Although yours truly isn’t a big fan, the Popeye’s Louisiana Kitchen being built on S.R. 54, on previously vacant land located directly adjacent to O’Brien’s Irish Pub & Grill in the Wesley Chapel Village Market, does have a building rising out of the ground and should be completed by sometime in early 2017.
The 44-year-old, New Orleans, LA-based fried chicken chain now has more than 2,000 locations not only nationwide but around the world.
And, with its location right off the S.R. 54 exit of I-75, Popeye’s is likely to enjoy success here in Wesley Chapel, too. We’ll keep you posted as the opening gets closer.
The Thrivent Financial Tampa Bay office team: includes (l.-r.) Tanya L. Boutot, Michael Joeckel, Pam Hansen and Jerry Hansen.
Personal financial management and investing are often primarily thought of as a way to enhance the financial interests of the individual. But, investors who put their money and faith in the hands of the associates of Thrivent Financial can grow their community’s assets as well as their own.
Working out of the Tampa Bay office of Thrivent, located in Forest Hills, less than 30 minutes south of most of New Tampa, financial associates Pam Hansen and Michael Joeckel help investors connect their faith and finances.
Hansen and Joeckel possess a combined 50 years of financial planning experience and are registered with the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA). Their areas of expertise include retirement income planning, estate strategies, life insurance and long-term care insurance.
“The reason some folks might be familiar with us is because we have our roots in the Lutheran faith,” says Joeckel.
Thrivent began in 1902, when it was chartered as a fraternal benefit society called Aid Association for Lutherans (AAL). The aim in those pre-Social Security days was to provide mutual security to counter the financial risks individuals faced. AAL combined with a similar organization, the Lutheran Brotherhood (LB), in 2001 to form Thrivent Financial for Lutherans.
In 2013, the company expanded its membership base to include all Christians. Today, there are about 2.5 million member-owners of Thrivent Financial and it is ranked number 318 on the Fortune 500 list for 2016. As of 2015, Thrivent reported having more than $109 billion in assets under management/advisement.
Joeckel, who is a designated Fraternal Insurance Counselor (FIC), which is conferred by the Fraternal Field Managers Association (FFMA), has passed FINRA exams for Uniform Securities Agent, Investment Company/Variable Products Limited Representative, and General Securities Representative. He says Thrivent is not a church and is first and foremost a financial services organization, much like other institutions such as banks, credit unions and brokerage houses.
“We’re not selling Christianity, but we offer services based on Christian principles,” he says.
Thrivent is classified by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) as a not-for-profit fraternal benefits society, giving it a tax-exempt status. Prospective clients qualify as members by affirming they are Christian, as part of the application process.
According to Joeckel, there is no inquiry or judgment as to an applicant’s specific Christian affiliation or beliefs in meeting the IRS’ fraternal standard. “There is no litmus test,” says Joeckel, who moved to Tampa Palms from Connecticut last year.
In cases of mixed-religion families, non-Christian family members can be sponsored and benefits are payable to them just as with other financial service companies, according to Joeckel. “At the end of the day, we’re a fraternal financial services company,” he says. “We’re trying to be the best Christian company we can be.”
As representatives of a Christian financial services organization, Joeckel says Thrivent associates follow Biblical principles such as living within your means and using debt wisely when working with clients to help them manage their finances, protect their assets, create financial security and plan a financial legacy.
Joeckel considers his relationship with his clients to be a process of leading them to “greener pastures.” He says some clients may begin their relationship with Thrivent just surviving or struggling financially but through financial planning and management they often can achieve financial security and even surplus, allowing them to “live generously” and give back to their communities and provide a legacy to their beneficiaries.
“We are equipped in this office to handle people in all strata of life,” says Joeckel. “We’ll take your $100,000 account, but we’ll also take your $1,000 account. We pride ourselves on being a valuable resource to our clients.”
Thrivent’s door also is open to people who are unsure about the financial road map they may already be using to guide them on their fiscal journey, says Hansen, who has earned the following industry designations through continuing education courses at the American College of Financial Services in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania: Chartered Financial Consultant (ChFC), Chartered Life Underwriter (CLU), and Retirement Income Certified Professional (RICP). She also has earned her FIC designation from FFMA and passed FINRA exams for Uniform Securities Agent, Investment Company/Variable Products Limited Representative, and General Securities Representative.
