There are those cherished individuals who make life better for other people, and there are those unfortunate individuals who make life more difficult for those around them. These two current news stories illustrate this perfectly.
Juanita Schultz, an elderly Englewood beachfront homeowner, is known to call law enforcement to chase beachgoers off her beach, which she believes extends all the way to the water–even going so far as to give the sea turtle volunteers a hard time. Apparently her angst got the better of her, and according to the Herald Tribune:
In June 2010, wildlife officers arrested Schultz after she removed stakes marking the location of a sea turtle nest on her property. She kicked sand over the nest and put a beach chair on top of it, according to official reports.
Schultz was convicted of the crime (a felony) and was sentenced to two years probation, 100 hours of community service, and is to pay $500 in court costs. Apparently her advanced age and declining health led the judge to go easy on her. Video here on WINK news.
Contrast Schultz with Mary Nelson, a sea turtle monitoring and conservation volunteer recently profiled in the Coastal Breeze News:
From May through October each year since 1995, Mary is up at 6 a.m., patrolling the beaches of Marco Island on an all-terrain-vehicle and on foot for three hours or more in all kinds of heat and weather. I’ve spent a little time with turtle volunteers and I can tell you that it is a physically demanding and difficult job with some very exacting requirements for recording data and handling turtle nests, eggs and hatchlings.
Because of volunteers like Mary, we know a lot more about turtle nesting in Florida and have a much better handle on turtle behavior and populations and whether they are increasing or decreasing.
One can only hope that America continues producing more people like Mary, and fewer with Ms. Schultz’s attitude.
Finally, I must note that as many people reach advanced age, they undergo changes that cause them to act in ways that may not reflect who they were for most of their lives. I do not know Ms. Schultz, so I do not pass judgement on her personally (though many of her neighbors apparently do not have nice things to say about her based on the Facebook comments below the article in the Herald Tribune).
This was the first such case brought in Charlotte County and it was hoped by wildlife officials that Ms. Schultz would receive a tough sentence as an example to deter future offenders. Unfortunately, I think this was not a good test case for the law, given the advanced age and health of the offender.
