, she gives them knives,
saws and razor blades. Tools, the Miami artist and community activist
believes, to help their souls survive.
Their art is shocking: Depictions of houses sprayed with gunfire.
Pictures of sad, abused women.
``It's big, frightenting art that says something,'' DePasquale says.
``I want it in the malls, in the grocery stores, in places where people go
and are least expecting to see something so powerful.''.
DePasquale, 37, grew up ``upper middle class'' but is drawn to children
of the underclass. (One young protege had a parent on Death Row.) She
works at Norman's restaurant in Coral Gables as a sommelier -- a
professional wine taster -- in charge of the wine list. Yet in a life she
describes as ``bizarrely split,'' she has been working with local and
federal grants to make art a part of young people's lives in places ``no
one else wants to go.''
Rosie Gordon-Wallace
Her gallery openings are more like cross-cultural family reunions,
replete with jerk chicken and lots of drinking and dancing. A benefactor
without big dollars, she has represented 18 artists since 1997, when she
opened Diaspora Vibe, a name that represents both the despair of
displacement and the steamy grooves of the islands.
And she's taking it beyond the walls of the Bakehouse, at 561 NW 32nd
St., with a show in Paris in March for three of her artists.
``My goal is to answer the question, `Where can I find Caribbean art?'
I want to be a name that pops up when they come to Miami to find art.''
David Lee Harden
In the halls of South Miami High, where his introverted eccentric ways
first alienated, then endeared him to classmates, David Lee Harden was so
into numbers that teachers had to create a math course just for him. He
sought out math profs at the University of Miami, where he spent
afternoons discussing linear algebra.
When he applied for the prestigious Intel Science Talent Search as a
senior last year, the theory he submitted was so complex, it baffled one
of Miami-Dade Public Schools' top science supervisors.
The shy 17-year-old was the only Florida student named as a finalist in
the search, among 40 nationwide. He was later chosen as an alternate for
the Top 10. Now, he sits up nights over equations as a freshman at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Harden is an aspiring math professor and researcher.
John Henry
Don't count John Henry out.
He's a college dropout who has amassed a fortune in commodities-futures
-- a witchcraft that turns millionaires into paupers in an afternoon.
So if John Henry says he's going to find a way to build a $400 million
baseball stadium for the woeful Marlins against all odds, then there is a
real chance we could all find ourselves in bleacher seats at Bicentennial
Park or downtown Fort Lauderdale watching home runs sail into Biscayne Bay
or the New River in the next decade or two.
``We are the next millennium's gateway to the Americas,'' he declares,
``and baseball is the next millennium's gateway to the hearts and minds of
our children's summers and the joy of sharing those evenings with them.''
Leonie Hermantin
``When you work that up close, all of a sudden you see a community's
needs in a compelling and different way,'' says Hermantin, 41, who heads
the Haitian American Community Foundation. ``When my kids would talk about
things like having a computer, the other children looked at them as if
they were rich. It put into perspective what kind of help I needed to
give.''
She's been helping ever since. To bring Haitians into the larger
culture. To make them feel like they belong.
As executive director of the Foundation, Hermantin has helped to place
6,000 immigrant families, assist the elderly, mentor young girls, offer
neighborhood services.
Hermantin's larger mission is even more ambitious: to change the image
of Haitians in South Florida. ``I want our community to be mainstreamed
and for our voices to be heard.''
Michael Kenny
If one day, tourists connect the words ``beach and Beethoven'' even a
tenth as much as they do ``beach and Budweiser,'' Michael Kenny will know
that he has changed Fort Lauderdale forever.
Which has been his mission since conceiving ``Beethoven on the Beach,''
the surprise hit in July for several summers now at the Broward Center for
the Performing Arts. That success launched his role as cultural guru for
the Greater Fort Lauderdale Convention & Visitors Bureau.
``As long as it snows in February, people are going to go to the beach,
but we want to help people decide to come here instead of another
sun-and-sand destination with nothing else to do,'' says Kenny. ``We want
to give them other things to do -- like go to the museum, or a
philharmonic performance.
``But we'll never be a stodgy, formal community,'' he adds. ``Beethoven
on the Beach is successful because the musicians are in T-shirts. We have
to be playful.''
Is this playful enough? Coming in September 2001: a partially submerged
Florida Philharmonic concert in which the musicians will perform above the
water surface on a barge and below in mini-submarines.
Stephen Leatherman
Dr. Stephen Leatherman, widely known as ``Dr. Beach'' for his ratings
of the best beaches in America (he gives South Beach an ``F''), came
aboard two years ago as director of Florida International University's
International Hurricane Center.