“Second opinions are free,” she says. “If you’re working with someone we can provide a second opinion and do an analysis of where you’re at.”
Establishing a professional relationship with Thrivent begins with a lengthy, introductory conversation with a financial associate who, according to Joeckel, will ask plenty of questions, such as, “If you had to, could you live the next five years on what you have so far?”
Asking questions and examining financial facts — ranging from pay stubs to budget sheets — will reveal how effectively people are progressing toward their goals.
“We help you determine whether your actions will help you reach your intentions.” Joeckel says.
Taking time to understand a client’s situation is important, and Joeckel says he is committed to doing that, as an initial consultation will typically last two hours.
“We’re not product people, we’re process people,” he says, “so we’ll meet again and again.” Joeckel refers to this approach as “relationship-based” financial counseling and planning.
Sometimes the meeting topics will be about things a lot of people don’t like to discuss, but eventually will. Hansen says it is better to do so sooner, rather than later.
“Everybody wants to grow money, but we’ll also talk about what happens when you die,” she says. “We’re not averse to having those tough conversations (with you).”
Philanthropic Options, Too!
Connecting faith and finances through philanthropy is another feature of Thrivent, as its tax-exempt status allows it to direct money normally paid as taxes to the government to be distributed to charitable causes and to fund projects benefiting local communities.
According to the Thrivent website, more than $325 million has been distributed to churches and nonprofits nationwide since 2010, including more than $3 million to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, TN. Members participating in the Thrivent Choice Dollars program also can recommend directing funds to eligible nonprofit organizations they wish to support, giving them a say in where the company’s local money goes.
Thrivent members also can apply for $250 grants to fund projects they initiate within their local communities. And, Thrivent Builds is a partnership between Thrivent and Habitat for Humanity that undertakes projects to build and repair homes.
Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) rules prohibit testimonials on behalf of financial advisors, but ratings by industry organizations such as A.M. Best, a an insurance industry rating agency, are permitted. Thrivent is rated A++ “Superior” by A.M. Best as of June 2016 and Thrivent’s credit rating as determined by Fitch Ratings Inc., is AA+ (“Very strong”) as of May 2016. Ratings reflect the overall financial integrity and claims-paying ability of Thrivent and do not apply to the investment performance of investment products.
For more info about Thrivent Financial, you can visit Connect.Thrivent.com/tampa-bay-office, or call 443-5088. Thrivent’s Tampa Bay office is located at 1202 W. Linebaugh Ave., Suite C, in West Tampa.
Schuyler Arakawa and her mother Meridith Hankenson in their Citrus Park home.
Dyane Elkins IronWing can still picture Schuyler Arakawa as a long-haired little girl filled with fire, prancing around her New Tampa Dance Theatre (NTDT) floor in rainbow-colored socks, cowboy boots and a mini skirt, her beaming smile lighting up the room with an energy so pure it was impossible to resist.
When she looks at Schuyler today, Dyane says she sees the same thing. The smile is still bright, the dimples are irresistible, the energy still pure.
“She was angelic then, and angelic now,’’ Dyane says.
It’s as if nothing has changed, even if everything has.
On Feb. 19, Schuyler, her mother Meridith Hankenson, sister Saya and brother Lyndon will quietly mark a one-year anniversary that many in the same situation would rather forget.
Meridith doesn’t know if her youngest daughter ever saw the large boulder roll off the 30-foot-high cliff that day and plummet towards the water. Schuyler doesn’t remember it crashing into her face, driving her deep under the water, crushing her skull, breaking her leg, collapsing her lung, fracturing five vertebrae in her spine and almost killing her.
What they do know, however, is this: it changed their world forever.
Schuyler Arakawa with her sister Saya.
Today, Schuyler, who is 23 years old, is moving forward, with many of the same hopes and dreams she had before.
A former Arbor Greene resident and longtime student at the NTDT on Cross Creek Blvd., Schuyler had the world at her feet a year ago.
