Month: December 2022

Gramatica Now Kicking Winners With Life Guard Imaging

*Former Tampa Bay Buccaneers placekicker Martin Gramatica is now the VP of development for Life Guard Imaging.*

Like most people, former Tampa Bay Buccaneers placekicker Martin Gramatica worried about what, if any, future maladies might be lurking in his body. So, when he heard a commercial on the radio for Life Guard Imaging, which promises to help answer those questions with high-tech full-body scans, he made a mental note to give them a call.

However, he never did.

Instead, it was a chance meeting — with a diehard Kansas City Chiefs fan — a few weeks later on an airplane, that put the former Buc on a path to not only get himself scanned, but to join the team at Life Guard Imaging and start helping to save other people’s lives.

That Kansas City Chiefs fan was Frankie Maldonado, the director of operations of Life Guard Imaging, which is located on Rocky Point Dr. in Tampa, off the Courtney Campbell Cswy.

As a Bucs sponsor, Maldonado was on a team-sponsored flight sitting in the row ahead of Gramatica, who does color commentary for the Bucs’ Spanish flagship radio station WTMP-FM 96.1.

Gramatica’s wife Ashlee overheard the conversation and told Martin it was the guys from the radio commercial.

“Frankie is a huge Chiefs fan and was wearing his Chiefs shirt, so I had to say something to him,” Gramatica said. “We ended up hanging out that weekend and had a great time. We landed back in Tampa on Sunday, and I had my scan on Tuesday, and it kind of went from there. Then, Eric (Shuman, Life Guard marketing director), and Frankie asked me if I wanted to come on board.”

Gramatica is now the vice president of business development for Life Guard Imaging, a company that specializes in preventive screenings in order to find heart disease, cancer and other illnesses early enough that patients and their physicians can take the proper steps to correct them.

At Life Guard Imaging, you are scanned from your shoulders to the base of your pelvis. A registered CT Technologist slides you through a low-radiation, high-resolution CT scanner, creating 3D images of your internal organs, which are then examined by a team of Board-certified Doctors of Radiology who can help aid in detecting deadly diseases before it’s too late.

The scans can help detect hundreds of issues, but among the most prominent are lung cancer (which kills more men and women than any other cancer), liver disease (which accounts for 2 million deaths per year) and abnormalities in your chest, abdomen or pelvis.

Maldonado describes the first scan as your base, and although you can get just one scan, he says yearly scans can reveal any dangerous year-to-year changes. He compares it to getting a mammogram.

“The single-most diagnosed cancer in America is breast cancer,” Maldonado says. “And yet, and most people don’t know this, the single most-survived cancer in American is breast cancer. That’s not a coincidence.”

A Little History

Maldonado took a job at an independent imaging facility in Atlanta in 2017, and knew then he wanted to bring scanning services to as many people as possible.

He has seen patient scans reveal early-stage pancreatic cancer — the same cancer that killed his father, prominent Maryland surgeon Dr. Benjamin J. Maldonado, Jr. — allowing this deadly type of cancer to be caught in time. Another patient had a cardiac calcium score so high it was revealed that three of his four main arteries had 90-percent blockage. Triple bypass surgery saved him from an inevitable heart attack.

Life Guard Imaging is one of only five places nationwide that offer this type of full-body-scan program, and the job is extremely gratifying. Gramatica says there are plans to expand to other locations in Florida.

“I’m having so much fun with it,” Gramatica says. “Where else can you say you are saving people’s lives?”

That’s why Gramatica didn’t want to just be a spokesman for the company. He wanted a larger role — “I wanted to be all in,” he says. “I didn’t just want to do a couple of commercials and put my face and name out there and be done with it. As VP of business development, my job is to get the word out there and let people know what we do, because what we do is important.”

For Gramatica, knowing that he’s healthy is important. He owns his own business, coaches all three of his kids — 14- and 16-year-old boys and a 10-year-old daughter — in soccer, has been doing Bucs radio with his brother (and former USF kicker) Santiago for five years and was recently named the head coach of the new Tampa Bay Strikers men’s and women’s teams that will play in the National Indoor Soccer League, which will play its home matches nearby at the USF Yuengling Center.

“When I first thought about getting scanned, my stomach had been bothering me,” Gramatica says. That checked out fine, however, and his scans have only revealed a few wear-and-tear issues from a lifetime of playing soccer and kicking field goals.

“It gave my wife and I tremendous piece of mind,” he says. “It’s extremely valuable to know that everything is fine. And, if anything does develop, we’ll catch it early.”

Life Guard Imaging is located at 3001 N. Rocky Point Dr., Suite 185. For more info, visit LifeGuardImaging.com or call (813) 524-1010. If you mention this story or the ad, you will receive a heart scan and coronary calcium score absolutely free.

