CELEBRITY SLANG | RPATZ | TAMPA’S HOMELESS
THE HUFFINGTON POST MAGAZINE
AUGUST 19, 2012
08.19.12 #10 CONTENTS
Enter POINTERS: Blood-Red Lake, Travolta Drama, Pregnant Man Returns MOVING IMAGE DATA: Arming a Shooter Q&A: Bill McKibben
Voices KATIE RADEMACHER: Whose Name Do You Take?
A BEAUTIFUL MIND BY BIANCA BOSKER
EVANNE SCHMARDER: Friend Farms? Can’t Buy Me Love DAN ROSS: What if Michael Phelps Weren’t American? QUOTED
FROM TOP: WINNI WINTERMEYER; ROBERT SNOW; STEPHEN VOSS
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TAMPA’S MAVERICK COP BY SAKI KNAFO
MOVIES: One Crazy Day in New York CELEBRITY: The Essential Guide to Celebrity Slang EWISE: Wedding Thank-Yous, Policing Kids on Facebook GREATEST PERSON: Aaron Segedi TFU
PROGNOSIS UNCLEAR BY JEFFREY YOUNG
FROM THE EDITOR: The Other Tampa ON THE COVER: Sebastian Thrun
photographed for Huffington by Winnie Wintermeyer. Illustration by Joel Holland.
LETTER FROM THE EDITOR
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The Other Tampa ATER THIS MONTH, Tampa will host the Republican National Convention, Mitt Romney will accept his party’s nomination and 15,000 credentialed media will swarm the city. In this week’s issue of Huffington, Saki Knafo spotlights a Tampa most of the media will not see during their stay. Hillsborough County, which surrounds Tampa, has 60 homeless people for every 10,000 residents—more homeless per capita than any other American city or county. As a result,
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Tampa has become a kind of civic laboratory, with citizens, police and government grappling with all the problems that accompany homelessness. Saki Knafo introduces us to several of Tampa’s homeless, as well as those who seek innovative solutions to their predicament. Among the latter is Steve Donaldson, a Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Department deputy with a lifelong passion
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LETTER FROM THE EDITOR
for problem solving (it began with a childhood fascination with Donald Trump and evolved into a respect for unconventional thinkers like Malcolm Gladwell). In his first decade with the department, Donaldson was repulsed by what he encountered out on the beat: the drug addicts and derelicts who seemed beyond help. But then, something changed in the way he saw Tampa’s homeless, and in the way he went about his daily work. Since then, as Saki puts it, Donaldson has been “on a mission to convince police and ordinary civilians alike that the answer to the homeless problem lies not in arrests and jail but in something far more subtle, the relationship between a single homeless person and a cop.” Since 2010, Donaldson has helped get more than 100 people off the streets—including Albert Swiger, who with Donaldson’s help traded a life of crime, and more than 200 arrests, for home ownership, a job and a girlfriend. Donaldson has done this by looking to both the public and private
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sectors. Many homeless people are unaware that they qualify for benefits, and part of Donaldson’s relationship with his “clients,” as he calls them, is making sure they understand what they’re entitled to. He’s also tapped his contacts in real estate, convincAs the ing property ownRepublican ers to let his clients convention work on abandoned approaches and homes in exchange all eyes turn to for staying in them. Tampa, Saki As the Republiputs flesh and can convention approaches and all blood on the eyes turn to Tampa, homelessness Saki puts flesh and crisis.” blood on the homelessness crisis, and gets an answer from Donaldson about what changed his perception of the homeless: it was the realization that he had “more in common with them than I would like to think.”
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SAM DOBSON /CATERS NEWS
LAKE TAKES ON STARTLING HUE
A lake in the South of France has turned a bright shade of red that could pass for blood, but experts say the coloring is a natural phenomenon caused by extremely high salt concentration linked to brine shrimp that live in the lake. Camargue, France, is a river delta that is home to many salt flats. Last month, Lake Retba in Senegal turned the color of a strawberry milkshake due to high levels of salt.
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DETAILS EMERGE AROUND CONGRESSMAN’S MEDICAL LEAVE
TOP TO BOTTOM: AP PHOTO/M. SPENCER GREEN; CHRISTOPHER HUNT/TB/GETTY IMAGES; AP PHOTO/CITY OF COLLEGE STATION
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U.S. Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-Ill.) has bipolar disorder, the Mayo Clinic announced on Monday. The congressman has been on medical leave for more than two months, and he is being treated for bipolar II, which involves milder manic episodes than bipolar I. His father, the Rev. Jesse Jackson, told the AP, “I’m glad he’s getting the treatment he needs and is responding well.”
“ PREGNANT MAN” FACES DIVORCE DILEMMA Thomas Beatie is having more trouble getting divorced than he had getting pregnant. The transgender man, who retained his female reproductive organs, made headlines when he gave birth to three children. Now he is seeking a divorce from his wife, Nancy, but an Arizona judge is questioning the validity of their marriage since the union involved two vaginas and same-sex marriage is not legal in the state.
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GUNMAN’S PARENTS REACT TO SHOOTING
The man who killed two people and wounded four before he was shot to death by police near the Texas A&M University was a “ticking time bomb” and “deeply troubled,” according to his mother and stepfather. Thomas Caffall bragged about gun purchases on Facebook in the months before the shooting. His mother, Linda Weaver, told The Huffington Post, “The minute I saw the TV I knew it was him. I’ve been that worried about him.”
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TOP TO BOTTOM: MUNSHI AHMED/BLOOMBERG VIA GETTY IMAGES; VERA ANDERSON/WIREIMAGE/GETTY IMAGES; TAYLOR HILL/GETTY IMAGES
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JOHN TRAVOLTA ASKED TO “COME OUT!”
Rashida Jones wants more Hollywood actors to come out of the closet—and she thinks John Travolta should lead the way. “A movie star. Like John Travolta?” she said in an interview with her friend Will McCormack. “Come out! Come on. How many masseurs have to come forward?” Travolta is mired in sexual harassment lawsuits from several men, including masseurs who have charged him with sexual battery.
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GOODBYE, HELEN GURLEY BROWN THAT’S VIRAL YUP, MILEY CYRUS GOT A ‘HAIRCUT’
Legendary Cosmopolitan editor Helen Gurley Brown has died at 90. Brown edited Cosmopolitan for more than 30 years, revolutionizing the women’s magazine industry and showing readers “how to get everything out of life—the money, recognition, success, men, prestige, authority, dignity—whatever she is looking at through the glass her nose is pressed against.” Her 1962 advice book Sex and the Single Girl, which encouraged women to have sex outside of marriage, became a bestseller translated into at least 16 languages.
A selection of the week’s most talked-about stories. HEADLINES TO VIEW FULL STORIES
RESEARCHERS MAY HAVE DISCOVERED NEW PYRAMIDS IN EGYPT
‘GAME OF THRONES’ AUTHOR HAS AN AXE TO GRIND WITH THE REPUBLICANS
‘RIDICULOUS PEOPLE WITH ZERO TALENT’
AND THE FIRST COLLEGE TO SUSPEND CHICK-FIL-A IS...
Enter Syria: Torn Apart More than a year after the Free Syrian Army began an insurrection to remove President Bashar al-Assad, fighting has escalated into civil war, the death toll nears 20,000 and al-Assad remains in power— while his former prime minister defected to the opposition last month. This is what life in Syria looks like today.
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PHOTOGRAPHS BY LAURENT VAN DER STOCKT
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A body is pictured in the aftermath of the siege of a police station in al Shaar by the Free Syrian Army. PHOTO OR ILLUSTRATION CREDIT TK
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A helicopter of the Syrian Army, the government’s official forces, drops rockets atop a school in a town between Aleppo and Azzaz. PHOTO OR ILLUSTRATION CREDIT TK
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Soldiers of the Free Syrian Army attempt to sleep in the bombed city of Azzaz, keeping their weapons close. PHOTO OR ILLUSTRATION CREDIT TK
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The rebel fighters successfully enter Aleppo without any resistance, taking positions around the four quarters of the city. PHOTO OR ILLUSTRATION CREDIT TK
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As opposition fighters enter the quarter of Aleppo called Tarik el Bab, hundreds flee the area in fear of a counter-offensive by Assad’s forces. PHOTO OR ILLUSTRATION CREDIT TK
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The threat of a retaliation in Tarik el Bab by Assad’s army prompts civilians to flee the quarter. PHOTO OR ILLUSTRATION CREDIT TK
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Free Syrian Army fighters line the streets of Bab el Hadith, another quarter of the city of Aleppo, while the remaining civilians watch fights between loyalist snipers and opposition forces. PHOTO OR ILLUSTRATION CREDIT TK
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After a resistance effort that lasted all day, the police station of al Shaar in Aleppo finally fell to the Free Syrian Army, with five officers surrendering and seven dead. PHOTO OR ILLUSTRATION CREDIT TK
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A fighter for the Free Syrian Army at the army’s headquarters in Aleppo. PHOTO OR ILLUSTRATION CREDIT TK
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A man accused of Mukhabarat activities, or illicit intelligence gathering, is arrested by the rebel forces. PHOTO OR ILLUSTRATION CREDIT TK
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The opposition has found a new home for this portrait of Hafez al-Assad; the image of the former president and father of Bashar gazes out from a dumpster. PHOTO OR ILLUSTRATION CREDIT TK
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A girl of Tarik al Bab, in Aleppo. PHOTO OR ILLUSTRATION CREDIT TK
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Inhabitants of the Shaar area demonstrate for the first time after the Friday prayer without fear of retaliation by government forces. PHOTO OR ILLUSTRATION CREDIT TK
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Fighters of the opposition army carry the body of a man killed in a bombing in Vasuqari, a free area in East Aleppo. PHOTO OR ILLUSTRATION CREDIT TK
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Children in the Shaar area of Aleppo attend prayers for the victim of a bombing. PHOTO OR ILLUSTRATION CREDIT TK
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Arming a Shooter
ILLUSTRATION: JASON LEE
A recent spate of shootings raises questions about just how easy it is for someone to obtain lethal weapons. Tap the circles on the figure for more information about the equipment shown.
Once guns are ordered online, they usually must be purchased in-person through a gun broker with a federal firearms license who is required to background-check customers.
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Bill McKibben Wrestles the Octopus in the Room
McKibben at the Middlebury College solar farm installation in Middlebury, Vermont. PHOTOGRAPH BY COREY HENDRICKSON
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AP PHOTO/PETER DEJONG
ILL MCKIBBEN, the environmental author-turned-activist, knows his movement is troubled. But he’s committed to protecting the environment, so he trudges forward, battling setbacks, death threats and what he sees as his primary enemy: the fossil fuel industry. In 2008, he launched the grassroots campaign 350.org, and last year played a pivotal role in raising public opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline project. But he’s concerned he’s fighting a losing battle against climate change. —Joanna Zelman You were arrested during the Keystone XL pipeline protests. Is civil disobedience necessary for a campaign to be successful? It’s one tool in the toolkit, I guess—and not the one you usually reach for first. But it is a way to demonstrate the moral urgency of questions. It needs, I think, to be totally non-
violent and dignified—the Keystone protests, which were the largest civil disobedience actions in 30 years in this country, were a good example. We told people: come in a necktie or a dress. Because we need to demonstrate who the radicals are in this fight. They’re not us.
McKibben, shown here at the 2009 UN climate change conference, says our only hope is real political change.
Enter You’ve said efforts to combat climate change have largely failed. What needs to happen for progress to be made? At this point the great obstacle is the political power of the fossil fuel industry. As I showed in that recent Rolling Stone piece, their business plan calls for them to burn 5 times the amount of carbon that even conservative governments think is safe—in order to do that, they have to warp our political systems, which they do with massive donations and lobbying. At 350.org, the night after the election, we’re going to mount a massive effort to try and focus on their irresponsibility—we hope we can spark a movement something like the one that led campuses and communities to divest from companies that did business in South Africa. What does a clean energy future look like? Could fracking be part of a bridge to it? Given the math of climate change, fracking’s no help. We don’t need a bridge—we need to make the leap to renewable energy. Germany’s done more than anyone else in the last decade—they’re already at the 25 percent mark, and one day in June they generated more than half the power they used with solar panels within
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their borders. (And remember that Munich is north of Montreal!) We have the technology; what we need is the political will. Given rising CO2 emissions and more troublesome numbers, do you ever want to give up? Some days, sure. But there are so many good people around the world engaged in this fight, many of them in places that have done nothing to contribute to this problem. As long as they’re willing to fight, so am I.
We need to demonstrate who the radicals are in this fight. They’re not us.” How do you reduce your own carbon footprint, and what do you tell your daughter about the troubling world her generation may face? The year we built our house, it got a prize as the most energy efficient in Vermont. I drove the first Hydrid Honda Civic in the state (and still do); I spent a year feeding my family nothing that wasn’t grown in our valley and am still a committed locavore. There are solar panels all over the roof, and on a big stalk in the yard. But—I
AP PHOTO/TOBY TALBOT
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don’t try to fool myself that this is changing the world—and in fact, one organizing trip on an airplane negates it. But I take those trips because the only real hope is serious political change. My daughter is 19, and couldn’t be smarter and more aware; I don’t tell her stuff, she tells me stuff.