She is a Berkeley Prep and Yale University graduate, and was on a mission to make the world a better, happier place. There was nothing she couldn’t do.
Now, she is starting over.
She goes to therapy three days a week, travels once a week to Tarpon Springs for aqua therapy, takes a yoga class and is trying to learn how to speak again, how to get up out of her wheelchair and walk again.
She is still joyous, however, in an amazing sort of way. She breaks out into smiles and laughter while finishing off leftover tacos for lunch in the Citrus Park townhome she now lives in with her mother.
Forrest Maddox, a friend from Yale who visits from New York every few months, smiles and laughs with her, reaching over to rub her arm.
Frodo, the family’s 13-year-old dapple dachshund, clickety-clacks across the floor at her feet, a treat in her mouth, perhaps to keep it from Tinkerbell, their chocolate, long-haired dachshund.
It is a quiet, peaceful, normal day. Schuyler had physical therapy in the morning, ate a big lunch, and is looking forward to her daily three-hour afternoon nap.
Her therapy is exhausting. “Everything is hard,’’ she says, quietly. “But I have to do it.”
Schuyler getting a view of the Glacier National Park in Montana. Photo credit: Brontë Wittpenn
Schuyler had traveled the world to so many places before the boulder rolled off that cliff in Colombia. She helped children and adults to read in Tanzania, and had worked with a pistachio plantation that was the lifeblood of a village in Indonesia.
She made friends everywhere she went, and created for herself a worldwide social network to help benefit the less fortunate.
Schuyler’s passion was social enterprise, and on a brief break from building schools in Peru, she was enjoying the cool water during a rafting trip. She had taken a few days of vacation before what was going to be the second installation of a Yale-affiliated post-graduate fellowship, which involved weaving for the Threads of Peru, a not-for-profit social enterprise which spreads Peruvian culture and creates a sustainable market for the local artisans by selling handmade panchos, scarves and bracelets, to name a few.
Meridith remembers getting the phone call from one of Schuyler’s friends with her at the time, Dana, frantically telling her Schuyler had been hurt.
She might not live, the friend said. Meridith needed to get to Colombia.
So began a frantic, spellbinding and critical 72-hour period in which every minute mattered, and every decision was life or death.
Schuyler on a mission trip to Tanzania.
Meridith didn’t speak Spanish, and didn’t know anyone from Colombia, but she knew she needed help. She’s not sure why, but she posted a plea on Facebook.
One of Schuyler’s friends knew a woman who was originally from Colombia. Her name is Amalita Estrada, and her daughter had attended Berkeley Prep with Schuyler. Along with another family — Chris and Georgette Tsavoussis, whose daughter Alexis went to school with Schuyler and immediately created a GoFundMe page for her classmate that raised more than $200,000 — they began helping to pave Meridith’s way in and out of Colombia.
“I got a phone call as I was checking out at the grocery store, and for some reason I felt a connection instantly,’’ says Amalita, who had never met Schuyler or her mother. She had to look in her daughter’s yearbook to even see what Schuyler looked like.
She began making calls from her Tarpon Springs home, trying to get Meridith to Colombia, eventually booking her plane tickets.
She called her cousin, a neurosurgeon in Bogota, the capital of Colombia.
Amalita told him he needed help getting Schuyler to Bogota, where the main hospitals would be. He asked where Schuyler was, and Amalita told him Socorro, in the northeastern part of Colombia.
Her cousin told her to take a deep breath and relax. It just so happened that one of Colombia’s best neurosurgeons, and his former teacher, had retired to Socorro, a small town of 30,000. And not only that, he had built an Intensive Care Unit in the middle of this small city because there had been so many motorcycle accidents in the area.
“Out of his own heart and goodwill, he built that there, because there was a need,’’ Amalita said. Without it, it is unlikely Schuyler would be alive today.
“That saved her life,’’ Amalita says.
Schuyler had been pulled from the river by the tour guides, and transported along dirt roads to the hospital in Socorro. Amalita doesn’t know how they did it, but they had help from an American man, she says, who just happened to appear and helped them get Schuyler up the ravine and into a vehicle. No one saw him again.
