The Pasco County Sheriff’s Office is looking for a white Hyundai Elantra with red rims in relation to Sunday’s shooting at Quail Hollow Golf & Country Club.
The PCSO releases pictures of the vehicle Monday morning.
On person was shot and suffered non-life threatening injuries at QHG&CC, located at 6225 Old Pasco Road. Pasco sheriff’s deputies say there was a party at the club with about 500 guests, most of of them from outside Pasco County, when someone possibly fired gun shots.
A second person received a cut to their hand that appears to be unrelated to the shooting.
If you can identify the suspects or the automobile, call 1-800-706-2488, or leave a tip on the PCSO website at pascosheriff.com.
Although I was already 30 when TV star Mario Lopez began his five-year run as AC Slater in the “Saved By the Bell” TV series, I remember that not only was I a fan of the show, but so were my sons, neither of whom had yet reached double digits when the original “Saved By the Bell” series ended in 1994.
Today, Lopez is starting his tenth year as the co-host of the Emmy Award-winning daily syndicated “Extra” TV series. So, what was this Hollywood star doing in Wesley Chapel on April 22?
Lopez spent the day with Wesley Chapel Nissan owner Jay Rosario, including a four-hour appearance at the dealership, which was named the first Motor Trend magazine-certified auto dealership in Florida, meaning that the dealership’s pre-owned side only sells pre-owned vehicles that have been certified (inspected, upgraded and guaranteed) by Motor Trend.
“It’s a big honor,” Wesley Chapel Nissanpublic relations manager and Greater Wesley Chapel Chamber Ambassador Troy Stevenson. “We wanted to reach as many people as possible with the news about Motor Trend and Mario Lopez sure delivered.”
In fact, a crowd estimated at 1,100 people by the Pasco County Sheriff’s Office — which was on-hand in force for the event and of which Rosario, executive GM Joey Falcon and their staff have been major supporters — came to see Mario, who threw Wesley Chapel Nissan T-shirts, posed for pictures and signed autographs for dozens of excited guests the last couple of hours of the event, which included giving away more than 900 hot dogs. Some of those attendees also got to enjoy gourmet cuisine like filet mignon sliders provided by Vesh Catering in the VIP area inside the dealership.
Rosario, an Orange County Sheriff’s Office reservist who lives in Orlando (where he owns Celebrity Nissan), was one of the first people allowed inside the Pulse Night Club following the mass shooting tragedy there in June of last year. I hope to be able to discuss both the aftermath of that horrible event with him and his support of Pasco Sheriff Chris Nocco in a future episode of WCNT-tv and in these pages. — Gary Nager
Cathy & Dr. Todd Di Leo of the Intrinsic Wellness Clinic in the Windfair Professional Center off BBD Blvd. in Wesley Chapel
Todd Di Leo, D.C. (Doctor of Chiropractic) is the owner of the Intrinsic Wellness Clinic, located in the Windfair Professional Center, across Bruce B. Downs Blvd. from Florida Hospital Wesley Chapel (FHWC). Dr. Di Leo is a chiropractic physician and functional medicine specialist.
“In conventional medicine, you have a symptom, you see the doctor, the doctor tells you what medicine to take to stop the symptom,” he explains. “But, in functional medicine, we address why the body is manifesting this symptom. We ask, ‘What is the cause?’ Then, we address that cause.”
Dr. Di Leo has been in practice for 25 years. He earned his D.C. degree from the National College of Chiropractic in Lombard, IL, in 1992. He also holds two Bachelor of Science (B.S.) degrees, one in Human Biology, also from the National College of Chiropractic, and one in Human Kinetics & Exercise Physiology, from the University of Guelph in Guelph, Ontario, Canada, in 1989.
He opened the Intrinsic Wellness Clinic nearly a year ago, saying that he’s pleased to be working in his own community. Dr. Di Leo and his wife, Cathy, who is the office manager for the practice, have lived in Seven Oaks with their two daughters for 11 years.
“I typically see people who are frustrated with having to take, ‘another pill for another ill,’” he says. “They’re tired of having five minutes with a medical doctor or a nurse practitioner and leaving the office with a new prescription or another increase in dose, which means now they’re dealing with side effects.” For example, “Maybe they’re sleeping nine or 10 hours at night , but they still feel fatigued.”
He says he can help those people who are wondering, “Why am I feeling this way? What is the root cause?”