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With so many issues to focus on, how do you allocate your time? I think it’s become clear the real battle is with the fossil fuel industry. We need to fight their worst projects—tarsands pipelines, coal export terminals, mountaintop removal, fracking. But we also, maybe even more, need to figure out how to go to the heart—take on the octopus itself, not just its tentacles.
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McKibben, who has led efforts to block construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, addresses lawmakers in Montpelier, Vt., in 2007.
Voices
KATIE RADEMACHER
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Whose Name Do You Take? AS MY PARTNER Ilana and I prepare to get married, we have wrestled with the question of what to do with our last names after we tie the knot. Although this is the same decision that straight couples make, I am struck by how uncomfortable people are with the lack of traditional script to follow. Their discomfort often reveals how they view our relationship
ILLUSTRATION BY PIETARI POSTI
and the ways in which patriarchal assumptions still inform the values of even proudly self-proclaimed feminists. Despite being a same-sex couple that challenges gender conventionality in many ways, Ilana and I are surprisingly traditional when it comes to marriage and families. We look forward to rais-
Katie Rademacher is a teaching assistant in American Studies at George Washington University
Voices ing children together and envision a family that shares a last name. This is not a judgment on how families are “supposed to” be, just the way we picture doing things ourselves. Furthermore, with all the challenges same-sex couples face, sharing a last name is a way that we feel we are more legible as a couple and, one day, as parents to our children. While the decision to change our names was easy, the decision of to what and why was not. Neither of us wanted to fully take the other’s name—it felt like a clear slight to the family whose name was getting dropped. This is where things began to get frustrating; none of my straight friends who have taken their new husbands’ names have faced accusations about denying connections to their families of origin. The next option was hyphenating, and Ilana had many reservations. Besides the obvious objection that hyphenated names are long and clunky (and “Rademacher” isn’t helping), our future children’s names became the main concern. Do we really want our kids’ names to be SternRademacher? How will they learn to spell it? They’re going to be
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amazing at sports—does that fit on a jersey? What if they decide to get married one day? Most importantly, hyphenated kids sometimes drop one name for the sake of brevity; will they go by the name of the biological parent (presumably me)? Ultimately, Sharing the option to hya last name phenate didn’t satisfy the main reason is a way that to change our names we feel we are in the first place: to more legible share a single last as a couple, name and be legible and, one day, to the world as our as parents to children’s parents. our children.” Rejecting the traditional options, Ilana and I decided to take on a new family name, using some combination of our names—truly representing the joining of our families—to make our own. After rejecting countless combinations, I wondered if we couldn’t consider our mothers’ pre-marriage names as well. The more we thought about this option, the more Ilana and I loved the idea of identifying our family through a connection to the women who come before us, both of whom
Voices changed their names when they married, and both of whose families we are close to. It felt refreshing, and feminist (and, I’ll grant you, surprisingly gay). In addition, this allows us to keep our current last names as middle names, leaving a portion of our legal names matching our parents.’ The last name we are considering is Kein, a combination of Kopa and Schein—it’s short, it’s easy to spell and pronounce, and it’s an alphabetical upgrade for both of us (win-win-win!). It’s important for me to say that our decision isn’t just the best of a list of rejected options, but one that I am happy with and incredibly proud of. What’s difficult is the questions and hostility that we’ve faced about it that so many others don’t. Most often, we are asked why we don’t just keep our own names, which implies to me that some don’t take our marriage seriously enough to consider it grounds for a major change that is taken for granted in heterosexual marriages. This response also emphasizes the persistent view that the family name should be the man’s—no man, no name change! Another common response comes from people who don’t
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take seriously our concerns about our future children’s names. Because having parental rights over their children and being recognized as parents by their communities isn’t something the majority of parents have to consider, people are quick to belittle What’s this factor. It is clear why parental rights difficult is are easily taken for the questions granted by straight and hostility couples, but to us that we’ve legislation and polifaced about it cies will have major, that so many tangible impacts on others don’t.” our lives. As we enter this new stage in our lives and become a family, having a family name solidifies our status as serious partners and our intention to be true coparents of any future children we may have together. Despite the challenges and initial uncertainty, Ilana and I are very proud and excited to change our names. We’re happy to be making this decision, hopefully the first of many important life decisions, based on what best represents our visions of partnership and family.
EVANNE SCHMARDER
Voices
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Friend Farms? Can’t Buy Me Love
P
OPPING UP AROUND the web recently, the topic of purchasing Facebook Likes, Twitter followers, YouTube video views and even Google Plus One votes—or what for my purposes we’ll just call “numbers”—seems to be on the mind of many. It’s a heady enticement if you believe that sheer quantity is the path to social media success for a business or brand.¶ Apparently, the thinking goes that if a business can amass an ostensibly large following, then that alone will establish it as a hot property and entice others to hop on the bandwagon. Its numbers will grow and its social media efforts will flourish. It’ll look like it can run alongside the big dogs, the law of attraction will kick into high gear, the proverbial phone will ring off the hook and advertisers will beat down the doors to place ads. ¶ There are a number of “friend farms”—such as Intertwitter.com, FansGalore.net and SocialKik.com—that sell this service under the guise ILLUSTRATION BY PIETARI POSTI
Evanne Schmarder is principal at Roadabode Productions and an author, consultant and speaker
Voices of social advertising, touting “fresh approaches to getting you traffic, attention and buzz through social media.” Here’s how it works: for a set dollar amount a business can purchase either targeted (usually by country) or non-targeted (worldwide) numbers. Typically numbers are promised between 48 hours and two weeks. A business can purchase anywhere from 100 to (I can hardly believe this myself) 100,000 numbers. Sounds nice, right? Unfortunately the only thing that purchasing numbers attracts is money from a business’ own coffers. It’s all in the seller’s disclaimer: Purchases are not guaranteed to deliver results. Really? Imagine that. Sure, it’s true that a business’s numbers will grow, but its newfound “friends” are anything but. They are statistics. Digits in the cloud. Bodies in a nonexistent room. Maybe even bots or dummy accounts. Meanwhile, everything we know about social media success revolves around engagement— shares and retweets, one’s circle of influence and one’s Klout score are significantly more important factors than the numbers listed on one’s social media profiles. These numbers will never share your
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story, visit your website or click on a sponsored ad. They are just numbers. Nothing more. Nothing less. Think of it this way, a post sent out to 5,000 bought and paid for numbers uninterested in a brand’s message is very likely to fade into the sunset without mention—netting nothing in return. Is an avid vegetarian who receives posts from Omaha Steaks likely to share them? Sure, Chances are they it’s true that would be much more a business’s open to ongoing news numbers will about their local grow, but its farmer’s market—rel- newfound evant, timely, tai‘friends’ are lored. By growing a anything follower/friend base but. They are organically, one by statistics.” one from interested parties, the chances of a message resonating and creating action are far more likely. The best course of social media development is to build relationships, engage with people and produce interesting, fun, relevant content that begs to be shared. Make an effort to connect with those that have chosen to follow your message. If a business or brand wants loyalty, it must be loyal.
Voices
DAN ROSS
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What if Michael Phelps Weren’t American? WITH SO MANY great story lines coming out of the 2012 Olympics, from Gabby Gold to Missy Magic, perhaps the most fun Olympic sport of them all was the race to tweet something witty and tag it to #NBCfail. But I would like to propose another hashtag that I believe is worth creating in the wake of this year’s Games: #NewextremesinAmericanjingois-
ILLUSTRATION BY PIETARI POSTI
m2012Olympics. My primary concern however is not that we root wildly for the Red, White and Blue; I’m just as guilty of that as anyone else. Rather, it’s that when we lose, we pout, cry foul or don’t pay attention at all. No example of this was more troubling than the accusations of doping fired at Chinese
Dan Ross is a writer and consultant in Washington, D.C.
Voices swimmer Ye Shiwen following her breathtaking victories in the 200 and 400 IMs (sequel to our allegations that the Chinese female gymnasts fielded an under aged team four years ago in Beijing). And in addition to our continuous grumbling, we have a problem giving credit where it’s due. For instance, I would have loved to learn more about Romanian gymnast Sandra Izbasa, who actually won the vault finals over our McKayla Maroney, or about Russia’s Aliya Mustafina, who so far as I can tell has at least two eponymous gymnastics skills to her name, and who will leave London with more hardware around her neck than America’s sweetheart Gabby Douglas. (Of course another issue is that three of my illustrations come from women’s gymnastics, a sport that we focus on for one week every four years, or approximately .005 percent of the time.) It seems to me that we have trouble both accepting and caring about the greatness of athletes from other nations. Of course there are some notable exceptions such as Jamaica’s rocket-legged Usain Bolt and
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DAN ROSS
South Africa’s no-legged Oscar Pistorious. But if there isn’t something unique about your lower extremities, Americans aren’t really that interested. To further illustrate my point, I decided to engage in a little thought experiment. I wondered how exactly NBC might lead their coverage of Michael Phelps’ record-shattering 22 career medals had he not been from the We good old US of A. Here’s what I came up with:
CHINA
have trouble both accepting and caring about the greatness of athletes from other nations.”
Suspected doper Michael Phelps swam into the record books today, but should there be an asterisk next to his name?...
GREAT BRITAIN William and Kate were in the stands as British swimmer Michael Phelps swam into history...
RUSSIA Vladimir Putin’s personal swim trainer, Michael Phelps, won
Voices his record setting 22nd Olympic medal, but was quick to reassure the world that his student swims faster than he does...
CANADA
DAN ROSS
NORTH KOREA
American swimmer Michael Phelps stood on the Olympic podium for a record 22nd time...
Child swimmer Michael Phelps set an Olympic record to save his family’s life... (I have to thank my friend Rahul for this one.)
INDIA
TEXAS
Politicians were outraged to discover that USA Swimming had outsourced the all-time record for Olympic medals to Indian swimmer Michael Phelps...
Inspired by the unprecedented 22nd Olympic medal won by Davy Crockett descendant Michael Phelps, Texas governor Rick Perry announced that his state will secede from the Union...
SOUTH AFRICA South African swimmer Michael Phelps overcame an unfortunate giraffe-related incident to ride his prosthetic flippers into the history books...
NORWAY As he took home his record 22nd medal, Norwegian Michael Phelps thanked the polar bears who trained him to swim in the icy waters of Svalbard...
KENYA President Obama’s long lost cousin, Michael Phelps, set the alltime mark for Olympic medals...
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My fellow Americans, it’s not that we All of shouldn’t be proud of them deserve the fact that Michael our fullest Phelps is one of our attention, even own—it’s that one of if we have to the most wonderful suffer through things about watch#NBCfails to ing sports is seeing see them soar.” greatness incarnate, regardless of where it comes from. And every four years, we receive the extraordinary gift of having the opportunity to witness the highest, fastest, and strongest people on the planet do what they do best. All of them deserve our fullest attention, even if we have to suffer through #NBCfails to see them soar.
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“ Barack can’t do it alone. He’s not Spider-Man. He’s not a superhero. He’s a human, so we need your help.”
— Michelle Obama
CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: SCOTT EELLS/BLOOMBERG VIA GETTY IMAGES; SCOTT OLSON/GETTY IMAGES; AP PHOTO/HASSAN AMMAR
at a Gwen Stefani-hosted campaign fundraiser
“ We made a mistake. We’re sorry. It doesn’t detract from all the good things we’ve done. I am not responsible for the financial crisis.”— Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan Chase CEO, to New York magazine
I almost feel bad for Ryan going up against Biden in the debates. Biden won’t have to do anything but stand there and hold up a tea party sign that says ‘Keep your hands off my Medicare.’
— HuffPost commenter EconPadawan
“ Ladies and gentlemen, we are about to land at Jeddah international airport, kindly set your watches back 1000 years.”
—HuffPost commenter katertaif on Saudi Arabia’s plan to build a women-only city for career-minded females
CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: AP PHOTO/MARK J. TERRILL; WIREIMAGE/GETTY IMAGES; VALERIE MACON/GETTY IMAGES
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QUOTED
Anyone who makes it to the Olympics to compete is a winner. Most everything else is couch potato talk.
— HuffPost commenter RJII
on the New York Times’ critique of Lolo Jones
“ Just because it confuses you, doesn’t mean she’s confused.”
— HuffPost commenter mmonzeglio19
on Texas State Rep. Mary Gonzalez identifying as pansexual
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“ This pic could single handedly destroy the self esteem of an entire nation.”
— Rihanna
tweeted with a picture of Beyonce
“ The pain and loss caused by the events of Jan. 8, 2011, are incalculable. Avoiding a trial will allow us—and we hope the whole Southern Arizona community— to continue with our recovery.”
— Gabby Giffords and her husband, Mark Kelly,
in a joint statement about Jared Lee Loughner’s decision to plead guilty to the Arizona shooting
08.19.12 #10 FEATURES ROBERT SNOW
A BEAUTIFUL MIND TAMPA’S MAVERICK COP PROGNOSIS UNCLEAR
A Beautiful BY BIANCA BOSKER
Sebastian Thrun Wants to Change the World
Photographs by WINNI WINTERMEYER
“ Let’s see if I can get us killed,”
Sebastian Thrun advises me in a Germanic baritone as we shoot south onto the 101 in his silver Nissan Leaf. Thrun, a pioneer of the self-driving car, cuts across two lanes of traffic, then jerks into a third, threading the car into a sliver of space between an eighteen-wheeler and a sedan. ¶ Thrun seems determined to halve the normally eleven minute commute from the Palo Alto headquarters of Udacity, the online university he oversees, to Google X, the secretive Google research lab he co-founded and leads.