“An angel,’’ Amalita explains, because how else would you?
At the ICU, doctors stabilized Schuyler, but the prognosis was still grim. Meridith and her two other children couldn’t get a flight out of Tampa, so they raced to Miami to catch the last one out that night to Colombia.
Meanwhile, the woman back in Tarpon Springs that they had never met and didn’t know was making calls, talking to doctors, organizing transportation and making the biggest decisions of the family’s life.
“Amalita was a blessing,’’ Meridith says. “I didn’t know her, but I could feel her energy, and I think Schuyler could too.”
On the flight to Colombia, a near calm had come over Meridith. A deeply spiritual person, she says she reached deep into her soul and found a positivity, a peace, that even she didn’t know was there.
She decided, on the airplane, that Schuyler was going to be all right…and nothing could shake her from that belief.
When Meridith arrived, the doctors showed her the x-rays.
“A whole part of her skull was gone,’’ she says. “They told us for sure she would not see, ever again, no possible way. She would never smell, or taste, if she survived at all.”
By the next morning, on Feb. 20, a CAT scan revealed dramatic improvement. Though in a medically induced coma, Schuyler had already begun the fight.
In the ICU, Meridith told Saya she wished she could play music for Schuyler, because she loved it so much. She fiddled with her cell phone, but there was no Wi-Fi, and she was not receiving service despite her efforts to load Pandora.
She says she placed her phone on top of the paper towel dispenser while she washed her hands, and “all of a sudden Izzy’s ‘Somewhere Over The Rainbow’ comes blasting from my phone.”
Meridith reaches out her arm as she recalls the moment. “Look, my hair still stands on end when I tell this story.”
Somehow, the Pandora app on her phone began playing, even though her phone still had no bars. They gently placed it on Schuyler’s bed and agreed not to touch the phone again. The playlist continued to pipe in tunes. “It proceeded to a playlist that was as if she was having a conversation with us,’’ Meridith said. “It was mind-blowing.”
She wrote down all the songs as they played, and later published them to a “Schuy is the Limit” Facebook page, which Meridith started during her time in Colombia to keep the hundreds of Schuyler’s friends from around the world updated.
The Facebook page proved to be a wonderful source for the family, as prayers and well wishes poured in.
Some wrote that Meridith’s updates were so filled with a positive joy, that it transformed their lives. One mother wrote that her son had been suicidal, but after following the daily posts had told his mother he loved her for the first time in years.
Meridith and Amalita were talking on the phone regularly, about getting Schuyler out of Colombia and to Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami, where they would eventually meet.
The second night in the ICU, before one of her many surgeries early on, the two mothers talked about positive colors, and how they can affect mood. Independently, they had both imagined Schuyler in a room awash with the healing colors of purple and green. “I thought, well, that’s interesting,’’ Meridith said.
The next morning, at 6 a.m., the doctors and nurses show up, wearing purple scrubs. Meridith found the head nurse, and wanted to give her a hug to thank her. The nurse’s name was Violet.
After the surgery, a new nurse had rotated in. Her name was written on the whiteboard in Schuyler’s room — it was Hazel, which is, of course, a shade of green. And, everywhere Meridith looked that day, people seemed to be wearing purple and green.
“There were a lot of things like that happening,’’ she remembers. “Things like that were smattered throughout the whole process.”
Over the next couple of weeks, as Schuyler recovered, there were more miracles.
The girl that was never supposed to be able to smell again complained about a particular aroma from the essential oil that was being diffused near her.
The girl that was never supposed to see again, whose optic nerves had been smashed by a direct hit from a boulder, tapped the correct number of fingers when the doctors asked how many fingers they were holding up.
The room erupted in cheers.
Once they were able to get her back to the U.S., doctors in Miami worked on putting Schuyler back together again. In March, Meridith posted on Facebook:
“Dear sweet Schuy is going to continue her titanium transformation beginning at about 6 am tomorrow morning. She will have a rod placed in her right thigh then screws and wires in her left ankle, shin and knee cap. The miracles of modern science!”