Just in time. ``That was the El Niņo year,'' he says. ``Since then,
we've had two big hurricane summers, and another one is likely next year.
It looks like we're in a 20-to-30-year cycle of big Atlantic hurricanes.
They'll just keep coming.''
He has a new bag of tricks that may help. One is a proposed new
hurricane scale that rates storms based on rainfall and flood potential,
rather than just wind strength, which would have been useful when
minimally windy but rain-laden Hurricane Irene struck this year. Another
is a million-dollar airborne laser mapping system for flood-prone areas so
accurate it pinpoints the crown of a roadway.
Only thing Dr. Beach can't do is make the hurricanes go someplace else.
Nor can he reverse global warming and rising sea levels. So his best
advice for the next 20 years is ``Hold on to your hats!''
Alberto Milian
He can't imagine anyone more courageous than his father, radio
broadcaster Emilio Milian, who lost his legs to a car bomb in 1976, after
condemning violence by anti-Castro extremists in Miami.
Alberto, 39, is a lifelong boxing devotee who served with the Army
Reserve in Panama and the Gulf War, where he earned a Bronze Star. But his
combative tendencies have gotten him in trouble, more than once.
In early November, a Broward judge found Milian guilty of contempt in a
courthouse shoving match with a defense attorney last August. Now he's
waiting out a 10-week suspension.
Milian, who was on special assignment to a Miami-Dade corruption
investigation from 1996 to 1998, says that eventually, he would like to
become ``an activist contributing with my knowledge and conviction to
having better government.''
Samuel Morrison
Morrison, 62, director of the Broward County library system since 1990,
remains optimistic. ``We'll work things out,'' he says.
In 1996, Morrison was feted by the American Library Association for
running the best library operation in the nation. The award was based
mostly on partnerships the library had developed with Florida Atlantic
University and Broward Community College, the public school system and
community-based organizations. It also stemmed from his staff of 600
cultivating 800,000 of Broward's 1.3 million residents as library
card-holders.
Morrison says he became a bookworm because he was too slight to excel
in athletics. He is one of only a handful of library directors in the
nation who are black.
Debbie Ohanian
The woman who shook Miami with the concert by Cuban band Los Van Van,
Debbie Ohanian has always had a keen sense of what makes this city move. A
descendant of Armenians, Ohanian learned salsa dancing and Spanish from
Puerto Rican girlfriends in Boston. She came to Miami after the blizzard
of 1978, and after ``disco dancing the nights away in Hialeah,'' she moved
to South Beach in 1985. She was an early pillar of the Sobe scene, first
with Meet Me In Miami, her sexy clubwear store, and then with the drag
queen extravaganzas at her restaurant Starfish.
Now Ohanian, 42, is poised to be a player in the explosion of Latin
culture and music in the United States, particularly Cuban music. Her
Friday salsa nights have already been featured in a host of national
magazines and TV shows, and this year should see the launch of Salsa,
Mambo, Cha-Cha-Cha, a Latin Riverdance-style dance show she conceived and
is working on with Broadway producer Richard Jay Alexander.
When she produced the Oct. 9 Los Van Van concert at the Miami Arena,
she says, she had no idea it would split the city with debates about
tolerance and Cuban identity. Unfazed, Ohanian plans to keep presenting
Cuban bands here, and is working to set up a network of clubs in other
cities that want to present Cuban musicians. ``Life hands you roles,''
Ohanian says. ``As many people as don't want Cuban music here, there are
people who do. Many are living in fear, but time changes things.''
R. Donahue Peebles
A Washington native who in his 20s was part of former Mayor Marion
Barry's inner circle, Peebles now lives in Coconut Grove and focuses much
of his energy on Miami Beach. His first Beach project is developing the
422-room Royal Palm Crowne Plaza Hotel scheduled to open in June, a
project that was part of the settlement that ended a three-year
African-American boycott of Miami Beach.
``The hospitality industry has a glass ceiling for minorities and
women,'' says Peebles, 39. ``I'm working to change that.''
And he just might.
His latest project is refurbishing Miami Beach's exclusive Bath Club as
a $122 million resort. In 1996, Peebles became the club's first
African-American member.
Alex Penelas
Just shy of 38, Miami-Dade's mayor is probably the most powerful
politician in Florida after Gov. Jeb Bush. And ``the nation's sexiest
politician,'' according to People magazine.