A BEAUTIFUL MIND
He’s also keen to demonstrate the urgency of replacing human drivers with the autonomous automobiles he’s engineered. “Would a self-driving car let us do this?” I ask, as mounting Gforces press me back into my seat. “No,” Thrun answers. “A selfdriving car would be much more careful.” Thrun, 45, is tall, tanned and toned from weekends biking and skiing at his Lake Tahoe home. More surfer than scientist, he smiles frequently and radiates serenity—until he slams on his brakes at the sight of a cop idling in a speed trap at the side of the highway. Something heavy thumps against the seat behind us and when Thrun opens the trunk moments later, he discovers that three sheets of glass he’s been shuttling around have shattered. Once we reach Google X, he regains his stride, leaving me trotting by his side as he racewalks to his office. Motion is a constant in his life. A pair of black roller skates sit by his desk. Twelve years ago, he borrowed his wife’s sneakers to run the Pittsburg marathon, without bothering to train for the race. He got his son on skis before most other kids his age got out of diapers.
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“ I’ve never seen a person fail if they didn’t
fear failure.”
When Thrun finds something he wants to do or, better yet, something that is “broken,” it drives him “nuts” and, he says, he becomes “obsessed” with fixing it. Over the last 17 years, Thrun has been the author of, or a pivotal force behind, a list of solutions to a entire roster of “broken” things, making him a folk hero of sorts among Silicon Valley innovators, though hardly a household name elsewhere. While he’s in a hurry in almost every other aspect of his life, he embraces a slowcooking approach to invention and product-building that sets him apart from many of the create-itfund-it-and-flip-it whiz kids and veterans who populate the Valley. Thrun’s resume is populated with seismic efforts, either those
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already set in motion or others just around the corner. There are various robotic self-navigating vehicles that guide tourists through museums, explore abandoned mines, and assist the elderly. There is the utopian self-driving car that promises to relieve humanity from the tedium of commuting while helping reduce emissions, gridlock, and deaths caused by driver error. There are the “magic” Google Glasses that allow wearers to instantly share what they see, as they are seeing it, with anyone anywhere in the world—with the blink of an eye. And there is the free online university Udacity, a potentially game-changing educational effort that, if Thrun has his way, will level the playing field for learners of all stripes. “While everyone is running around saying ‘I’m going to do a better mobile photo thing so I can defeat Facebook and suck out more of their market cap to me,’ Sebastian is going around saying, ‘I think driving is totally screwed up and there should be autonomous cars,’” says venture capitalist George Zachary, an investor in Udacity. “He thinks much more boldly about the problems.” Other observers say all of this
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is firmly in the tradition of the best sort of innovators. “What’s unique about Sebastian, and all innovators, perhaps, is that they don’t start with the current situation and try to make incrementally better based on what’s been done in the past. They look out and say, ‘Given the current state of technology, what can I do radically differently to make a discontinuity—not an incremental change, but put us in a different place?’” says Dean Kamen, the inventor of the Segway. “He is a true innovator…And he has a fantastic vision.” Many Silicon Valley standouts have succeeded by making radical improvements to products that already exist. Facebook, for example, did social networking better than any of its predecessors. Smartphones were around well before the iPhone, but Apple came up with a gadget far slicker than the competition. Thrun likes creating new things from scratch and invents for a world that should be, for an audience that may not yet be out there, for conditions that may never be met. “I have a strong disrespect for authority and for rules,” he says. “Including gravity. Gravity sucks.” To that end, and for all of his bravado, Thrun also says that
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he distrusts even his own beliefs and theories, calling them “traps” that might ensnare him in a solution based more on his own ego than logic. “Every time I act on a fear, I feel disappointed in myself. I have a lot of fear. If I can quit all fear in my life and all guilt, then I tend to be much, much more living up to my standards,” Thrun says. “I’ve never seen a person fail if they didn’t fear failure.” Thrun imagines a future where cars fly, news articles are tailored to
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the time you have to read them, and teachers are as famous and wellpaid as Hollywood celebrities. He grouses that we don’t wear devices to monitor our health twenty-fourseven instead of relying on symptoms to diagnose what ails us. He can spot inefficiencies everywhere he turns, and in most cases, sees technology as the magic bullet. When he talks about his mission to “look for areas that are just intolerably broken where even small amounts of technology can yield a fundamental sea change,” Thrun makes it clear that his goal isn’t to make us high-tech, but to make us high-human.
Nick Roy, William Shatner, Mike Montemerlo and Sebastian Thrun with the “Nursebot.”
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“I have a really deep belief that we create technologies to empower ourselves. We’ve invented a lot of technology that just makes us all faster and better and I’m generally a big fan of this,” Thrun says. “I just want to make sure that this technology stays subservient to people. People are the number one entity there is on this planet.”
Simple and Streamlined
Though Thrun says his adult life revolves around trying to find ways that technology can help people, his childhood and adolescence were mainly about self-help. The youngest of three children, Thrun was born in 1967 in Solingen, Germany. His parents, devout Catholics, told him he was an unplanned baby. Thrun recalls having little contact with his parents, and especially his father. His siblings “required a lot of attention and there was almost no attention left for me,” he says. His father was a construction company executive and more often than not his first order of business was disciplining Sebastian or his one of siblings with a beating, at the request of his wife. Thrun says his stay-at-home mom was “heavy into punishing people and sins
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and all that stuff.” Thrun responded by retreating into a solo world of calculators, computers and code. “I reacted a lot by just insulating myself from this and so mentally, emotionally I wasn’t that connected,” he says. “I learned to basically pull my own weight, just do my own thing. I spent a lot of time alone and I loved it. It was actually really great because to the present day I love spending time alone. I go bicycling alone, go climbing alone and I just love being with myself and observing myself and learning something.” Thrun befriended an inventor in his neighborhood who gave him spare parts and a soldering iron, then let him tinker. As an eight-year-old, he’d come home from school, shut himself up in his room, turn on Pink Floyd, AC/DC, Mozart, or Bach, and spend hours sitting on his bed programming his Texas Instruments TI-57 calculator to solve math problems and play games (These days you can find him blasting a mix of classical concertos and Rihanna). The calculator had no memory, of course, so every time he switched it off, he lost all his code. Eventually, he graduated from his calculator to a display model computer at the local department store, but basically, he was still
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dealing with the same problem: after four or five hours building games on the store machine, he’d be kicked out and all his work vanished. He took this inconvenience as a challenge to perfect his code so that he could re-enter it in the fewest possible steps. This fastidious dedication to simple, streamlined programming stayed with him, and he would later require his students to write straightforward, elegant code. When not sitting at a screen, Thrun sang in a five-person choir with Petra Dierkes, a girl two years
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his junior who would become his girlfriend when he was 18, and, eventually, his wife and colleague at Stanford University. He also played the piano, improvising his own songs as a way to study and express his emotions. Thrun was a gifted student and terrible pupil with a self-imposed homework ban that lasted from seventh grade through high school graduation. In college, the unprecedented freedom to choose his own coursework sparked a newfound passion for his academic work. He combined a major in computer science with an unorthodox double minor in medicine and economics, a combination
Thrun is pictured here in October of 2007 with the rest of the Carnegie Mellon University team working on the “Groundhog,” a robot which traverses mines too toxic for humans to enter.
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that would eventually help him design a “nursebot” to assist elderly patients. When he graduated from the University of Bonn with a Ph. D. in computer science and statistics in 1995, he leaped at the chance to join the faculty at Carnegie Mellon University—what then seemed like “paradise” to Thrun— and spent eight years there before moving to Stanford, where he was computer science guru. Out in the Valley, Thrun struck up an acquaintanceship with Google co-founder Larry Page, who asked him to see a robot Page had built in his spare time. The two men met for dinner at a casual Japanese restaurant in Palo Alto and Thrun returned to Page’s house to see his creation. The robot’s hardware was in decent shape, but Page “got stuck on the software side of it,” according to Thrun’s diagnosis. He borrowed the robot, flew in a few friends, and returned Page’s bot within a day after giving it the ability to localize itself. After another two or three days of work, the robot could navigate. Thrun said Page was “blown away.” In 2005, Thrun’s engineering team at the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory built a
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Thrun says his stay-athome mom was
“heavy into punishing people and sins and all that stuff.” driverless car, a blue Volkswagen Touareg SUV named Stanley, that managed to navigate 132 miles of desert terrain on its own, becoming the first self-driving car in history to win the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Grand Challenge — a race through the sands of Nevada organized by the United States Department of Defense. The previous year, not a single one of the 15 entries from some of the most powerful robotics engineers in the world had managed to com-
The culmination of Thrun’s efforts studying computer science and medicine in college: the “Nursebot” designed to care for elderly patients.
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plete more than eight miles of the course. Thrun won the first year he competed, just 15 months after deciding to enter the race. Page, who professes selfdriving cars have “been a passion of mine for years,” watched Stanley’s triumph in the Mojave desert. Soon after, Google hired Thrun to sire the sons of Stanley. In 2010, Thrun helped Page and Sergey Brin, Google’s other cofounder, launch Google X, a topsecret and closely-guarded lab that the search giant tasked with making the impossible possible. The following year, Thrun relinquished his tenure at Stanford.
Xtreme engineering
Google X’s engineers are housed in a low structure covered in squares of dark, mirrored glass that offer a mercury-tinted reflection of the parking lot, bikes and trees that surround it. There are jails less secure than this research lab. Employees need a key card to unlock the entrance, and then are admitted to a small waiting area furnished with two chairs and a foosball table. From there, employees must swipe their badges again to enter any of the labs within, each door plastered with
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signs warning Googlers to stay vigilant of “tailgaters.” For a visitor, it’s like stepping into the labs of a mad, hipster scientist. Floors are made of concrete, wires hang from ceiling, tubing covered in foil gleams from the rafters and row after row of black metal desks fill the wide-open space. Thrun’s desk stands in the center of a vast space, at the end of a long row of identical workstations. His is tidy and spare, save for a nametag, an unopened cardboard box, a DVD about the DARPA Grand Challenge, a white Japanese humanoid robot and The Idea Factory, Jon Gertner’s history of Bell Labs—AT&T’s legendary innovations incubator that won seven Nobel prizes and helped usher in the information age. Thrun says he rarely reads books (they’re “too long”), but Gertner’s tome is particularly fitting in a place that aspires to be the heir to the Bell Labs throne. Its mission, according to Thrun, is to work on areas of innovation that have “hard scientific challenges” and “can influence society in a massive way.” Thrun had considered working with the government to deploy self-driving technology to help soldiers in the field, but the military’s stipulation that he not publish his results killed the collaboration. He
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Junior is a self-driving car built by Stanford University that is much like its predecessor Stanley, except this car had to navigate through moving objects in a simulated city environment for DARPA’s Urban Challenge in 2007.
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instead brought his autonomous vehicles to Google, where they provided the inspiration for Google X and, in Thrun’s view, would get the support they needed to “impact large, large numbers of people.” Thrun crouches down to strap on his roller skates, but is distracted by a Google X-branded skateboard produced by a colleague. He grabs the board and starts wheeling around the room. “Sergey fell on this? Awesome,” Thrun remarks with a smile on his second lap. The cavernous area, nearly empty at 9 a.m., echoes with his chirps — “Aah!” “Whee!”— as he loops the room, narrowly missing the edges of the desks, bookcases and fridges stocked with free food. “Don’t fall, we need you,” a Googler shouts at Thrun. A fascination with images as facilitator for human relationships infused Thrun’s work on Google Street View, which allows people to digitally meander the streets of Mumbai, trace a nature hike in Yosemite, or tour New York’s Times Square—all from the comfort of their homes. In 2007, Google acquired mapping technology which Thrun’s team at Stanford had developed to
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Google X’s engineers are housed in a low structure covered in squares of dark, mirrored glass…
There are jails less secure than this research lab. train Stanley—technology Thrun nearly used to start his own company, Vutool. Page tasked Thrun with applying the software to scaling Google Street View as quickly as possible. “I always felt that if countries knew each other better, there would be less war,” says Thrun. “Often conflict goes with demonizing other countries and cultures.