While Schuyler may need an additional surgery to repair her right eyelid later this spring, she has not required any other surgeries, remarkable considering that the boulder had made a direct hit on her head.
Amalita is Catholic, so she has read all about miracles. But, this was the first time, she says, that she had been a part of one.
“I tell everybody that you hear about these many miracles in Biblical times, and about angels and the Pope and so many religious stories, but before my eyes, I can testify that this is a miracle,’’ she says.
She is witness to it every week. She had a pool, so Amalita volunteered to learn aquatherapy. On Thursdays, Meridith drives Schuyler to Tarpon Springs for treatment. Amalita marvels at the progress she gets to see.
“It’s a beautiful, flowing story, and Schuyler is getting better when the odds were that she wasn’t supposed to.”
It has been almost a year since the accident, and the road to recovery is still a long one for Schuyler. But, she isn’t angry, she never asks why this had to happen to her, and she remains undaunted.
“She is championing her way through this,’’ Meridith says. “Neither she nor I have any doubt that within another year, she will be walking.”
The mother has been transformed, too.
Before the accident, things hadn’t been easy for Meridith. There were bad relationships, failed businesses, financial strife.
At times, life had proven difficult.
Before she got off that plane in Colombia, though, everything had come together. She looked at her past, and how it had shaped her for this moment. She was determined to will Schuyler to live, until she could arrive at her side. Once there, in concert with all of the wonderful medical advances employed by the doctors and nurses, she draped her daughter in love, and powered her to recovery, until she could bring her home, and take care of her.
Everything that Schuyler wanted to be before the accident, Meridith will make sure she still becomes.
“I am in awe of the beauty of this mom and her daughter,’’ says Amalita. “What Meridith has done, her positivity, it defies belief. Schuyler would not have survived without her.”
Schuyler has plans to start a travel website, based on the travel blog she kept before the accident. It will highlight user-generated trips made by the more curious travelers, who eschew the typical Top 10 places to visit in a city.
“If you’re ever in Montana, for example, go see the Garden of One Thousand Buddhas,’’ Meridith says.
The website will keep Schuyler engaged, as she is currently brainstorming ideas. “By the time Schuyler is up and running, she’ll be able to use her own passport and will have plenty of ideas for places to visit,’’ Meridith says.
Forrest was one of Schuyler’s closest friends at Yale, and he says he still sees the same joy and enthusiasm in her face he did before the accident. Her says her personality is the same and that he has little doubt that whatever she chooses to do, the best is still ahead for her.
“I don’t see this being a defining story for Schuyler, which is weird to say,” Forrest says. “I honestly think this is something where, she’ll be doing something else amazing and she’ll say, ‘Oh by the way, a couple of years ago I was in this horrible accident, but right now I’m doing this incredible thing.’”
In October, Elkins IronWing, who helped teach Schuyler jazz, ballet, modern and even hip-hop dance (“She loved them all,’’ Meridith says) for more than a dozen years at NTDT, held a large Dance-a-Thon fund raiser for her.
Hundreds showed up, and dozens of local businesses chipped in to pull it off. Dyane was not surprised about the large turnout.
“She was a light that everyone was drawn to,’’ Elkins IronWing says. “I always tell people, if you met her for five minutes, you would remember her for the rest of your life.”
When Dyane saw Schuyler for the first time after the accident, she was overcome with emotion. Her voice chokes up even now recalling the moment, how she so badly just wanted to run to her former pupil and kiss the familiar dimples on her cheeks.
“From the time the accident happened until that moment, she was on the front of my brain,’’ Dyane says. “I just wanted to see her, feel her and kiss her to let her know that everything would be okay.”
The women of Threads of Peru didn’t get the chance to host Schuyler, but her story moved them to make 10,000 of the very same bracelets with the exact pattern Schuyler was wearing that day on the water. She still wears that bracelet today.
Dyane sells them at her dance studio, for $10, with all proceeds going to the cost of Schuyler’s medical care and therapy.
Schuyler has a long way to go to “complete” recovery, or as close as anyone can get to that after a boulder lands on their head. But she’ll get there. She promises.
“I’m just a positive person,” she says.