He's never lost an election, starting with a seat on the Hialeah City
Council at age 25. He's touted as a possible candidate for U.S. Sen. Bob
Graham's seat one day, or a running mate for Al Gore.
Does he want to be president?
``I don't know. I'm concentrating on doing a good job as mayor.''
His friends think he wants to be president. ``I think it's been
instilled in him by his parents,'' says political PR man Ric Katz.
In a 1996 interview, his father, Luis Penelas, said: ``I'm sure in
eight years, he'll run for governor, and then the next step will be
Washington and the president -- and why not?''
So, again, does he want to be president?
``It's not something I give a lot of thought to.''
Even with his friends: ``His pet phrase is, `One step at a
time,' '' Katz says. ``He says, `If you mess up here, you don't get
any further.' ''
Jorge Perez
Jorge Perez is an urban kind of guy. Snubs the suburbs. Eschews
ticky-tacky. Loves having art, shopping and good restaurants by his
doorstep. Perez holds such scorn for sprawl that he jokes about boycotting
Broward's hockey palace on the Everglades' edge, except for a can't-miss
event like a Celine Dion concert.
So instead of adding to the sprawl like he used to, the Coconut Grove
resident turned his company, The Related Companies of Florida, into the
leading ``urban infill'' developer of high-rise eastern development in
South Florida.
His projects include the eight-story Gables Grand apartment tower in
Coral Gables, Miami's Yacht Club of Brickell, the orange 42-story
Portofino condo in South Beach, and CityPlace, the 77-acre reconstruction
of West Palm Beach's downtown. And he has his sights set on Fort
Lauderdale's Las Olas.
``We still do about 2,000 units a year of suburban development, but
looking at what we want to be known by, we have tried to concentrate our
resources on cities, on existing infrastructure.
``We're finding that people are reacting positively to urban living,
when they can feel safe, and walk, and go to the neighborhood bar and have
a drink with friends, and go to a restaurant, and walk home.''
Perez walks the walk. He walks to breakfast every morning in Coconut
Grove.
Frank Frank and Audrey Peterman used to dream about opening a guest house in
Belize. Then they realized that guests probably would ask questions about
the United States that they couldn't answer.
So in 1995, the Plantation couple set off on a cross-country journey in
their 1991 pickup, camping in 15 national parks in 40 states.
They seldom saw another black face in a park, which astounded and
dismayed them.
Returning to South Florida -- where Frank, 62, grew up amid the tomato
fields of Dania -- they founded Earthwise Productions, and began
publishing a newsletter called Pickup & Go!
A rarity in the mostly white environmental movement, the Petermans have
gotten funding from the National Audubon Society's Florida office and the
South Florida Water Management District to educate minorities about
America's natural wonders, and to understand how Everglades restoration
relates directly to their urban neighborhoods, through the Eastward Ho!
initiative.
``Eastward Ho! will completely redraw the communities in the urban
core,'' as continued building into the Everglades ``becomes unfeasible,''
says Audrey Peterman, 48. ``The people with the least political power will
find themselves occupying the most valuable land in the region.''
Kike Posada
Kike Posada just wanted to make sure different music, good music, found
a place in Miami. He never imagined it would be this hard.
An advocate of rock en espaņol and other Latin alternative music,
Posada decided to take matters into his own hands when he arrived here
from Colombia in 1992 and realized not a single radio station played Latin
rock. Posada created his own show, and he's been shuttling from station to
station ever since.
``Latin rock was the tip of the iceberg,'' says Posada, 31. ``I decided
to fight for it, but there was much more. With Latin rock we opened doors
for all the other things that came behind.''
Those things include alternative music and other Latin music that
departs from the traditional standard set by Miami radio.
Posada's quest has been hard. To date, only university stations have
Latin rock shows. His show, subject to the whims of station managers,
never has a home for long. But his other venture is thriving. Boom!
Magazine, a monthly national publication dedicated mostly to Latin rock
and alternative music, has 25,000 subscribers and is growing.
``I want to contribute to giving [these musical styles] a bigger
presence in television, press and radio,'' he says. ``Maybe we got here
too soon, but we see that this path is more visible, more clear.''
Craig Robins
As president of Miami Beach's Dacra Development Corp., Craig Robins is
a dentist of urban restoration. Since the 1980s, Robins has been drilling
and polishing collections of decaying buildings in under-appreciated
neighborhoods.
Robins, a Miami Beach native, was one of the major players in the
revitalization of South Beach, and now he's working on Miami's funky,
up-and-coming Design District.