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I figured if we could bridge the gap between cultures with images, that would not be a bad thing to do.” Two years ago, Thrun assembled a team of Google X engineers and tasked them with another assignment, one also rooted in the future: to reinvent the computer. The result is Project Glass, a.k.a. Google Glasses, an endeavor Thrun makes a point of asking me to note is now being led by his colleague Babak Parviz. Thrun hands me a pair of the “glasses,” which will be available for $1500 to a limited group of tech industry insiders in early 2013. Worn like a pair of lens-less spectacles, the device suspends a glass cube around half an inch wide just far enough to the right of my retina that I can still make direct eye contact with Thrun, who all but hovers with excitement in the chair across from mine. A video of fireworks begins to play on the cube and the screen glows purple, pink and blue, both from my vantage point and Thrun’s. A faint soundtrack of the explosions hums from a speaker just above my ear. The image on the glass shifts as I tilt my chin and move my gaze, and without realizing it, I snap a picture of Th-
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run. A small row of icons appears with the option to share it. Google Glasses’ creators have taken pains to design a device that won’t isolate people from their surroundings. For example, the speaker sits above the wearer’s ear, not in it, and the cube rests above the eye, not in front of it. The suspended square of glass lights up from both sides, so a person speaking to someone wearing Google Glasses can tell if the wearer has the device switched on. Thrun’s deep investment in the project seems to come from a personal aversion to the madly proliferating gadgets that stand between people and the world around them. The inspiration is to “get technology out of your way” so people “spend less time on technology and more time on the real world,” he says. And for someone who hopes to see us endowed with an all-seeing electronic third eye, Thrun is remarkably hostile to his devices. Cellphones are a distraction that make us socially “cut off” from an environment, he gripes. He’ll finish a two-hour meal without once glancing at his phone. To him, phone calls are a “super negative” experience because they interrupt what he’s doing. “I once saw a family of five children and two parents in a Lake
LARRY BUSACCA/WIREIMAGE FOR WIRED
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Tahoe restaurant, where every single person was just looking at their phone while they were having dinner together. That made me so sad because they have this brief of moment of time with their family and they should just enjoy each other,” Thrun recalls. “I can’t tell if Google Glass has succeeded, but it’s a really big emotional thing for me: having the technology that we love and connections that bring us to other people.
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Technology is synonymous for connection with other people.” Maybe. A cellphone can slip into a pocket and be temporarily out of sight. Google Glasses are at eye level and constantly in your face, or on someone else’s face. Making it easier to snap and share photos all but guarantees we’ll take more of them and share more of them, thus connecting ourselves more directly to the people who aren’t present. Surveillance—and documentation—will become more pervasive as well in a world full of
Thrun speaks with Jason Tanz, the New York editor of Wired, at a Wired Business Conference on May 1.
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Google Glasses. Does Thrun worry that omnipresent Google Glasses will make us more likely to disconnect from people around us? “All the time,” he says, explaining that he and other Google X engineers have been wearing the device as much as possible to see what dinner table conversation is like once the novelty of the gadget has worn off. “Maybe the outcome will be socially not that acceptable, we don’t know.” So far, he’s felt “amazingly empowered” by the ability to take pictures, share pictures, and bring people into what he’s doing at that very moment. To Thrun, Google Glasses’ primary appeal is as a camera. He predicts we’ll share ten times as many photos as we do now and that the images we share will be “uglier”— more personal, more authentic, and more of the moment. These intimate images of what we’re seeing right this instant — a baby’s face, the steak we’re about to bite into — will allow a kind of elementary teleportation that lets us each bring everyone along for the ride. Your mind can be closer than ever to mine. If Google Glasses embody Th-
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run’s vision for a device that brings people together, the house he’s building near Palo Alto is a wish for a home that does the same. The frame of the house tops a gold, grassy hill on a $5.9 million, nine-acre plot of land in Los Altos Hills. Seen from afar, it might be mistaken for a red flying saucer that has descended on Silicon Valley. Designed by Eli Attia, former chief of design for Philip Johnson, the building is a squat, singlestory cylinder with exterior walls made entirely of floor-to-ceiling glass. A glass cone protrudes from the roof at the center of the circle and directly below it, a spiral staircase leads to a garage. Thrun says with a touch of pride that at 5,000 square feet, the three-bedroom home is a fraction the size of its neighboring mansions. There are also no corridors or load-bearing walls in the floor plan, and much of the eco-friendly home is given over to common areas. “It’s really compact,” Thrun says. “The idea to make as compact as possible so family stays as close together as possible.” During the tour, a neighbor stops by to ask if Thrun will join him at this year’s Bohemian Club retreat. Like Thrun, he’s a member of this elite society where men—and only men—with big checkbooks and big roles to play
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in life get together to schmooze, booze, sing and pee in the woods, according to accounts. Thrun says it isn’t likely. Later, he tells me he wouldn’t want to go on vacation without his wife and son.
WINNI WINTERMEYER
The Laws Of Motion
Even as Thrun seeks to get gadgets out of our way, his vision suggests an effort to make humans a bit more like computers: more rational and less inclined to give into foolish fears. Thrun sees a very real and important place for
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technology that advances clarity, eliminates obfuscation, and gives people all the help they need to solve problems on their own. Thrun approaches problems armed with facts and cool hard logic, and seems troubled by people who do otherwise. He has an impressive number of statistics at his fingertips: the energy efficiency of planes versus trains, the fraction of materials shipped to a construction site that go to waste, the number of years required to fly to Mars and the percentage of Americans who don’t believe in evolution (a number irksomely large, in his view). He imagines a
Thrun in the Google self-driving car earlier this month.
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device more instantaneous, personalized and melded with our mind than a smartphone, one that would elevate conversations by allowing user to more easily research and surface facts during a discussion. No more messy speculation or faulty memories. “We’ve stopped thinking. We’ve really stopped thinking,” he says. “We don’t look at problems logically, we look at them emotionally. We look at them through the guts. We look at them as if we’re doing a high school problem, like what is beautiful, what makes me recognized among my peers. We don’t go and think about things. We as a society don’t wish to engage in rational thought.” Thrun blames the sorry state of our minds on an education system that raises students “like robots” and trains them to “follow rules.” Thrun’s pedagogy, at Carnegie Mellon, Stanford and now Udacity, leans heavily on learning by doing. He advises that I take up snowboarding so I can understand the laws of motion by living them rather than memorizing them in a classroom. Thrun also believes that connectivity is fundamental to learning. It’s through interactions with
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“ We as a society don’t wish to engage in
rational thought.”
as many good minds as possible that good ideas take hold. Conversations with people like Dean Kamen, Elon Musk and Google’s co-founders are crucial to Thrun’s problem solving process. He listens, debates and tests ideas out on people to see how they react. Being around Page and Brin makes Thrun feel “stupid,” like “a schoolboy,” and he says he can’t get enough of it. “For me these are the high points of my life: When I go in and somebody just shows me how dumb I am and how little I know. That’s what I live for. Just to learn something new,” he says. On a recent afternoon, Thrun is at Udacity’s headquarters in Palo Alto, just blocks from Stanford’s campus, rallying the troops. He has called an all-hands meeting and the company’s 30-odd employees,
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mostly 20-somethings in jeans, are gathered in a semi circle around him leaning on desks, squished onto couches, or sitting cross-legged on the floor. His two co-founders, David Stavens and Mike Sokolsky, former members of Stanford’s self-driving car team, have also joined. “The purpose of this week has been for me to think about where the focus is and I know all of you have been asking me for this and it’s obviously something I’ve been slacking to do and not doing really well, so score me on the performance review and make sure that you put a check mark on ‘Sebastian is not particularly fast,’” he tells his staff. Since Udacity launched in 2011, first under the name Know Labs, over 730,000 students have enrolled in classes—including the 160,000 that registered for Thrun’s first online course, Introduction to Artificial Intelligence—and 150,000 of them are actively taking Udacity courses. Enrollment is down, Thrun acknowledges, though he doesn’t say by how much. But Thrun is undaunted. “If we do a really good job here, then we’re going to shape society,
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together with our partners and other entities in the space, to really, really redefine education,” he says. “That’s pretty cool for a mission. That’s much better than being Instagram.” Thrun predicts education will radically transform in the next ten years. Like blockbuster films, blockbuster online classes will command huge audiences and cost millions of dollars to produce. Many alma maters will shutter their doors as low-cost, highquality online courses put second-tier schools out of business. Learning won’t stop the moment careers begin, and instead co-exist with work throughout life. He hopes to see teens start working earlier. Books will play a reduced role in teaching and short-butcomprehensive, quiz-intensive lessons will replace them. Udacity marks Thrun’s effort to make all of the above come true. He’s after an audience of people from 18 to 80 years old, from Sacremento to Shanghai, from novice to knowledgeable. Thrun calls Udacity the “Twitter of education,” in keeping with his vision that universities “will go from mammoth degrees to 140-character education.” Shorter, more digestible units created by professors concerned with teaching, not tenure, will seamlessly “fit” in students’ lives.
DAVID PAUL MORRIS/BLOOMBERG VIA GETTY IMAGES
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Udacity’s lessons — YouTube videos split into segments three to five minutes in length — feature a professor narrating principles or equations as they are sketched out by a disembodied hand. Each lesson ends with a quiz, followed by an explanation of how to properly answer the problem. Unlike traditional universities, Udacity plans to turn a profit. For a fee, the company will provide official certification to students who pass course exams at an inperson testing center. Udacity
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also plans to play matchmaker between students and companies looking to hire them, and, like LinkedIn, will charge firms to browse its database of resumes. Upsetting the status quo in lecture halls around the country has become big business and Udacity faces a growing number of competitors, most of which have, unlike Udacity, partnered with existing universities to produce their courses. Coursera, a company that’s the brainchild of two Stanford professors, boasts a dozen partners from Princeton to Penn. EdX is a not-for-profit initiative founded by Harvard
Sergey Brin, co-founder of Google Inc., wears the Project Glass internet glasses at a Google conference in June.
WINNI WINTERMEYER
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and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to provide instruction online. And 2tor is working with a growing roster of universities to offer online graduate degrees in business, law and nursing, among other fields. Thrun says he welcomes these rivals because more choice is the best thing that could happen to students. Udacity looks to be a breeding ground for cultivating the talents of the young Thruns of the world: motivated individuals who want to learn, know what subjects they care about, seek a braniac community and are determined to teach themselves, no matter what. It’s the experience Thrun didn’t have growing up, but would have wanted. Classes are structured around solving a problem — building a search engine, programming a robotic car — rather than mastering theory or reviewing a canon. The thirteencourses offered so far cover programming physics, math, statistics and artificial intelligence. “It’s opening up the chances for other people to also become innovators,” Zachary, the venture capitalist, says of Udacity and Thrun. “It is passing forward his
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spirit of innovation.” Thrun considers Udacity his most important undertaking and it will perhaps prove his most challenging one. Regardless, he doesn’t think about his legacy and he doesn’t imagine he’ll be remembered in a generation. After all, he’s only human. “I screw up every day,” he says. “I have a broken piece of glass in my car. I almost got a ticket this morning.” In the meantime, he plans to keep aiming high. “Question every assumption and go towards the problem, like the way they flew to the moon,” he says. “We should have more moon shots and flights to the moon in areas of societal importance.”
Thrun shows off Jeeves the Tennis Rover, his machine which collects tennis balls.
TAMPA’S
MAVERICK
COP
STEVE DONALDSON’S IMPROBABLE CRUSADE TO END HOMELESSNESS BY SAKI KNAFO PHOTOGRAPHS BY ROBERT SNOW Y THE TIME Albert Swiger encountered a cop named Steve Donaldson in the suburbs of Tampa in 2010, Swiger had more than 200 arrests on his record. He’d been arrested for burglary, for armed robbery, for assault and battery. He’d been arrested for grand auto theft, shoplifting and disorderly conduct. Month after month, year after year, the mug shots had documented his transformation from an angry young misfit to a dull-eyed middle-aged convict. He sported a shaved head and a scraggly goatee —“the jailhouse look,” he said. All told, he had spent
nearly half his life in jail, starting when he robbed a convenience store at gunpoint at the age of 14. About 10 years ago, when he was 34, he’d decided he’d had enough of the criminal life and he checked himself into a rehab center and kicked his addiction to painkillers. He landed a steady job in construction, met a girl, fell in love and moved into her apartment in Hudson, Florida. After a few months they decided to start a family. But when the baby was born, the relationship fell apart. Looking back, Swiger talks about postpartum depression and wonders whether things might have turned out differently if he’d stayed around. Not long after he walked out, he called
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TAMPA’S MAVERICK COP
her grandmother’s house and asked for her. He thought she was staying there and hoped he could patch things up. He learned that she’d killed herself with an overdose of painkillers. Things disintegrated quickly after that. The grandmother took custody of the baby. Swiger got back into drugs, lost his job, his car, the apartment. He moved into a house with some crack addicts who let him crash on the couch on
the condition that he would serve as “the muscle.” One night he woke to the sound of the dog going crazy. The house was on fire. He crawled out under a cloud of smoke and was sick for weeks. He has trouble explaining what happened next, but at some point during this period he broke off the last of his tenuous social connections and retreated into the woods. He knew some of the other men who lived in makeshift camps around Tampa, and he’d learned that they could haul in as much as 50 bucks a day just by standing
Swiger works as he talks to Deputy Donaldson.
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TAMPA’S MAVERICK COP
on the side of the road and holding a sign asking for help. He saw no reason why he should continue looking for work when just a fraction of a panhandler’s income covered the cost of ramen, beer, tobacco and pills. So he claimed a spot on Hillsborough Avenue, and that’s where he was standing seven years later, in 2010, when Steve Donaldson pulled up in his squad car and said, “If I could help you, would you accept my help?” Donaldson is a common sheriff’s deputy — “a slick-sleeve,” as he likes to say, referring to the absence of stripes and badges on the sleeves of his uniform. He works for the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Department, the 10th largest suburban law enforcement agency in the country, with a staff of 900 deputies and hundreds of officers. Sometime in late 2009, an order had come down from the upper ranks: We need to do something about the homeless problem. By the most widely cited counts, Hillsborough County, Fla., has more homeless people per capita than any other county or city in the United States, with nearly 60 for every 10,000 residents. New York City, by comparison, has 40. By the end
of 2009 the situation had gotten so bad that panhandlers were lining up three or four deep on the street corners, taking shifts. A local bumper sticker expressed a popular sentiment: “Don’t feed the bums!!” When a community pressures a police force to do something about its homeless people, the cops usually respond by ramping up arrests for crimes like panhandling, drinking in public and camping without a license. Donaldson had locked up his share of loiterers and drunks, but after his first few years on the force he’d come to the conclusion that the approach didn’t work. He’d arrest someone on a Monday after-
After seven years of panhandling, Swiger now works as a landscaper five days a week.