To follow Schuyler and Meridith on Facebook and learn more about her amazing recovery, search Schuy is the Limit. To purchase a bracelet at the New Tampa Dance Theatre (10701 Cross Creek Blvd), visit Monday-Thursday 4 p.m.-8 p.m., or 9 a.m.-1 p.m. on Saturday.
Ok, so I freely admit that while I love cooking on a grill, I’m not the biggest fan of barbecue food, especially at most places. One advantage (or disadvantage?) for me as I’ve aged is that my stomach just can’t handle most BBQ sauces.
But, the casual, new Union 72 BBQ in the Shops at Wiregrass mall is not your usual BBQ place. Yes, there’s a slew of smoked meats from which to choose — and there are some unique options among those that I am excited to tell you about — but it’s quite honestly mainly the non-BBQ-style offerings at Union 72 that really do it for me, even though, at one time, I consumed full racks of ribs in one sitting. I still love ribs, but these days, I usually just stick to enjoying one or two of someone else’s ribs (at the most) before I give up.
Well, Union 72 co-owners Jeff Martin and Bharat Chhabria and pitmaster Geoff Zukosky definitely have my attention. One bite of graphic designer Blake Beatty’s Union 72 St. Louis-style ribs and I was hooked. The ribs are prepared with Union 72’s own house-made dry rub, marinated overnight and slow-smoked to perfection. They’re served wet or dry, so I was glad that Blake ordered his dry (the marinade creates a glaze that gives these fall-off-the-bone-tender ribs a nice crispy edge), even though the photo above (provided by Union 72), are shown wet. I’m also partial to Union 72’s Texas-style beef brisket and I enjoyed tastes of the pulled pork and even the country-style sausage.
As I said before, however, I am even more impressed by Union 72’s non-smoked items, like the southern fried hot chicken tenders, which are buttermilk-battered and rubbed with Union 72’s chef-created “Fire” rub. If you like the Nashville hot chicken at that fast food chicken joint, I’m betting you’ll love these super-crispy-outside, tender-and-juicy-inside beauties even more.
I also absolutely loved the Conquistador sandwich, which is still smoked pulled pork, but Spanish-spiced (like at a great Cuban place), topped with a green chimichurri sauce, caramelized onions and topped with a perfect sunny-side-up egg that absolutely oozes into every bite, all on a tasty brioche bun.
Other chef-created Union 72 favorites at our office include the tacos — available with brisket, pork or your choice of smoked meat — the dry-rub (think spicy blackened) hot wings, the pulled chicken salad and the marinated, slow-smoked half chicken.
There are a couple of Asian-influenced sandwiches at Union 72 I’m planning to try on my next couple of visits — the Vietnamese-style Banh mi sandwich (photo, right), which puts slices of that slow-smoked brisket on a baguette, topped with pickled vegetables, cucumbers, bean sprouts and spicy aioli; and the Far East sandwich, which is slow-smoked, chopped pork topped with kimchi, drizzled with Union 72’s house-made Sticky Asian barbecue sauce, and finished with fresh cilantro, scallions and toasted sesame seeds.
Some of these sandwiches are served with your choice of a side and so far, I’m pretty much loving all of ‘em. The corn on the cob, collared greens, fries, house-made slaw, smoked bacon mac & cheese and the smoked, loaded baked potato all get high marks from me. I’m not a big fried okra fan, but lots of Union 72 regulars seem to love it, too. I’ve only sampled three or four of the sixhouse-made sauces to date, but my favorites are the white BBQ and Sticky Asian.
Speaking of folks who already visit Union 72, which has been open about two months at our press time, 900º Woodfired Pizza (also located in the mall) owner Steve Falabella and Little Italy’s (on S.R. 54 in Lutz) owners Carl and Jessica Meyers rave about the place, as did everyone in my office who got to try it the day I wrote this article.
The Brass Tap Connection
Martin is probably familiar to a lot of you, as he opened the first Brass Tap (in the space adjacent to what is now Union 72) in the mall more than eight years ago. Today, Martin and a variety of partners and some franchisees now have 39 Brass Taps in more than a dozen states. The Wiregrass location which previously had only served dozens of beers from around the world and a variety of wines, recently added full liquor, which has only brought in more people to an already popular watering hole and night spot.