His latest project is Aqua, a Georgetown-like residential development
on Miami Beach's Allison Island, now occupied by defunct St. Francis
Hospital. It will have a ``village-like'' atmosphere with town houses and
low-rise apartments.
``We think people are more important than cars,'' says, Robins, 36.
``We design neighborhoods around people.''
The Rock
Who could argue? TV commercials and guest spots, a TV Guide cover, book
deals, autograph signings, T-shirts, sunglasses, music, etc. -- The Rock
is the People's Champ.
The Rock appeared on That 70s Show and starred in a Chef Boy-ar-dee
commercial saying, ``Don't be a jabroni. Eat your macaroni.'' People
magazine named him Sexiest Wrestler.
It wouldn't surprise anyone if he decided to aim for another title --
Sexiest Wrestler/Politician. The former University of Miami defensive
lineman is moving to Davie, where the mayor happens to be wrestler Dirty
Harry Venis.
The Rock declares: ``When I finally move to Davie and after it's all
said and done . . . all the dust has settled . . . all
the smoke has cleared . . . the millions and the millions of The
Rock's fans are through chanting his name -- when and if it's right -- The
Rock would run for Mayor of Davie and unseat that jabroni -- what's his
name -- Harry Venis, at the snap of his fingers.''
Kitty Ryan
Leave it to Ryan, 50, whose original jazz club turned Fort Lauderdale's
Las Olas Boulevard into an all-night party, to see a future brighter than
a polished sax.
Her current and future gig: turning downtown Hollywood into a
Destination.
``When I looked at Hollywood Boulevard five years ago, I saw a Sleeping
Beauty ready to be kissed,'' says Ryan.
Nearly two years ago, Ryan opened her second club, O'Hara's Jazz Cafe
and Swing Street Bistro, in a long-vacant Woolworth's on Hollywood
Boulevard. Other businesses -- art galleries, funky restaurants --
followed. Ryan wants to keep the momentum going by opening the cafe's
second story next year.
A decade ago, when she opened O'Hara's Pub on Las Olas, she helped wait
tables. As the divorced mother of one, Bridget, now 17, ``I had to make it
work.'' And she did.
Cristina Saralegui
She forged a new language for the Spanish-speaking world when she
started her Univision talk show in 1989. Suddenly, Latin audiences from
Miami to Mexico City were getting in touch with same-sex marriages,
incest, transsexuals -- even alien abductions.
Along the way, Cristina Saralegui emerged as a powerhouse in Latin
entertainment. El Show de Cristina continues to be the top-ranked talk
show in the market.
Now she's branching out. This year, she launched the first new show by
her own production company, Cristina Saralegui Enterprises. Univision's A
Que No Te Atrevez (You Wouldn't Dare) which gets people to do wild things
for cash, already is a ratings winner. Next year, the company launches
Soņado Con Tigo, (Dreaming of You), which grants the wishes of viewers.
Saralegui, 51, is building studios near Univision to house those shows
and others she plans. She's long been called the Latin Oprah.
``Miami is without a doubt the capital for Spanish-language
entertainment, and that's only growing. And we're attracting more talent
to the city. It's an exciting time.''
Debbie Debbie Wasserman Schultz has her hands full. The state rep from Weston
is on her office floor, cooing at her 7-month-old daughter, Rebecca.
In between coos, Wasserman Schultz ticks off a list of things she wants
to accomplish: Like adding breathing room to South Florida's packed
classrooms. And providing health insurance for the two million Floridians
who have none.
Ambitious goals. But vintage Wasserman Schultz.
In 1992, at 26, she became the youngest woman ever elected to the
Florida Legislature, and she has won three re-elections since. Today she's
running for a state Senate seat and expects to run for Congress one day.
At 33, Wasserman Schultz is now known for her passion as much as her
youth. In the poker-faced world of political deal-making, she has cried
real tears of disappointment when a cherished bill didn't pass.
The mother of two -- Rebecca has a twin, Jake -- she jokes about never
doing anything halfway. In all things, she plays to win.
Mark Soyka
That was the year he opened News Cafe on Ocean and Eighth Street. At
first, he saw it as a simple ice cream and cappuccino place.
``I didn't see the grand News Cafe that it is today. But I had faith in
myself and I had faith in the district.''
Soyka, 55, got in on Lincoln Road early, too, buying the Van Dyke in
1992, when the Road was a haven for starving artists.
Now Soyka's knack for divining the future has everybody paying
attention to the restaurant he opened in May and named after himself at
Miami's Biscayne Boulevard and 57th Street.