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noon only to see him standing in the same spot on Wednesday morning. What if there was a better way? That was what Donaldson was wondering as he pulled up to Swiger’s corner, and what followed was the first of a series of encounters that have essentially transformed the way the sheriff’s department handles homelessness. For the last two years, Donaldson has been convincing police and ordinary civilians alike that
the answer to the homeless problem lies not in arrests and jail but in something far more subtle, the relationship between a homeless person and a cop. Since 2010, by his account and others, he’s gotten more than 100 people off the streets. And he’s done it at a cost of virtually nothing beyond his beat-cop salary. In some cases he’s connected people with safety-net benefits like housing subsidies—entitlements they didn’t realize they were eligible for or didn’t think they’d receive. But as often as not, the
Wilber, formerly homeless, is one of the many Deputy Donaldson has helped to obtain a home through his initiative.
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bureaucracy hasn’t come through, and in those cases he’s turned to less obvious resources. He’s called in favors from local do-gooders. He’s persuaded real-estate owners to let the homeless fix up their abandoned properties in exchange for a chance to stay in them. In one instance, he got someone a job at a ranch after the man muttered something about having worked as a show-horse trainer as a teenager. Most of all, he’s tried to change the very attitudes of homeless people themselves. He cajoles, scolds, bullies, comforts, gives sermons
SINCE 2010, BY HIS ACCOUNT AND OTHERS, HE’S GOTTEN MORE THAN 100 PEOPLE OFF THE STREETS, FOR A COST OF VIRTUALLY NOTHING BEYOND WHAT HE ALREADY EARNS AS A STREET-LEVEL COP.
and pep-talks and what you might describe as counseling. Other police departments employ outreach workers who alert the socialservice agencies when a homeless camp crops up, but Donaldson may be unique in trying to reverse the tide of homelessness on his own, by sheer dint of his personality. One might assume he’s driven by sympathy or compassion. “Absolutely not,” he says. He claims he isn’t interested in helping the homeless as such; he prefers to frame his work in terms of helping his department do its job. Still, he’s developed an obvious affection for some of his “clients”, as he calls them, and Swiger, he says, is his “rock star.” He says if Swiger can get off the streets, anyone can. Swiger now lives in his own house on a street lined with lush tropical gardens and $200,000 homes. In the year he’s been there, he’s put in a lawn, laid circular stones in a winding path to his front door, and planted a row of trees bursting with crinkly red and white blossoms. One afternoon recently, he sat in his living room with Donaldson, reveling in the ways his life has changed since their meeting. He’s working five
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days a week for a landscaping business, a job Donaldson helped him get, and says he hasn’t touched drugs and alcohol in several years. He’s also dating someone again. “I have an aspect of life I never thought I’d have again,” he said, “and that’s love.” Donaldson looked at him quizzically. “You finally shaved off that goatee.” He and Swiger laughed about the old jailhouse look. At 45, Swiger insisted he’d finally turned his life
around, maybe for good this time. He said that for the first time since he was 14, he was on track to make it through a full year without getting arrested. IN THE PAST SEVERAL YEARS, more than 250 cities around the United States have passed ordinances against panhandling, camping without a license, sleeping outside, drinking in public, sitting on the sidewalk, or some combination of the above. Advocates refer to this as the criminalization of homelessness. These laws
Valerie, Wilber’s roommate, is pictured here with her two dogs.
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One of Deputy Donaldson’s success stories. A former homeless man who now works a full time job with horses and is off the streets.
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haven’t done much to discourage people from living on the streets: On the contrary, homelessness is on the rise in some of the cities with the toughest statutes. An advocacy group called the National Coalition for the Homeless compiles a report on the treatment of homeless people every few years, and Florida’s cities often rank among the “meanest.” The last time the report came out, in 2009, St. Petersburg, Florida came in second, after Los Angeles. A placid town of retirement homes and beachfront restaurants, St. Pete’s lies 20 minutes from Tampa across the glittering bay. Between 2007 and 2009, the city passed six new ordinances cracking down on homelessness. From a certain point of view, St. Pete’s has made homelessness a crime, and homeless people are afraid that Tampa may follow its lead. Last fall, a proposed ban against panhandling appeared before the Tampa city council. One councilwoman, Mary Mulhern, told a local paper she was worried about “criminalizing poverty.” “I just morally couldn’t do that,” she said. Hers was the one dissenting
vote. The ordinance passed by a measure of six to one, and panhandlers now face a fine or a jail sentence of up to a year. The general feeling among the homeless seems to be that the council wanted to “clean up” the city before the big political convention came to town. “The streets kinds of knew it was coming,” one activist said. Some observers describe the proliferation of laws of this sort as a response to the failures of the country’s social services systems. A little more than 10 years ago, hundreds of agencies and advocacy groups around the country made a bold promise—with enough funding and political support, they would effectively end homelessness in America by the end of the decade. Led by the National Alliance To End Homelessness, they asked for $2 billion a year from the federal government, and pressed the government to close the “front door to homelessness” by fixing programs like Medicaid and welfare. The Bush administration embraced the idea of a “10-year plan” and required local community groups to come up with their own versions. Ten years later,
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some observers say that more Americans are homeless than at any point since the mid-1980s. On a given night in the U.S., according to a count by the U.S. Housing Department, around 600,000 people sleep on the streets, in the woods, in their cars, in parks and in homeless shelters— a population larger than that of Washington, D.C. This is a conservative estimate. Some counts put the number closer to one million.
If you include people who’ve been relegated to temporary places like cheap hotels and the couches of relatives, the number doubles. People disagree on why the 10year plans faltered. Neil Donovan, the head of the National Coalition for the Homeless, says that the activist community should have asked for $20 billion up front, instead of settling for $2 billion a year, which ultimately amounted to the same thing. Only a massive lump sum would have sufficed to put every homeless American into housing, he says.
Donaldson answers a call during his meeting with Glassmyer at McDonald’s.
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Other leaders, including those at the National Alliance, blame the bad economy and the missteps of local community groups. Yet homelessness persists even in places where social-service providers have won accolades for their work. Donaldson agrees with Donovan’s diagnosis, but he dismisses his prescription (more money) as a liberal fantasy. “There will never be enough money,” he said. What Tampa needs, he believes, is better policing, and he suspects he’s one of the few people in the country who knows how to provide that. One day this summer, Don-
NO, HOMELESS PEOPLE DON’T USUALLY WANT TO BE HOMELESS. NO, MOST OF THEM AREN’T SCREWED-UP BEYOND REDEMPTION. YES, ALL BUT A TINY PERCENTAGE ARE CAPABLE OF CHANGE.
aldson sat in the lounge area of a Tampa McDonalds, helping two men muddle through a morass of paperwork. Donaldson approaches pretty much every moment of his work with missionary fervor, but he was particularly excited about this meeting. “My first father and son pair!” he said proudly. The father, Gerald Glassmyer, was in his 60s, and he was tall and thin with a hunched body and a cane, the result of a deteriorated disk in his lower back. His son was 40 years younger, and he blinked emphatically, as if fighting off sleep. Donaldson was dressed in the crisp white and grey attire of the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Department, and everything about him, from his boot-camp physique to the narrow, tense line of his upper lip, seemed to speak to his infatuation with discipline, efficiency and neatness. One trait stood in contrast with his rigid appearance, however. As one of his supervisors put it, “Man that boy can talk.” Today, aided by several tall cups of coffee, he was talking disability benefits and housing subsidies, a task that he sees as one of the more mundane aspects of his job. Homeless people are often eligible for help from dozens of government agencies: The Department of Veterans Affairs, the Department
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of Health and Human Services, the Department of Housing and Urban Development. But Donaldson has found that only a small fraction of them even get food stamps. When he first met Glassmyer, Donaldson was appalled to find out that he didn’t have so much as a birth certificate. Donaldson helped him apply for one, and that had marked a turning point in their relationship. At the McDonald’s, Donaldson was eager to reminisce
about those days. “Tell him how we met,” he said, taking a break from the paperwork. Glassmyer smirked. “I was in trouble with the law.” “And the law won?” Donaldson said. Glassmyer explained that he and a buddy had broken into an abandoned house “to suck down some beers.” Donaldson filled in the rest. “I arrested them.” He took a sip of his coffee. Before locking up Glassmyer, Donaldson gave him his card. Glassmyer called a few months later. His 24-year-old son had just
Gerald and Paul Glassmyer, the homeless father and son duo, are currently working with Donaldson to alleviate their situation.
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completed a three-year-prison sentence and had come to stay with him in the woods behind a furniture warehouse. Glassmyer told Donaldson he’d had enough. Donaldson has come up with his own special jargon for his job, much of it inspired by the business and pop-psychology books that he fills with highlighter. When he comes across a piece of information that he thinks he can use to help a homeless person turn his life around, he’s calls it “the hook.” Glassmyer’s “ hook” was his sheer desperation, but about a year later, it was evident that his desperation hadn’t quite propelled him into becoming the optimistic, organized, self-reliant citizen Donaldson still hopes he’ll become. “Gerald?” said Donaldson, looking irritated, after Glassmyer handed back a blank form. “When I give you paperwork and say fill it out? Fill it out.” Glassmyer launched into a lengthy explanation: essentially, someone had told him he didn’t really need it. Donaldson glared at him. “This is why you’re homeless,” he said. Donaldson believes that there are a number of psychological differences between most poor peo-
ple and those who end up on the streets. He thinks that homeless people tend to be more passive and withdrawn, more reluctant to seek help when they need it, more pessimistic about their prospects for success, and more likely to give up at the first sign of adversity. They lack “survival skills,” he say, and he sees it as his duty to change that. He says he can’t help them get off the streets without first “retooling their minds.” SPENDING A COUPLE OF DAYS with Donaldson one gets the impression that he doesn’t have many opportunities for self-expression outside of his conversations with the homeless. Asked about his personal life, he’s uncharacteristically concise: “I’m divorced.” What does he do in his free time? “ I don’t know. Jog.” He’s a font of wisdom culled from books like “Freakonomics” and “The Tipping Point”— stories about how success come to those who challenge conventions. And he believes that most of the conventional thinking about homelessness is wrong. No, homeless people don’t usually want to be homeless. No, most of them aren’t screwed-up beyond
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redemption. Yes, all but a tiny percentage are capable of change. “I used to think like a cop, actually,” he said, sounding almost apologetic as he criss-crossed the city in his squad car. “ I used to keep them in the backseat. One day I moved them to the front seat. Things changed. The mentality changed. This is when I have an opportunity to counsel them—
“IF YOU WANT PEOPLE TO DO BETTER, PUT THEM WITH PEOPLE WHO ARE DOING BETTER THAN THEM. DON’T STICK THEM ALL TOGETHER IN A WAREHOUSE, WHERE THEY’RE JUST REINFORCING THE BEHAVIORS THAT MADE THEM HOMELESS IN THE FIRST PLACE.”
talk to them, rehabilitate them, the one-on-one conversation, mano y mano. You can’t get out of the car with me at 45 miles per hour. You have to listen.” Donaldson’s “front-seat therapy”, as he calls it, is the flipside of his disciplinarian approach. By combining the two, he hopes to carrot-and-stick homeless people into believing that they can do better. He calls this “coupling.” One day in July, he applied the gentler side of this technique to a man named Mark who lived in the woods on the outskirts of town. So far Mark had declined Donaldson’s offers of help, and it wasn’t hard to see why. He and two friends had what one of them claimed was the “best homeless camp in Tampa.” Donaldson concurred. “They’re like the Swiss Family Robinson,” he said. Throughout the country, but especially in the warmer states, people find shelter amid the trees and weeds of neglected lots, in camps that can range from a plastic sheet on the ground to a small village of three- and four-person tents equipped with generators, refrigerators and televisions. Mark and his friends had set up tents
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50 feet away from each other, and Mark’s tent had carpeting, a bed and a bedframe, and an acoustic guitar on a stand. As Donaldson walked over to him, he and a friend were sitting in lawn chairs, smoking cigarettes and talking, and they greeted Donaldson warmly, with smiles and handshakes. Then Donaldson started badgering Mark to get out his guitar. “What’s that John Mellancamp song?” he asked. The last time
he’d dropped by, apparently, Mark had impressed him with a whiskyvoiced rendition of “Pink Houses.” At the end of the jam session, Donaldson reminded Mark that he was available if Mark needed him. Mark smiled politely and said, “I love it here.” Donaldson said he didn’t see that as a problem. The men had found such a remote spot that no one had complained. But as he drove away, he said he didn’t expect Mark to hold out for long. One of Mark’s neighbors had already asked for help moving out. “When Mark sees his friend move
Some homeless people such as “Little John,” pictured here, camp out in the woods, a few encampments more sustainable than others.
