Vero Beach 32963 | Kimberly Thorpe

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British takeover of FlightSafety school has to be good thing

COVID-19 good news: cases down, vaccinations up

MY VERO

BY RAY MCNULTY Staff Writer

BY LISA ZAHNER Staff Writer

The decision by FlightSafety International to sell its 55-yearold Vero Beach pilot academy to a British flight-training school isn’t going to break our hearts – even though the pilot training school once was a significant part of the Vero scene.

The school has been troubled for years, with an abysmal graduation rate in recent years, and it tanked badly during the pandemic. A new owner and new approach to flight training here seems like a good thing.

“With decades of experience in training and education, and long-standing relationships with the world’s leading airlines, our team of directors and staff are committed to attracting top U.S. talent and building the No. 1 flight-training school in the country,” Skyborne Avia-

tested positive for the virus as of Monday, including 594 students, 40 staff members and 101 people whose role was not given.

But the school district’s an-

Indian River County made significant progress in February as new infections continued to decline – with only 34 people a day testing positive on average this past week – and an average of 754 local residents per day receiving a COVID-19 vaccine shot last month.

Hospitalizations on Monday were lower than they’ve been in many months, with 17 people in the hospital with COVID-19.

In more good news, the previously lengthy wait list for vaccinations here has dwindled significantly, according to county Emergency Services Chief Tad Stone. “Our current records show less than 4,000 on the county’s waiting list,” Stone said. “This number continues to go down each week.”

A good number of people, when called, have declined their

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PHOTO BY BRENDA AHEARN

Why is school district underreporting COVID-19?

BY GEORGE ANDREASSI Staff Writer

The Florida Department of Health has reported more than twice as many COVID-19 cases in our county’s public schools

as have been reported by the school district, a Vero Beach 32963 analysis shows.

How is this possible?

The latest state report shows 741 people in the Indian River County public schools have

Hal Du Pont: Remembered by shooters, photogs and cat lovers

Kimberly Thorpe: A meteoric life comes to an untimely end

BY LISA ZAHNER Staff Writer

BY STEVEN M. THOMAS Staff Writer

The loss of 84-year-old Indian River Shores resident S. Hallock Du Pont Jr. last week was felt by many he touched with his kindness, from the world of competitive shooting sports to his circle of friends in the local

The hundreds of people who showed up at Strunk Funeral Home last Friday during visitation for Kimberly Thorpe were a testament to her qualities as a person and to her meteoric career in island real estate.

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NEWS Hal Du Pont

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holding leadership roles in various national competitive shooting organizations.

Members of the shooting community in online forums posted remembrances of Hal over the past week, recalling his kindness, his generosity, his endless willingness to share his knowledge – and even his guns – with up-and-coming competitors learning their craft.

Seventeen years ago, Hal married Barbara in Vero and they traveled about six months of the year so Hal could compete in shooting events and so they both could photograph landscapes and wildlife all over the world.

“We hunted with our cameras; it’s a passion we developed together,” Barbara said. Of their globe-trotting photo shoots, Barbara recalls an expedition to Antarctica as the most harrowing.

“We flew to South America and went by ship, I’m talking 40-foot seas,” she said.

No distance was too far, no trip too extreme in the name of adventure and great photography.

South Africa was Hal’s favorite spot for photographing wildlife, and the cheetah became his favorite animal after he met some rescued cheetahs up

close. “He loved cheetahs because you can pet them, and they purr. You can’t pet lions or tigers,” Barbara said.

A long-time volunteer with a local no-kill animal rescue, Barbara converted Hal’s affinity for the big cats that roam the savannas of Africa into a passion for much smaller cats homeless on the streets of St. Lucie and Indian River counties. Dogs and Cats Forever remembered Hal Du Pont with great affection.

“Throughout the last 14 years, Hal was a true friend to our shelter and supported us in various ways, both large and small. Recognizing the need for the 150 plus cats at the shelter to not only have a comfortable place to live while they awaited adoption, but also to have a building which would showcase them to potential adopters, Hal proposed to finance the construction of a 3,100-square-foot Cat Building that would be connected to the rear of the existing shelter building at 4600 Selvitz Road in Fort Pierce.