With gentrification in Buena Vista, Morningside, Belle Meade and Miami
Shores, a recharged Biscayne Boulevard seems around the corner.
Soyka has already drawn a host of new tenants to the shopping center
beside his new restaurant. Expected soon: an art house movie theater, a
gym, a gallery and a sushi restaurant.
``Miami is a great city,'' says Soyka. ``Basically what it needs is
better government to understand how to take it into the next millennium.''
Gail Thompson
Brooklyn-born Gail Thompson, 44, moved to Miami this summer to take
charge of getting Miami-Dade's planned $168 million performing arts center
off the ground. The new project director was fresh from the $180 million
New Jersey Performing Arts Center in Newark, where she was vice president
of design and construction.
``I see Miami as a microcosm of what the country will look like in the
next century,'' Thompson said. ``There's a tremendous opportunity here to
be the standard-bearer of how diversity can work.''
The arts complex will be the third largest in the nation and the first
to open in the new millennium. Thompson sees it as a potential catalyst
for extraordinary development on Biscayne Boulevard .
``In New Jersey, we had a highly developed system of showing how the
arts could be used to bring diverse people together,'' she said. ``In
Miami, our biggest challenge is to bring attention to what this center can
do for the area.''
Andrew Tobias
Really.
``I have to help raise $150 million between now and the election or
some number like that,'' says Miami's irrepressible author/activist, who
these days is treasurer of the Democratic National Committee. ``That's an
awful lot of phone calls. I'm flinging off in six directions at once.''
Tobias' other phone rings. It's 10:45 p.m. No, no, he assures the
caller, it's not too late. Minutes later, he's back, a bit breathless.
Tobias, 52, is a Harvard man who has written such best-sellers as The
Only Investment Guide You'll Ever Need and My Vast Fortune. But he's also
famous for writing The Best Little Boy in the World Grows Up, the tale of
his coming out as a gay man. Best Little Boy was a sequel to a gay cult
classic he wrote in 1973 under the pseudonym John Reid: The Best Little
Boy in the World.
Wait. His other phone is ringing. And he has 100 e-mails waiting.
The people he admires the most, he says, are those who focus on one
thing at a time.
Amy Carol Webb
``It wouldn't be quiet. It made me get up and do it again. It leads
me,'' says Webb, 43, folk/pop's leading voice in South Florida, a
crystalline singer of smart songs like I Come From Women. She sees a
higher role for herself as the next millennium dawns.
``I envision taking my music anywhere in the world where empowerment
and healing are needful. This is not so esoteric as it might sound.
Somewhere in the room, the house or the hall is a heart that needs the
comfort or the courage the music divines.''
Webb: ``I am wildly successful when a young fan e-mails me she's
promised herself to practice her guitar. And when a 3-year-old boy stands
in front of the South Florida Folk Festival stage and sings I Come From
Women at the top of his lungs. And when a middle-aged man stops me to say
he went to the lobby at intermission to call his father for the first time
in years after Daddy, Don't Let Go.''
Thomas Wenski
Auxiliary Bishop Thomas Wenski, champion of the underdog, is a
nationally knownadvocate for immigrants and the poor. He is positioned to
be a leader in the Catholic Church for decades.
As a former parish priest in the Archdiocese of Miami, one of the most
diverse flocks in American Catholicism, Wenski earned respect with his
quick wit, his mastery of theology and desire to share the gospel. He can
celebrate Mass or tell a joke in English, Spanish, Creole, Italian and
Polish.
In 2000, Wenski will help Archbishop John C. Favalora guide South
Florida's 1.3 million Catholics through the Jubilee celebration, a time
the church will aggressively encourage wayward souls to return to the
fold.
``The great hope of the millennium celebration is to focus on
evangelism and reconciliation,'' Wenski said.
The son of a Polish Lake Worth house-painter, Wenski was the first
Florida native to become a Roman Catholic bishop in the state. Ordained in
1997 at age 46, he was the third youngest bishop in the nation.
An outspoken activist for immigrants, Wenski delivered food to Cubans
left homeless by Hurricane Lili in 1996, despite some Miami exiles who
opposed aid while Castro was in power. During a hunger strike at Krome
Detention Center, Wenski offered Mass for Haitians and was able to quiet
disturbances with prayer.
Wenski now runs the multimillion-dollar service arm of the church,
Catholic Charities. ``Even as we speak,'' Wenski says, ``we have to hear
what we are preaching and apply it to ourselves.''
Mauricio Abaroa
Pamela Adams
and Audrey Peterman
Wasserman Schultz
|
Copyright 1999 Miami Herald