Dr. Di Leo says, “My tools are different.” He explains his main tool is lifestyle management, which may mean managing a patient’s diet, stress and exercise, and the use of therapeutic foods, natural supplements and herbs to restore normal body function. He says patients are often willing to make changes, but they need to know how. “We can give them a 10-minute exercise — or maybe even a three-minute exercise — to help them relax, but they need to be educated to know that there are tools that are that easy.”
Cancer Support, Too
In addition to functional medicine, Dr. Di Leo also focuses on cancer support.
“We offer a state-of-the-art blood test that we brought to Wesley Chapel,” he says, noting that there are only about 400 practitioners offering this test in the entire U.S., and none in Wesley Chapel or New Tampa. People with a high risk for cancer can request the test, but more often, he sees patients who have recently been diagnosed with cancer.
“The test detects cancer cells circulating in the blood,” explains Dr. Di Leo, adding that it provides information about the number of cancer cells, and also the type of cells. “The lab does sensitivity testing to test the cancer cells against 50 chemotherapy drugs and 47 natural substances. It determines a ‘kill rate’ of how each substance kills the particular cancer cells in a patient’s blood.”
He says this is great information that patients can take back to their oncology team. While some oncologists will hesitate to leverage these results, because best practices in oncology may favor a different protocol, Dr. Di Leo believes that’s temporary.
“There is so much research happening in supplemental and complementary medicine, that I expect it to come to a point where this will be more mainstream,” he says. “For example, there is a ton of research supporting using mushroom extract to fight cancer.”
For people looking for a more natural and alternative approach, Dr. Di Leo explains that primary care also is part of the scope of the practice at Intrinsic Wellness.
He says an initial appointment with him usually takes at least 60 minutes. “We want to get a complete picture of who you are and what your body’s been through.”
Tina Danielson, who lives in Watergrass, is a patient of Dr. Di Leo’s who has benefited from the doctor’s approach.
Danielson explains that she’s taken medicine for hypothyroid — or an underactive thyroid — since high school. Recently, she had new symptoms, including blurred vision and dizziness, “and just a complete lack of energy,” she says. Her regular doctor said her new symptoms weren’t related, so that’s when she found Intrinsic Wellness.
She says Dr. Di Leo first tried things that didn’t work to cure her dizziness, such as chiropractic adjustments and changes to her diet, but then, “Dr. Di Leo continued to delve into it,” she says, and showed her exercises she could do. “The exercises took care of the dizziness within a few days. I don’t need to do them now, but if the dizziness ever starts again, I can just do those exercises again.”
She also says that the draw to Dr. Di Leo was knowing that he’s committed to finding the root cause of her problems.
“I don’t want to take medicine for the rest of my life,” she says. “I’ve already taken it for 20 years. Now, we’re doing bloodwork and working with my diet to find the root cause of this. I want to find what I can do to get better for the long haul, not just for the next month.”
Dr. Di Leo agrees, and he makes himself available to Danielson and all of his patients. “We are high touch and high availability,” he says. “I give my patients my personal cell phone number and exchange text messages with them.”
Dr. Di Leo also is an active athlete who has competed in Ironman triathlons and marathon road races, including his favorites in New York City and Chicago. He also is a certified strength and conditioning coach and USA triathlon coach.
In his practice, he often sees athletes, especially endurance athletes such as long-distance runners and triathletes.
“I always tell newbies that anyone can do it,” he says. “You need proper guidance and proper nutrition, but it’s worth it because you get an amazing sense of accomplishment. It’s a very elite accomplishment, because only a small percentage of the population actually accomplishes this.”
Dr. Di Leo often speaks to different audiences in settings such as “lunch and learns” and says he is available to talk about health and wellness to cancer survivors or other community groups.
The Intrinsic Wellness Clinic is located at 2808 Windguard Cir., Suite 101. It is open by appointment only. To make an appointment for a free 15-minute consultation, call Intrinsic Wellness at (813) 549-3551. For more info, visit IntrinsicWellnessClinic.com.
When a photo session at Cloud 9 Studios in Wesley Chapel scheduled for 1 p.m. on April 25 was cancelled, owner Jeanine McLeod took her one-year-old son, James, and went out to grab lunch.
The office manager, Mary Gullett, stayed in the studio while assistant Carla Holness photographed her own three children —ages almost 1, 4, and 5 — in the back.
That’s when, all of a sudden, a car came crashing through the front doors of Cloud 9’s building in the Summergate Professional Center behind Sam’s Club off S.R. 56.
“I heard tires screeching and felt the building rattle,” Carla says.
According to a report by the Florida Highway Patrol, 80-year-old Theresa Drummond was attempting to park her car when she pressed the gas pedal instead of the brake.