Chhabria met Martin when he bought a franchise and the two shared a love for great barbecue and wanted to be able to offer good prices for their “flavors of the world.” Martin even says that Union 72 is now adding a variety of small, shareable appetizer platters — like unique nachos and more — to better serve his thirsty (and often hungry) customers at the Brass Tap.
Speaking of beverages, I love the local Cigar City craft lager on draft (served in mason jars) and house merlot and chardonnay also are available.
And, by the time you read this, you’ll be able to check out Union 72’s expanding catering menu, which you should consider if you want everyone to rave about the food at your “Big Game” party. Union 72 will even provide employees to work your party, to make sure everything is perfect. And, based on my experience so far, it will be!
Union 72 BBQ (2000 Piazza Ave., Suite 150) is open 11 a.m.-9 p.m. every day & until 10 p.m. on Fri. & Sat. For info, call 575-9999, or visit Union72.com. Please tell Jeff & crew we sent you!
This pic of Zammy went viral after it was posted on reddit, and Todd Pitner says it has been viewed more than a million times.
On the social media site reddit, there’s a “subreddit” called “aww” – as in, “things that make you go AWW! –like puppies, bunnies, babies, and so on…” And on that subreddit, you’ll find a picture of one local pup, named Zammy, hanging out at the Shops at Wiregrass mall. His photo, titled “Girls loving this huge fluffy sheepadoodle,” has gotten more than a million views and 11,000 “up-votes” on the site.
A “sheepadoodle” is a fairly new breed that is a mix between an Old English sheepdog and an extra large standard poodle. Zammy is just a year old and already weighs 100 pounds.
His owner is Todd Pitner, a resident of K-Bar Ranch off of Cross Creek Blvd. in New Tampa, where he lives with his wife, Yana, and youngest daughter Vlada, who is 13. His other three daughters are adults who live on their own.
Todd says that Zammy is so “visually unique” that he tends to attract a lot of attention. He says he often takes Zammy for walks around the Shops at Wiregrass.
“Everyone goes nuts over him, wanting to pet him,” says Todd. “It takes me a couple of hours to do a loop around Wiregrass.”
During a walk over the Thanksgiving weekend, he snapped the photo that would soon go viral. Two girls at one of the outdoor dining areas asked to pet Zammy. Todd snapped the photo, posted it to his Instagram account, and it took off. “
The photo is just pure joy,” Todd says.
While Zammy had about 600 followers before his photo hit reddit, he now has more than 12,500. “It went from 600 to 1,000 overnight, then 2,000 in a week, then 9,000.”
Todd says he set up the Instagram account @ZammyPup because all of his daughters use Instagram, so he thought it would be a fun and interactive way to share pictures.
In fact, it was because of one of his daughters that Todd has Zammy today. He first came across a sheepadoodle while walking through Manhattan on a trip with his daughter, Alix. He saw someone walking a sheepadoodle and was fascinated. “I asked for breeder information and contacted her,” says Todd. “Turns out Zammy is that dog’s brother, from the same parents.”
Todd says Zammy was born on Dec. 17, 2015, and delivered from that breeder in California on Valentine’s Day. “It seemed like every day he grew a pound.”
Todd wanted a new dog in his family because, at the time, his beloved German shepherd, Rio, was aging and in fact, has recently passed away. So, Zammy’s family now includes a new German shepherd puppy, Zeus, and a 12-year-old schnauzer, Jocko.
Zammy is actually short for “Kazaam,” a nod to Todd’s college years, when he performed as a magician, and eventually nicknamed his older girls “Abby Cadabra” and “Alix Kazaam.” Since it was on the trip with Alix that he was introduced to the sheepadoodle breed, it was her nickname that ended up inspiring the dog’s memorable name.
When asked if he considers himself something of an ambassador for sheepadoodles, he denies he’s trying to make any kind of statement.“I love the breed,” he says. “Zammy’s just a really special dog, with a special personality, and he brings joy to people.”
Popeye’s Louisiana Kitchen Getting Closer