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on, it’s not going to be so much fun for him there.” DONALDSON’S PHRASE FOR this is “disrupting social networks.” He wants to replace a community of men who are sad and broken and drunk together, who share each other’s complaints and failures and low expectations, with a “fraternity” of improbable successes who cheer each other on. (Although there aren’t many women on the streets of Tampa, Donaldson has helped some of them, too.) Donaldson sees himself as a member of this fellowship. Although for his first 10 years in law enforcement he had as much contempt for the homeless as anyone, he has since discovered that he has “more in common with them than I would like to think.” Growing up in Tampa, Donaldson was something of a loner; he did not have a very large social network, as he might say. He did have a hero, however. When other kids were going out for football practice or studying for their SATs, he was reading “Trump: The Art Of The Deal” and “Trump: Surviving at the Top.” He worshipped successful “problem solvers”, especially a certain real-estate kingpin
with a big mouth and a brash personality, and he got his own realestate license at the age of 18. But by the time he’d turned 30, several of his ventures had failed. He had a wife and a young son and a drawer full of bills, and although he’d never been a great fan of rules and procedures, he was clean-cut and politically conservative and figured he’d fit in with the culture of lawenforcement. So he gave up on his dreams and became a cop. For a dreamer, and especially one who sees life as a series of solvable problems, the daily work of a beat cop offers few satisfactions. Every 12-hour-shift brings the same mundane dramas: public drunkenness, break-ins, domestic
Mark, Big John and Little John after a jam session outside of their camp.
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feuds. Gil Sainz, a sergeant in the Hillsborough sheriff’s department who worked alongside Donaldson 15 years ago, said, “Ninety-nine point nine percent of the things that we deal with as patrol deputies on a day to day basis are all the ills of society. Sometimes when that’s all that you see, you come to believe that that’s all that there is. Sometimes after a while it weighs on your soul.” When Donaldson started, he was filled with “vim and vigor,” a feel-
ON ANY GIVEN NIGHT IN THE U.S., MORE THAN 600,000 PEOPLE SLEEP ON THE STREETS, IN THE WOODS, IN THEIR CARS, IN PARKS AND IN HOMELESS SHELTERS -- A POPULATION LARGER THAN THAT OF WASHINGTON, D.C.
ing that lasted roughly two years. As the novelty wore off, supervisors grew concerned. He’d lose his temper with old ladies, roll his eyes at departmental procedures. “I was an asshole,” he said. Sainz put it more kindly. ‘”I knew he was burnt out and he just wanted to come in, do the 12 hours and go home.” Donaldson’s marriage buckled and eventually collapsed under the strain. As he now says about life on the streets, “One man becomes an island all to themselves.” Sainz climbed the ranks of the department, became Donaldson’s supervisor and began looking around for a task that his friend might find challenging. Then the word came down about the homeless problem. Many advocates questioned Florida’s spending priorities, and so did Sainz: Budget cuts had virtually eliminated funding for agencies that dealt with mental health issues. Clearly those groups could use all the help they could get, so Sainz set up meetings between them and Donaldson. Donaldson says he sensed “an opportunity” in the assignment, but his ideas didn’t really begin to take shape until few months later,
What may be suitable for a camping weekend must pass as a makeshift residence for the homeless who have chosen to live in the woods.
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when President Obama signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which included a 1.5 billion grant for “homelessness prevention and rapid-rehousing.” A local social worker asked Donaldson to help her find some people to apply for the housing subsidies, so he brought her to a camp in the woods and watched her fill out her forms. “She’s not doing anything I can’t do,” he thought. The truth was that Tampa’s social-services agencies had lost so much funding that they could barely afford to send workers into the field anymore. But there wasn’t a single cop in Tampa who couldn’t tell you where and who the homeless people were and where they lived. Over the next year Donaldson assembled detailed profiles on every homeless person he met, and made a map showing Tampa’s “homelessness hotspots,” and wrote an eight-page “thesis” entitled “Homeless Engagement and Intervention Equals Police Work.” Complaints about homeless people in his district slowly declined. He tactics didn’t win universal approval from the higherups. One commander reportedly
dressed him down after seeing a bunch of disheveled, blearyeyed men hanging out in his office. Then the money from the stimulus bill ran out and all three people who’d gotten apartments through that program ended up back on the streets. Donaldson decided that he’d been unwise to rely on government money, so he persuaded a local property owner to let some homeless folks live in the owner’s dilapidated houses. The selling point: The men would fix up the homes with donated wood and paint, adding value to the properties and deepening their own sense of propriety. So far this “housing gimmick” has provided homes to five people, and Donaldson says it’s increased the value of the homes by thousands of dollars. LAST YEAR, IN AN ATTEMPT to stem the flow of homeless people into the county’s courts and jails, the sheriff’s department in St. Petersburg converted an old jail building into what its website describes as “a cost-effective shelter and service headquarters.” The homeless have their own term for it: “Jailter.” More
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than 250 men and women sleep in separate facilities, on pallets laid flat on the floor, while armed security guards stand outside, turning away anyone who arrives after the 8:30 curfew. Donaldson doesn’t think much of this strategy. “If you want people to do better,” he says, “put them with people who are doing better than them. Don’t stick them all together in a warehouse, where they’re just reinforcing the
behaviors that made them homeless in the first place.” Donaldson hasn’t yet gathered nearly enough evidence to convince skeptics that his approach works best, but it’s hard not to wonder whether other police officers could at least benefit from hearing what he has to say. His own bosses and colleagues are doing just that. Jerry Andrews, a deputy in the Hillsborough sheriff’s department, has spent hours shadowing Donaldson and emulating his methods. And just eight months ago, Tampa’s city police
Officer Donaldson, pictured here with a young man named Bryant, is a pioneering force in how communities should deal with the situation of homelessness.
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department enlisted Donaldson to train one of its officers. Several other police departments around the country have adopted unconventional strategies for dealing with homelessness, too, and in many cases these methods have proved popular with taxpayers and the police.
“I USED TO THINK LIKE A COP. I USED TO KEEP THEM IN THE BACKSEAT. ONE DAY I MOVED THEM TO THE FRONT SEAT ... THINGS CHANGED. THIS IS WHEN I HAVE AN OPPORTUNITY TO COUNSEL THEM … YOU CAN’T GET OUT OF THE CAR WITH ME AT 45 MILES PER HOUR. YOU HAVE TO LISTEN.”
In Portland, a four-year-old police program has placed 87 homeless drug users and chronic offenders into housing, and has reduced their recidivism rate by 43 percent. With his frequent references to “the tipping point,” Donaldson isn’t shy about expressing his hopes for success on a national scale, and he’s especially passionate about his home-improvement endeavor, a scheme that may owe something to his abiding love for Trump. But to see his ideas spread beyond Tampa, he’ll need to convince many other Americans of what he himself had such a hard time believing at first – that society’s most isolated, damaged people can change. And that won’t just mean convincing the taxpayers and the cops. A day after his meeting with Donaldson at the McDonald’s, Glassmyer sat with his son in a gas-station parking lot and offered a gloomy assessment of his situation. “Sometimes you just don’t see to the end of it,” he said. He seemed to be losing hope, but Donaldson didn’t feel sorry for him. “He’s behaving like a victim,” he said the following day. “But he doesn’t talk that way when I’m around. I won’t let him.”
PROGNOSIS UNCLEAR TOUGH QUESTIONS THE AFFORDABLE CARE ACT MUST ANSWER Nurse educator Paula Neira speaks with nurse Stephen Wood at the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore.
BY JEFFREY YOUNG PHOTOGRAPHS BY STEPHEN VOSS
The reception area at Johns Hopkins Hospital’s cheerfully decorated adult emergency department was only about half full, the state-of-the-art trauma rooms were empty, and many of the patient beds were unoccupied on a recent, steamy summer weekday morning. But that’s not the norm for this 123-year-old institution, which opened a glittering new hospital in April. Every month, close to 5,000 adult patients are treated in the emergency department of the downtown Baltimore hospital. Some have major health problems — gunshot wounds, heart attacks, traffic accidents — while others have more minor issues they’re hoping to get taken care of quickly. But many of these patients are simply looking for a doctor, any doctor, and this is the only place they believe will serve them. The law requires hospitals to provide emergency treatment to anyone who comes through their doors whether they can pay or not, which is good for people who have no health insurance or can’t get a doctor’s appointment. But that’s not really what hospital emergency departments are built to handle, said Paula Neira, a nurse educator at Johns Hopkins. “As an emergency practitioner,
my job isn’t to fix everything. My job is to make sure that you do not have an emergent condition going on,” Neira told Huffington during an interview at the hospital. “The sickest people are supposed to be the priority.” When President Obama enacted the health care reform law in 2010, it was supposed to discourage some patients from turning to hospitals for routine care by extending health insurance coverage to tens of millions of people.
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That law, recently upheld by the Supreme Court, may shift non-emergency patients away from hospitals, but many health care professionals still have lingering questions. What’s really going to change when those millions of Americans are covered by health insurance, when access to regular medical care is improved and skyrocketing health care costs start to be reined in? Some worry that the health care reform law may not deliver on its promises, or that if it does, it will bring with it a new set of problems. These reforms will be gradually implemented leading up to 2014, when the biggest part of the law — the expansion of coverage to an estimated 30 million of the currently uninsured — is set to kick in. If we get it right, more people will have the security of health insurance, the nation can become healthier and spending will be restrained. If things don’t go according to plan, it could disrupt the $4.78 trillion health care economy by squeezing hospitals, health insurance companies and state governments. Waits for doctor visits could get even longer. Chances are, we will see both positive and negative outcomes.
Some experts believe if the largest expansion of health care coverage since the creation of Medicare and Medicaid goes wrong, it could also handicap a vital component of America’s economic engine. “Health care in this country is approaching 20 percent of the economy and we have a tremendous amount of uncertainty about what 2014 is going to look like,” said John Lumpkin, chairman of the board of directors at the Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Brunswick, N.J., at a briefing last month sponsored by the Alliance
“Anybody who thinks that they can really predict exactly what’s going to happen is probably making things up.”
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for Health Reform at the National Press Club in Washington. “If that economy bets wrong on what the realities of 2014 will be, the ability to deliver services in an efficient way, to actually be able to meet the demand at that particular time, will be in jeopardy,” said Lumpkin, who also serves as the director of the health care group at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation in Princeton, N.J.. While President Obama and
Republican politicians continue to trade barbs over the Affordable Care Act and the public remains divided over health care reform, the law is taking shape in the real world. With the Supreme Court ruling out of the way, no one can afford to gamble on the law going away, despite vows to repeal it by presidential candidate Mitt Romney and other Republicans. There’s a lot left to be done. Federal officials and state governments must make plans for how to connect as many as 30 million people to health care benefits
Ronald Peterson (left), president of the Johns Hopkins Hospital and Health System, talks outside the center in Baltimore on Aug. 2.
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DOCTORS IN DEMAND In 2008, the demand for primary care physicians slightly exceeded the supply. By 2010, the shortage also included specialists. By 2025, the total shortage of physicians is projected to exceed 15 percent of the demand.
Primary Care & Specialists
900K
SHORTAGE:
Primary Care
SHORTAGE:
DEMAND
Physicians Projected Supply and Demand, 2008-2025
SUPPLY
starting in less than 18 months. Insurance companies are scrambling to find new ways to make money in a brand-new market subject to unprecedented national regulations about who they must cover, how much they can charge and what profits they can earn. Hospitals and other medical providers have to adapt to a world in which they’ll be getting paid not just for what they do, but whether they’re getting more efficient and whether their patients are actually getting healthier. Here are the most important questions about how the law will be implemented.
SOURCE: ASSOCIATION OF AMERICAN MEDICAL COLLEGES
WILL WE REACH THE UNINSURED? The federal government, states, health care providers, health insurance companies and everyone else with an interest in seeing health care reform succeed have a tough task ahead them: reaching out to the millions of uninsured people the law is supposed to help. Although it might seem easy to connect uninsured people with health insurance that will benefit them, simply making it possible doesn’t mean it will happen. “The vast majority of people
500K
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’15
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’20
’25
0
PHOTO OR ILLUSTRATION CREDIT TK
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James Scheulen, chief administrative officer for the Johns Hopkins Department of Emergency Medicine, stands in one of the hospital’s trauma rooms. PHOTO OR ILLUSTRATION CREDIT TK
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who are currently uninsured, who can gain enormously from the Affordable Care Act, aren’t aware of it,” said Ron Pollack, the executive director of Families USA, a Washington-based advocacy organization that used its hefty advertising and lobbying budget, as well as its nationwide grassroots network, to help pass the health care law. “There’s got to be a huge and effective public education, outreach and advertising campaign,” said Pollack, who is on the board of Enroll America, a coalition of health care industry groups and nonprofit organizations that will spend tens of millions of dollars educating the public about the law’s new benefits. A massive and well-coordinated effort has to be ready to go by next October, when small businesses and individuals who don’t get insurance at work can begin shopping for plans — and will learn whether they’re eligible for financial assistance. People who earn up to 133 percent of the federal poverty level, which is $14,856 this year, will qualify for Medicaid coverage. Those who earn up to 400 percent, which is $44,680 in 2012,
can get tax credits to help pay for private insurance. Some small companies also will qualify for tax credits.