“The groundbreaking for that structure was held in 2014, and, by 2015, the cats had happily moved into their new accommodations.”

Personally, Hal and Barbara adopted fostered and rescued a large number of cats over the years, starting with a bonded pair named Thelma and Louise.

“When he crossed over the rainbow bridge, Hal probably had a lot of cats waiting for him,” Barbara said. 

Kimberly Thorpe CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1

Thorpe, 54, who passed away unexpectedly in her sleep on Feb. 20, was “a single mom driving a minivan” around Vero Beach when she decided to go back to work in 2008, she told Vero Beach 32963 in a 2019 interview.

Born in Louisville, Kentucky, and raised in Alabama before moving to Vero in 2000, she had a good education and business experience years before but no background in real estate when she got her real estate license in January 2009.

Going to work for her future husband, Michael Thorpe, at his Vero brokerage, she looked like just another rookie trying out in a tough business at a very tough time for the housing market.

But it wasn’t long before Mike Thorpe saw something special in his new hire.

“She started out in a partnership with another agent but that didn’t work out and it was sink or swim time,” Mike Thorpe said on Sunday.

She swam. Like an Olympian.

In her first year, Kimberly Kent Hardin, her name at the time, was the top listing agent in the office, with $17 million in listings. She was the top selling agent the next year, racking up nearly $20 million in sales.

“She leveraged her experience with the legal profession, the organizational skills and attention to detail, and figured a way to separate herself from the pack and excel in hard times,” said Mike Thorpe.

“She was a very creative thinker and came to me with a lot of unbelievable ideas, things I had never thought of in my many years in the business. She created her own systems and check lists that we still use at the brokerage today.

“I came to see her as a real estate savant, and even though I had always been an independent broker and hadn’t been thinking of taking on a partner, I ended up inviting her to join forces with me.”

Kim had some family money behind her – her father was Lynn Velde, who owned Velde Ford in Vero Beach for many years prior to his death – and she bought half of Mike’s business.

In January 2010, the new partners rebranded the business as Treasure Coast Sotheby’s International Realty.

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combined talents, they held on through the downturn and thrived thereafter, growing sales from around $100 million in 2009 to $450 million in 2019.

After working together for six months or so in the apocalyptic market – an experience that Mike describes as like “going to war together” – the pair fell in love and began what Mike calls “an unbelievably passionate romance and life together.”

They married a few years later, forming a blended family with Kim’s son Harrison, and Mike’s two daughters, Shannon and Rachel Thorpe.

By 2019, the Thorpes’ brokerage had expanded to Brevard County and had some 100 agents listing and selling property from Fort Pierce to Cocoa Beach. In November of that year, they cashed in on their success, selling their business to ONE Sotheby’s International Realty, a Miami-based brokerage expanding up the east coast of Florida.

After the sale, the couple stayed on as broker associates, returning to what both described as the “best part of the business.”

“Listing and selling homes is my passion, and now we will be able to really concentrate on that,” Kim told Vero Beach 32963 at the time of the sale.

With Mike’s daughters heading off to college and Kim’s son Harrison thriving at St. Ed’s, the couple, by all accounts, was enjoying a happy, successful life together, selling lots of luxury real estate while also making time to enjoy things like surfing, fine wine and good friends.

That life came to an abrupt and tragic end two weeks ago.

Kim was at St. Ed’s that Friday, meeting between real estate appointments with Harrison and Michele Sternberg, her son’s college counselor, who also was a close friend of Kim’s.

“We had no idea it was the last time either of us would see Kim alive,” Sternberg said of the meeting. “We talked about Harrison’s transcript and the opportunities he has ahead of him, and she could not have been prouder of him. She was beaming with pride that Harrison was doing so well in school and that the teachers were so impressed with his work.”

Leaving the school that day, Kim stopped to congratulate Wanda Travis, who works in the gate guardhouse at St. Ed’s, and who had just learned she would soon be a homeowner via the Habitat for Humanity program.

“When she first found out I was trying to get a home, she stood by me

from day one,” Travis said. “She was always calling or sending me positive texts, checking in, asking how I was doing. On the Friday before she passed she was even more excited than I was.