That sent her 2005 while Ford Taurus over the curb, in between two pillars and halfway through the door into the building at 27340 Cashford Circle.
“What’s crazy is that Jeanine is always there with James and I’m not usually there with my kids,” says Carla. “About half an hour before it happened, the kids were all running around playing, so I’m just so thankful that they were out to lunch and that my kids were in the back.”
Jeanine echoed Carla’s grateful attitude.
“All of us are a little shook up, but I’m just so thankful everyone is okay,’’ Jeanine said. “ My son loves to play at the windows with the curtains, and he’s always up there looking as the cars go by.”
Both ladies are amazed that the car fit exactly through the columns on either side of the front door. “The car had to be lined up perfectly,” says Jeanine. “Any farther to the left or right and she would have hit steel columns.”
According to the Florida Highway Patrol, Drummond was not transported to a medical facility. The studio was temporarily boarded up until new doors could be installed.
Wade Angel’s five-year hunt to find justice for the tragic loss of his son took another happy turn last month when William Angel’s alleged killer was finally extradited to the U.S.
Christopher Ponce, who is accused of killing 20-year-old William Angel and injuring two others while driving drunk on the wrong side of I-275 in 2002, was finally turned over to American authorities by Spain on April 6.
“It is now 2 a.m. on April 7th,’’ Wade wrote on his blog, FindChrisPonce.com, which he has been updating since 2014. “My wife and I had the pleasure of witnessing Christopher Ponce being escorted into the Orient Rd Jail here in Tampa this evening. We waited at the airport for 5 hours hoping to see him as the U S Marshalls escorted him off the plane. They took him by another route so we had to hurry in order to beat them to the jail and just barely did so. We were able to see him being escorted into the booking area of the jail.”
He excitedly wrote “NO BOND!!!!” on the blog April 8, a day later, when Ponce made his first court appearance. “So gratifying to see him doing the inmate shuffle.”
Wade, who quit working for a time while he pursued every lead he could online — up to 15 hours a day for three years — drove himself to the limit in his efforts to find his son’s alleged killer.
So, Wade’s post on April 9 was surely one of the most satisfying.
“For the first time in years I got a good nights sleep,’’ he wrote. “I actually woke up feeling good and refreshed. It was awesome.”
Ponce was driving the wrong way in the northbound lanes of I-275 near downtown Tampa when he hit William’s 2000 Ford Mustang, also seriously injuring passengers Jay Davis and Robert Newberry.
On May 9, 2013, while awaiting trial for DUI manslaughter, Ponce slipped off an electronic monitoring bracelet he had been wearing and had been on the run ever since.
In 2014, CNN’s “The Hunt,” hosted by John Walsh of “America’s Most Wanted” fame, profiled the case.
That manhunt ended Aug. 9, 2016, when Ponce was captured by local police in a bus station in Almeria, Spain.
At the time, Wade said he was not surprised that Ponce was captured in Spain. He said he had received a tip through the blog shortly after starting it in 2013 that Spain is where Ponce was headed. He started tracking Internet Protocol, or IP, addresses, to see if anyone was checking his site from Spain.
Wade said someone definitely checked his website from Spain, once from a McDonald’s, but mostly on public wifi at bus stations.
“I knew it!,’” Wade said when he heard Ponce had been found. He said Ponce and his family were too narcissistic to resist the chance to see their names in print and wonder what people were saying about them. It was one of the reasons that he started the website.
Wade told the Neighborhood News in August that FindChrisPonce.com would remain up right through the trial.
“The day he is sentenced, that will be my last post,’’ he says.
That last post is closer now than it has ever been.
The Pasco County Sheriff’s Office is looking for a white Hyundai Elantra with red rims in relation to Sunday’s shooting at Quail Hollow Golf & Country Club.
Although I was already 30 when TV star Mario Lopez began his five-year run as AC Slater in the “Saved By the Bell” TV series, I remember that not only was I a fan of the show, but so were my sons, neither of whom had yet reached double digits when the original “Saved By the Bell” series ended in 1994.
In fact, a crowd estimated at 1,100 people by the Pasco County Sheriff’s Office — which was on-hand in force for the event and of which Rosario, executive GM Joey Falcon and their staff have been major supporters — came to see Mario, who threw Wesley Chapel Nissan T-shirts, posed for pictures and signed autographs for dozens of excited guests the last couple of hours of the event, which included giving away more than 900 hot dogs. Some of those attendees also got to enjoy gourmet cuisine like filet mignon sliders provided by Vesh Catering in the VIP area inside the dealership.