WILL INSURANCE COMPANIES SELL PLANS THE HEALTHY WILL BUY? One of the main reasons for enacting health care reform was to end health insurance company practices that excluded people with pre-existing conditions or made them pay exorbitant premiums, overcharged women and
“The vast majority of people who are currently uninsured, who can gain enormously from the Affordable Care Act, aren’t aware of it. We’ve got to reach them all.”
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older people, and excluded coverage for major expenses like maternity care. A key way the law makes this possible is the individual mandate that nearly everyone obtain health care coverage, which will push younger, healthier people with low medical costs to pay into the system. Although the industry should benefit from access to millions of new customers — many of whom will receive tax credits — no one
really knows what this new market for individual health insurance is going to look like. The health insurance industry is weighing these considerations as companies try to determine how to design their new products and how much to charge for them. “Whether or not the costs are affordable will be very dependent on whether individuals who are young and healthy purchase coverage,” Karen Ignagni, the president and CEO of the trade group America’s Health Insurance Plans, said at a conference hosted at the National Press
The exterior of the Johns Hopkins Hospital on Aug. 7.
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SOURCE: OFFICE OF THE ACTUARY AT THE CENTERS FOR MEDICARE AND MEDICAID SERVICES
HEALTHCARE SPENDING
Club by the journal Health Affairs Healtholder, Care Spending last month. If they don’t, As a percentage of the gross domestic product, the sicker people will pay more. The cost of health care in theoverall United States on the rise for decades. As a percentage costhasofbeen health care inover thefive United States has of There’s no guarantee people the gross domestic product, the overall cost has increased by more than three times what it was in 1960. increased by more than three times over the last will go along with the plan. Some five decades. 20% healthy people who buy their own health insurance today may 17.9% see their premiums increase because the law mandates certain 15% Percentage of GDP, 1960-2010 services be covered and doesn’t permit insurance companies to deny policies to sick people with higher medical expenses. And 10% that will increase costs for everyone in the insurance pool. Their coverage may be more 5% comprehensive and more secure 5.2% but a bigger price tag could turn them off. And the penalty for not get0 ting health insurance in 2014 is ’60 ’70 ’80 ’90 ’00 ’10 just $95, or 1 percent of income, whichever is higher. The penalty Source: Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services THE HUFFINGTON POST gradually escalates until it reaches $695, or 2.5 percent of income, in 2016 but that’s still lower than Huffington. “Maybe it’s better to the cost of health insurance. be the market-share winner in the Health insurance companies second year when you know who may be cautious about entering you’re insuring.” these markets until they have a better idea about who their cusWILL BUYING HEALTH INSURANCE EXCHANGES BE EASIER? tomers will be, Sheryl Skolnick, an equities analyst for CRT CapiWhoever winds up being those tal Group in Stamford, Conn., told insurance companies’ customers will buy their products on the regulated exchange marketplaces that go live in October 2013, TIM WALLACE/THE HUFFINGTON POST
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One cabinet of the FEATURE_TITLE pharmaceutical dispensing system at the Johns Hopkins Hospital.
PHOTO OR ILLUSTRATION CREDIT TK
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which will allow people to comparison shop and to determine whether they’re entitled to Medicaid benefits or to tax credits that would defray the cost of private health insurance.. Often described as akin to Expedia.com for health insurance, these exchanges are considerably more complicated because they must access information about the products as well as federal and state records on applicants’ income that will determine whether a shopper qualifies for assistance. That complexity can’t be visible to consumers or the whole project won’t work, said Peter Lee, the executive director of the California Health Benefit Exchange in Sacramento, which will oversee the enrollment of as many as 5 million people into health care coverage starting in 2014. Shopping for insurance must be “as easy as buying a book on Amazon,” Lee said at the Health Affairs conference. “We’re a sales organization. We are not forcing anyone to do anything,” Lee said. “We’re making a product available that people are going to be putting money on the table to buy, so we if don’t approach it like that, we’re going to be dead in the water.”
The authors of the health care reform law envisioned each state setting up its own exchange, but states are making mixed progress — in part because Republican governors and state legislators remain resistant to anything associated with “Obamacare”— leaving the federal government no choice but to step in. Fifteen states and the District of Columbia had exchanges in the works as of Aug. 1, three are building exchanges in partnership with the federal government, seven have decided not to set one up, nine have conducted “no significant activity” and the remainder are weighing their options, according to the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation in Menlo Park, Calif. But time is running out: States
“It’s great if you have insurance, but if there’s nobody there to care for you, it doesn’t really matter.”
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have until Nov. 16 to submit their plans for federal approval. Meantime, the Supreme Court’s decision allowed states to opt out of the health care law’s planned expansion of Medicaid to 13 million poor people. Already, Republican governors in states, including Texas and Florida, have said they won’t broaden the program, which the federal and state governments jointly run. The Congressional Budget Office predicts the Court’s
ruling on Medicaid will result in 3 million fewer uninsured people gaining health coverage.
WILL THERE BE ENOUGH DOCTORS? Health care reform isn’t supposed to just get people on health insurance — it’s intended to help people establish a steady relationship with a doctor who can help them with routine medical care and manage any chronic ailments they have. At the Johns Hopkins Hospital, many of the thousands of patients treated in the emergency department every month would be bet-
Sharon Featherstone tracks inventory at the Johns Hopkins Hospital on Aug. 7.
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ter served in a doctor’s office. “It’s not really primary care that’s delivered in emergency departments. It’s a pretty common misconception. ‘Primary care’ suggests that there’s an ongoing relationship between a patient and provider,” James Scheulen, the chief administrative officer of the hospital’s Department of Emergency Medicine, told Huffington. Emergency care costs patients more because bills are higher, while their health may be worse because they put off treatment. It’s also more expensive for hospitals, not least because uninsured people leave behind unpaid bills — to the tune of $39.3 billion in 2010, according to the Chicago-based American Hospital Association. Johns Hopkins saw $248 million in unpaid bills in 2009. “It’s great if you have insurance, but if there’s nobody there to care for you, it doesn’t really matter,” nurse educator Paula Neira said. “They can’t get into their primary care physicians in a reasonable time frame to deal with an urgent flare-up of something. I’m in pain, I call my doc, the doc says, ‘Well, I can see you in two weeks.’ That doesn’t do me much good,” she said.
Trouble is, there simply may not be enough doctors to handle all these newly insured patients trying to make appointments for check-ups, common illnesses and treatments for chronic conditions. The Association of American Medical Colleges predicts a shortage of 62,900 doctors in 2015, and that will worsen over time. “They’re absolutely right to be concerned about having an adequate primary care infrastructure,” Glen Stream, a physician in Spokane, Wash., told Huffington. “Our primary care infrastructure is stressed and distressed,” said Stream, who is the president of the Leawood, Kansas-based American Academy
“There’s got to be a huge and effective public education, outreach and advertising campaign.”
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of Family Physicians. The shortage of physicians predates health care reform, which includes provisions meant to address it, said Stream. The law provides scholarships and apprenticeships for medical students who want to be primary care doctors, he said. In addition, the reforms raise Medicare and Medicaid payments for primary care doctors and facilitate arrangements between physicians,
nurses, nurse-practitioners, physician-assistants and pharmacists to promote primary care, he said.
CAN HOSPITALS CUT COSTS WHILE MAKING CARE BETTER? Hospitals will be at the epicenter when health care reform goes from being mere legislation, and fodder for politicians, to the new reality. Hospitals accounts for the largest share of U.S. health care spending — more than doctor bills, prescription drugs or anything else. In 2010, Americans doled out $814 billion on hospital
A trauma room at the Johns Hopkins Hospital.
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care, which was 31 percent of the nation’s total health care spending. Containing costs in this area is vital to making health care more affordable and to sustaining Medicare and Medicaid into the future. Johns Hopkins hopes to be ahead of the curve as the American medical system attempts to undergo a fundamental transformation in how health care is delivered and financed. Medicare, Medicaid and private insurance companies are
exerting intense pressure on medical providers to save money. “The expectation of government, payers and employers is that we have to become more efficient, more cost-effective at delivering services,” Ronald Peterson, president of the Johns Hopkins Hospital and Health System, said in an interview with Huffington. “This is the wave of the future and we believe we’re reasonably well-positioned.”
Percentage of GDP, 1960-2010
UNINSURED AMERICANS
In 2010, the number of uninsured Americans rose to nearly 50 million. Between 1999 and 2010, the number of uninsured people increased in every age group aged 19 and older. 50 million 1999-2010 by age
65+ 55-64 30
45-54
SOURCE: UNITED STATES CENSUS BUREAU
35-44 25-34
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19-24 18 & under ’99
’00
Source: United States Census Bureau
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Johns Hopkins has been preparing for a new health care system since before Barack Obama even decided to run for president. After four years of development, Johns Hopkins opened the doors of a new, $1 billion hospital in April to replace venerable but outmoded facilities that originally opened in 1889. The organization has made strides toward streamlining its operations and integrating the activities of its six hospitals, 35 physician practices, a home health care services entity and a managed care operation that covers 300,000 people. Based on the expectation that more people would be insured and more hospital bills covered, industry trade groups endorsed the health care reform law, which also cuts Medicare and Medicaid funding for hospitals by $155 billion through 2019. In addition, the law links Medicare payments to measurable improvements in patients’ medical care, an approach private health insurance companies also are employing. The ongoing debate about federal and state budgets has Peterson concerned the government will cut back even further, though, since Medicare and Medicaid together make up more than 45
percent of Johns Hopkins Hospital’s revenues, he said. Johns Hopkins has taken steps to prepare for a future in which hospitals simply don’t bring in as much money and are paid not for performing the most procedures, but for being more efficient and delivering higher-quality services, Peterson said. Hospitals that aren’t carrying out plans to cut costs, and to base clinical decisions on how well they work, are in trouble, Skolnick said. “If you haven’t already done a lot of that, you’re really going to be behind the eight ball,” she said. “It’s a little late in the game to be getting started.” Whatever else happens, one thing is certain at Johns Hopkins and hospitals throughout the country: patients will show up every day. Some will need high-intensity treatments, others will have lesser complaints but feel they have nowhere else to turn, and many of them won’t have the means to pay. So will health care reform ease the process? When James Scheulen tries to envision what that future will look like, he doesn’t know what to expect and doesn’t believe anyone who claims they do. “Anybody who thinks that they can really predict exactly what’s going to happen is probably making things up.”
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MOVIES
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One Crazy Day in New York
HARLEM
BY CHRISTOPHER ROSEN
EAST HARLEM
UPPER WEST SIDE
UPPER EAST SIDE
CENTRAL PARK
A lot can happen in 24 hours. In Cosmopolis, David Cronenberg’s latest film and adaptation of Don DeLillo’s novel, billionaire Eric Packer (Robert Pattinson) spends an entire day traveling around Manhattan to get a haircut — and loses his fortune along the way. Packer is just one of many screen protagonists who have spent a tumultuous day in New York City, with results ranging from the sublime to the tragic. Click on the clapperboard icons for some of the craziest single onscreen days in in New York history.
Cosmopolis (2012) QUEENS
MIDTOWN MURRAY HILL
GRAMERCY
CHELSEA FLATIRON
EAST VILLAGE
WEST VILLAGE
LOWER EAST SIDE
SOHO
TOP TO BOTTOM: PARAMOUNT/EVERETT COLLECTION; SONY PICTURES/EVERETT COLLECTION; MARY EVANS/RONALD GRANT/EVERETT COLLECTION; 20THCENTFOX/EVERETT COLLECTION; EVERETT COLLECTION; FRED DUVAL/FILMMAGIC/GETTY IMAGES; MUNAWAR HOSAIN/FOTOS INTERNATIONAL/GETTY IMAGES
CHINATOWN
FINANCIAL DISTRICT
NEW JERSEY
B R O O K LY N
HUDSON RIVER
WINDSOR TERRACE
IS ROBERT PATTINSON A GOOD ACTOR? suited to pick up the FOR: He’s got great mantle left behind taste, evidenced by by James Dean. his desire to work with people like AGAINST: Unlike David Cronenberg FOR: While playing Franco and and David Michod, Edward Cullen Depp, Pattinson who’s set to helm in the Twilight seems humorless his next film, The franchise, Pattinson onscreen, Rover. Pattinson has honed his something in direct could be the next smoldering glances. opposition to his Daniel Radcliffe, Like James Franco off-screen persona, an actor who made and Johnny Depp, which is more smart choices post he seems expertly playful and wry. Harry Potter and
seems destined for greatness.
Scorsese and Chris Nolan be knocking down his door? He’s so attached to the Twilight franchise, it may be impossible for him to progress beyond it. He could AGAINST: If he be the next Mark were such a good Hamill, an actor actor, wouldn’t who was never directors like David anyone other than Fincher, Martin Luke Skywalker.
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CELEBRITY
The Essential Guide to Celebrity Slang BY YOUYOUNG LEE
HUFFINGTON 08.19.12
O, KIDS THESE days are not unusually obsessed with a particular brand of frozen yogurt. Drake fans and millennials alike know that “YOLO” stands for “you only live once” — an acronym ripped from the Canadian rapper’s song “The Motto” and meant to be an updated version of “carpe diem.” But cool kid neology extends beyond Drake and Lil Wayne, of course. Take a stab at deciphering these 10 celebrity slang phrases that are currently inspiring hashtags everywhere. FOAF (first one’s a freebie!).
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CELEBRITY
HUFFINGTON 08.19.12
Take the Celeb Slang Quiz! Tap letter to reveal answer
YOLO A
A brand of frozen yogurt and homemade Italian gelato.