I was jumping up and down and we hugged. As she was walking away she said, ‘I can’t wait for next Saturday!’”

– the day Travis would get the keys to her new home.

That night, Kimberly Thorpe went to bed in apparent good health with no known medical conditions and died in her sleep. The cause of death is still unknown.

“I am devastated,” said Mike Thor-

pe. “She was the love of my life and much better than I deserved. Because I am 12 years older than she was, it never crossed my mind that she would go first. I feel lost at times.

“I am OK when I am busy. Work is therapy. Surfing is even better therapy.

And I have had my family around me, but it is hard. When I am alone in our bedroom gathering my thoughts, it is very hard.”

Everyone interviewed for this story that knew Kim described her as someone who greatly enjoyed life – traveling the world with her husband and son, dining in great restaurants before

the pandemic, sharing wine and good times with friends, attending NBA games, rock concerts and the opera.

Her professional peers thought highly of her as well.

“She was easy to work with, always accommodating and at the top of her game,” said Cindy O’Dare, a broker associate at Premier Estate Properties who did business with Kim. “I am shocked and saddened by her death.

I spoke to her last week and she was telling me how much she loved Cabo San Lucas and advised me on some great places to stay there. It is really CONTINUED ON PAGE 10

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heart-breaking to lose her. She was beautiful, had great style and a funny,

dry sense of humor.”

“She was a lovely person,” said Matilde Sorensen, co-owner of Dale Sorensen Real Estate. “I wasn’t close with her, but I saw her often having lunch at Quail. She seemed like a

very, very nice person and was always very professional in her business dealings.”

“People liked her, and she assembled a wide variety of friends,” Mike Thorpe said. “She was kind and gen-

erous and a mentor to many of our agents. There were more than 300 replies on Facebook to the notice of her death. I was incredibly lucky to have the time I had with her and I will never stop missing her.” 

Pandemic makes college planning a challenge for St. Ed’s seniors

BY STEPHANIE LABAFF Staff Writer

St. Ed’s seniors making college plans for next year are contending with a challenging array of COVID-19 related obstacles and uncertainties.

Saint Edward’s School takes pride in the fact that 100 percent of its students are accepted to 4-year universities, and more than 90 percent are accepted to their first or second choice, including an impressive number who have attended Ivy League and other upper-tier colleges.

Things are different this year, though, said Michele Sternberg, director of College Counseling and academic dean.

College schedules are still uncertain as the pandemic continues. Regulations vary from state to state and day to

day, and schools that now plan to open their campuses in the fall could change their minds if the virus rebounds.

In addition, there are fewer openings for college freshmen and more students than ever vying for available spots at selective colleges and universities.

Last fall, a large number of first-year college students across the country chose to defer enrollment – mainly because parents did not want to send their children so far from home during the pandemic, or pay for their kids to attend college virtually.

Many of those students are now ready to take their place as freshman at the schools where they were accepted, taking up space that this year’s high school seniors are competing for.

Because of that, admittance rates

are lower than they have ever been in the history of college admissions, and there have been fewer early acceptance offers this year, Sternberg said.

“Because of all those factors going against us, we’ll have a tougher time with the Ivies this year, but that will be true at every school in the nation.”

Despite these challenges, “the tone from the colleges, kids and parents is one of cautious optimism for this fall,” said John MacMullan, associate head of school and head of Upper School.

However, “if things do not break our way and the COVID precautions continue, I think we will definitely see an uptick in the number of deferrals. People ... don’t want to pay many tens of thousands of dollars for an online experience.”

Another significant change in the

college application process this year that adds additional uncertainty is the sweeping shift to “test-optional” admissions at most major universities and colleges.

This new policy, which no longer requires SAT or ACT scores, has boosted student confidence and more students than ever are “throwing their hat in the ring” and applying to Ivy League schools they previously wouldn’t have considered because their test scores weren’t competitive.

Despite the test-optional trend, “we’ll continue to have our rising seniors go through the testing process and submit testing when it’s strong,” said MacMullan, noting that informal studies show strong test scores give most applicants an advantage.

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