A
Used as an expression of cool, style or arrogance.
B
An acronym for “Yo soy un Loser,” an adaptation of a line from Beck’s song “Loser.”
B
Australian slang for fanny pack.
C
Ghetto lingo for really, really cutting edge rubber wristbands.
D
A person who acts like they are wagging an imaginary tail.
C CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: PHOTO BY JOHNNY NUNEZ/WIREIMAGE/GETTY IMAGES; KEVIN WINTER/ GETTY IMAGES; ADAM PRETTY/GETTY IMAGES; CARLOS ALVAREZ/GETTY IMAGES
Swag
D
Meaning “Yo Lover,” used in an insulting fashion, like “yo momma.” Carpe Diem.
YOLO
Twerk Carpe Diem. A B C
✗ D
To rigorously dance, using your MADE POPULAR BY: Drake. butt especially.
Jeah A
A bralet made out of jean.
WHY: Drake fans everywhere know that “YOLO” To be happy or to be good, used stands for “You only live once,” a phrase popularized To modify or adjust slightly. roughly in the same context as by the song “The Motto” off 2011’s Take Care. “yeah.” HOW TO USE IT: “I just drank three bacon-chocolate To attend happy hour after work; martinis. YOLO!”
a combination of the word “twilight” and the German word for work, “werk.”
Industry-speak for a precocious child actor. “Wow, that fat kid on Modern Family is such a twerk.”
B C
✗ D
Spanish for “ouch,” pronounced he-ahhh. Hipster spelling for “gee,” pronounced the same way as the correct spelling. “Jeah man, I don’t know about the shorts.”
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CELEBRITY
HUFFINGTON 08.19.12
Take the Celeb Slang Quiz! Tap letter to reveal answer
Jonesing A
B
Responding to the exuberant text message affections of a potential paramour with brief, vanilla, emotionless messages designed to convey your own total lack of interest. “I suggested a drink next week and he responded with “haha yeah” — can’t believe that asshole is jonesing on me!”
Amazeballs A
Particularly delicious meatballs.
B
An iPhone app that involves a maze filled with bouncing balls.
C
To describe something as amazing, crazy or extraordinary.
D
Male genitalia with social media capabilities.
The gift of having a brief TV career in America that no one can quite remember; named after Steve Jones, former host of The X Factor.
CLOCKWISE FROM LEFT: RAY MICKSHAW/FOX VIA GETTY IMAGES; TIFFANY ROSE/ WIREIMAGE/GETTY IMAGES; NEIL LUPIN/REDFERNS VIA GETTY IMAGES
Amazeballs
C D
Kiki
To crave or desire something something as A hickey so big it looks like To describe A greatly, to essentially want tocrazy or extraordinary. there were feet used to amazing, have what the “Joneses” have. produce it. “Can I offer you
an umbrella to help cover
MADE POPULAR BY: Perez Hilton. A form of dancing that imitates that kiki, madam?” WHY: Seemingly the celebrity blogger’s favorite riding a wild horse. form of expression — after doodling all over A party, often sexual or wild photos in Paint, of course. in nature. HOW TO USE IT: “The party last night even gave away free puppies! Amazeballs!”
B C
✗ D
Someone who is princessy; “Man, that chick with the parasol was such a kiki!”
Updated American terminology for people from New Zealand.
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CELEBRITY
HUFFINGTON 08.19.12
Take the Celeb Slang Quiz! Tap letter to reveal answer
CLOCKWISE FROM LEFT: MATHU ANDERSEN/RUPAUL’S DRAG RACE; DIMITRIOS KAMBOURIS/ WIREIMAGE FOR SWATCH/GETTY IMAGES;TERESA LEE/GETTY IMAGES
Realness A
Emphasis on something cool, or the new “fierce.”
B
Keeping something real or down-to-earth.
C
The new “literally.” “I was walking down the pathway when a giant panda realness jumped in front of me!”
D
To question the veracity of something, used in place of “really?”
Deuces A
What tennis players exclaim when the score is at deuce for the second time in a single game. “Deuces, baby!”
B
The new Four Loko, involving the combination of 36 different juices — or “deuces” — including caffeine, quinine, vodka, whisky, truffle oil, horse urine, tahini, corn syrup, dextrose, Pepto-bismol, brake fluid, liquid fun dip, sriracha hot sauce and hummus; regulatory approval forthcoming.
Throwing C shade Throwing shade
Used as an expression of parting, while simultaneously raising two fingers on each hand to form a peace sign. To insult someone, especially
A
To insult someone, especially or condescending in a haughty in a haughtymanner. or condescending The act of publishing simultaneD manner. ous Facebook and Twitter posts..
B
To be so overweight that you WHY: It makes so little sense that it makes perfect effectively provide shade to sense. the people around you.
✗
MADE POPULAR BY: RuPaul.
C
HOW TO USE IT: “Anyone else feel like Angelina Jolie was throwing some serious shade at Stacy Vomiting. Keibler at the Oscars?”
D
To cool someone down, often by providing them with a beer.
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eWISE
BY KATY HALL
I recently bought a friend a nice wedding gift and traveled at significant expense to her destination wedding. A few weeks later she sent me an email thanking me for the gift. I haven’t responded yet because I feel like wedding gifts should be acknowledged with a written thank-you note. Or is that no longer the case? — G., Boston
Q
Spending hundreds of dollars in plane fare, hotels and wedding gifts is one of the most generous things we do for our acquaintances. A handwritten note is not too much to expect in return. But there’s no need to acknowledge her inadequate acknowledgement of your gift — even the most thoughtful thank-you card does not beg a response. I suspect you don’t
A
ILLUSTRATION BY JASON SCHNEIDER
HUFFINGTON 8.19.12
feel obliged to respond, but are reaching for a way to remind her she is a bad friend. Don’t. She knows she is cutting corners, and there is no use trying to reason with a new bride. A gift is an expression of thanks for a lavish party and best wishes for the couple’s future. Next time you are invited to a wedding, give no more than these things mean to you.
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eWISE
When my adult niece told me that my teenage son had postings with the f-word and drug references on his Facebook page, I went straight to my son to take down those posts. He knows I have no idea how to use Facebook, so I told him how I found out. The next day my niece emailed that he had unfriended her. She didn’t seem particularly fazed by it, but was I wrong to intervene? — Mom glad not to be on Facebook
TOP TO BOTTOM: JOE KOHEN/WIREIMAGE/GETTY IMAGES; CINDY ORD/GETTY IMAGES; SHUTTERSTOCK / MARKO MARCELLO; JEAN BAPTISTE LACROIX/WIREIMAGE/GETTY IMAGES
Q
No, we need to help those who can’t help themselves, and teenage boys need lots of help. But there are sneakier ways to make sure your son isn’t broadcasting his worst habits. A service called ZoneAlarm SocialGuard will alert you when certain words, potential strangers, cyber-bullying or malicious links appear on your child’s page without allowing you to see what he is posting. You can customize it, so be sure to add any code words your son and his friends use to describe their antics. This is only a partial solution, as he may create a dummy page or move the colorful talk to chats if you’re clueless. Mentioning his chances of getting a cool summer job could convince him to clean up his page on his own.
A
Have a question about electronic etiquette? Email ewise@huffingtonpost.com.
ENOUGH ALREADY
totally over. Things we’re
Babies in bars Nail art Palins in reality shows Mike Tyson Cutoff shorts with pocket-lining showing Shia LaBeouf thinking he’s an artist Overanalyzing women’s love lives Sofia Vergara in commercials
HUFFINGTON 8.19.12
There are no disabilities on this field.”
Exit
GREATEST PERSON OF THE WEEK
Aaron Segedi
A Day in the Sun
BY EMMA DIAB
EIGHTH GRADER Tyler Sutherby does not talk much. He does not like to be touched, and he has only mastered reading at a firstgrade level. But when Tyler, a student living with a genetic disorder called Fragile X Syndrome, was asked to read a book to any staff member at Boyd W. Arthurs Middle School, he did not pick his speech pathologist. He didn’t PHOTOGRAPH BY MARVIN SHAOUNI
HUFFINGTON 8.19.12
Exit choose his special education teacher or any other faculty member familiar with his disorder. He wanted Coach Aaron Segedi, or — as he likes to call him — Mr. Football. Segedi, 36, takes his role as Mr. Football very seriously. In Wayne County, Michigan, he’s opened the sport to everyone’s participation, not just athletic young men like the ones he coaches for the Trenton Trojans’ football team. His vision is realized in Victory Day, an initiative he created for special needs children who are autistic or physically or cognitively impaired to actively participate in football. “Victory Day is each kid’s moment to shine,” says Segedi. “There are no disabilities on this field.”
WHAT IS VICTORY DAY? Victory Day, held every September since 2010, involves the whole football community — the marching band, cheerleaders and team. About 60 children and young adults, ages from six to 24, are paired up with a mentor. Some practice skills like tackling, while others learn cheers or play drums for the marching band. It’s a daylong event, but the real fun begins when the game starts — the Trojans play defense against the Victory Day team, al-
GREATEST PERSON OF THE WEEK
lowing them to break through their ranks and score touchdowns to the sounds of a roaring crowd of parents and supporters. “There was one little kid, Noah,” recalls Segedi. “He’s 10 years old, and has Down syndrome. His mom told me that every time Noah drives by the football field he nudges her and says, ‘Mommy that’s where I scored my touchdown.’” Before the first Victory Day in 2010, Segedi said he received a phone call from a father of an autistic boy who was participating in the game. “He said, ‘I have butterflies in my stomach [knowing] that my autistic son in going to play football on Saturday afternoon,’”
HUFFINGTON 8.19.12
Trenton football players run after a Victory Day participant scoring a touchdown.
Exit Segedi said. “How cool is that?” The premise of Victory Day was born when Segedi, who teaches language arts and science at Arthurs Middle School, in addition to coaching, was trying to formulate a community service project for his football players. He wanted the football program to give back to the community and disadvantaged children, as well as help his players build character. Now, even the rival teams in the county come out to participate in Victory Day. “What are we doing as coaches?” he asks. “Are we worrying about wins and losses all the time? We are here to make these kids better human beings.” Segedi recalls the initial reaction from the football team when he told them of his Victory Day plan. “‘You want us to do what on a Saturday in the course of the season?’ they said to me. I said, ‘What’s the priority here?’ They quickly saw what I was trying to get across and said, ‘Hey, let’s try it.’”
AN EYE-OPENING STRUGGLE It wasn’t just his duty as a coach and educator that motivated Segedi to give back to his community. His battle with cancer in 2005 changed his perspective on life. The mar-
GREATEST PERSON OF THE WEEK
HUFFINGTON 8.19.12
ried father of two fought through bio duct cancer, which was brought on by a previous lifelong illness. To combat the lifelong illness, he needed a liver transplant, but to make things more complicated, he couldn’t go ahead with the transplant until the cancer was at bay.
There’s a reason I got cancer twice. I try to believe God gives us an amount that we can handle in life.” Meanwhile, he was told he would likely wait about two years for a new liver, and doctors said he would die waiting. To save his life, Segedi’s sister, Rhonda, donated 70 percent of her own liver. “I promised myself as I went through all of this I was going to make a positive impact on other people’s lives,” he said. As he was planning the first Victory Day, Segedi was thrown into a second round with cancer. This time, it was post-transplant lymphoma disorder, caused by the antirejection medication he was taking for his liver transplant. “There’s a reason I got cancer twice,” says Segedi. “And I try to
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believe God gives us an amount that we can handle in life.” He gets routine tests to make sure the cancer is gone and has no intention to stop teaching, coaching football or planning Victory Day. “I’d have to be on my deathbed,” Segedi said. “It takes a lot to knock me down.”
GOING NATIONWIDE By 2010, Segedi’s cancer was in remission and the first Victory Day had taken place on the turf of Trenton’s Farrar Stadium. As the third annual Victory Day, set for Sept. 15, approaches, Segedi anticipates what’s to come for his initiative. “I want this to go nationwide,”
GREATEST PERSON OF THE WEEK
he says. This year, Nike is even sponsoring his event, providing custom jerseys for the players. The coach has also been speaking to schools across the country about Victory Day, the event spreading to other schools in Michigan, Kentucky, Ohio and Indiana. An initiative whose funds go solely towards the event, any surplus money is passed to another school struggling to form its own Victory Day. “I don’t want any money,” says Segedi. “Our kids now look at it like, we’re so blessed to be able to play this game, to do the things we do that these children would die to do. I want the word to spread for this to be something great.” Nate Stemen contributed to this story.
HUFFINGTON 8.19.12
Captains from Woodhaven, Carlson and Wyandotte high schools help out with Victory Day in 2011.
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HUFFINGTON 8.19.12
Feminist Punk Rockers May Face Years in Prison
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99 Year Old Denied Credit Card Because of Age
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GOLDMAN SACHS WILL NOT FACE CRIMINAL CHARGES
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Threatened Species Used in Shark Fin Soup
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Fareed Zakaria Plagiarizes From New Yorker Article
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Romney Ad Lies Again
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Spider Found Living in Woman’s Ear
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WOMAN STABS FIANCE ON WEDDING DAY
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Year Old Found With Roaches in Her Hair
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Racial Profiling ‘Rampant’ at Major Airport
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