Lifeguard Imaging Martin Gramatica

County’s Default, RADDSports’ Lawsuit On Hold For Now

Pasco County and RADDSports failed to settle their differences over the management of the Wiregrass Ranch Sports Campus at a November mediation, and have decided to pause efforts to reconcile those differences for 60 days until a second mediation can be held in February 2023.

A lawsuit, filed by RADDSports on Nov. 15, now hangs over the negotiations, as well.

The two sides issued a joint statement on Dec. 12, which was signed by RADDSports’ chief operating officer Anthony Homer and Pasco’s chief assistant county attorney David Goldstein, acknowledging the lawsuit and the lack of a settlement at the initial mediation session on Nov. 28, but stated that the two sides were still trying to resolve their issues.

“The parties have now agreed to place their disputes on hold for 60 days while they continue to work towards a definitive resolution,” the joint statement says. “There has been no judicial determination of whether RADDSports is or is not in default of the (contract).”

Homer says RADDSports wants that judicial determination, which is why the company filed the suit.

“What we are suing for is a declarative action,” Homer says. “We simply want a judge to look at the county’s allegations, compare it to the contract and to essentially declare whether or not we are in default (as the county claims). That’s it.”

Goldstein declined comment.

After receiving a letter of default from Pasco County on Nov. 4, and receiving no response to its defense of the claims in the letter, RADDSports filed the suit, which claims that the county has long sought to undermine the management company’s efforts.

“Now, under the pretense of a default, the county is trying to terminate a 20-year contract with false claims in order to take over operations at the Wiregrass Ranch Sports Campus,” Homer says.

“We’re not asking for damages, we’re not asking to renegotiate the contract,” he adds. “We’re perfectly happy to live within the terms of the agreement that we committed to at the beginning of this for the next 18 years. All we’re asking is for a judge to determine whether or not we are in default, and if we are not, we go back to business.”

While Homer hasn’t ruled out another suit for damages if the county proceeds with terminating the management company’s contract, RADDSports did agree to suspend its lawsuit during the current 60-day break in talks.

Both sides are still communicating, however, as well as collecting information and fulfilling public records requests that they expect will bolster their arguments on Feb. 7 when they meet again.

The two sides are at odds over how the sports facility, which opened in July of 2020 but officially opened in January 2021, is being run and the results of those early efforts.

On Oct. 25, the county’s Board of County Commissioners (BOC) approved a Notice of Default, originally written by Florida Sports Coast director Adam Thomas, which also included approval of roughly $3 million to take over management of the sports campus from RADDSports.

The county claims that RADD has focused too heavily on local events and did not promote tourism and overnight hotel stays – including failing to properly market the facility and not working with the Residence Inn by Marriott hotel, which is located on the same campus.

The default letter received by RADD, which Homer says was different than what the BOC initially approved, was delivered to RADDSports on Nov. 4. Homer delivered a point-by-point rebuttal to the default claims at the following BOC meeting on Nov. 8.

Homer says that RADDSports asked the county to withdraw its claim of default, but was met with silence from the five county commissioners.

The suit was filed because “Pasco County basically left us in purgatory,” Homer said, after putting the accusation of default in the public domain.

RADDSports claims it has not only promoted tourism and met all of the other requirements laid out in the contract, but actually has exceeded the number of room nights in the company’s agreement with the county and has spent $1.5 million of its own money to do so.

It says the county also paid consultants roughly $35,000 to produce data on RADDSports’ tourism efforts, and that data only confirmed that the management company has met expectations.

In addition, Florida Sports Coast is accused of attempting to turn other local businesses against RADDSports, with false accusations that those businesses refused to sign off on.

Homer says he is “optimistic” that the next mediation session will produce an agreement that both sides find satisfactory.

“We want the same thing the county wants,” he says. “The more people we bring into the building is better for us, and also better for them. It is unclear to us right now exactly what the county’s expectations are, since they are claiming we are in default, yet their own data they paid an outside company for confirmed that we are doing exactly what we said we would. In fact, their vendor said we were doing better than even we had estimated. So, there’s an alignment of interests to be found. Hopefully we can all agree on some objective metrics and move forward.“

RADD

‘Kidpreneurs’ Learning The Art Of Making Business Deals

On the way to school one day just over a year ago, one of the neighborhood kids that Danielle Cannon was driving to school mentioned that she wanted to start selling some of her homemade bracelets.

Cannon’s own two kids, 7-year-old Jane and 9-year-old Adam, chimed in that they were interested in selling some stuff as well.

“So I posted online asking if anyone knew of a good place to do this little thing for the neighborhood,” Cannon says.

That little thing, however, became a much bigger thing. Within a day, more than 20 families had replied that their children wanted to be a part of it as well, and the Tampa Children’s Business Fair was born.

At the end of last month, Cannon’s army of “Kidpreneurs” set up more than 40 tables at the KRATE at The Grove container park, selling everything from artwork to tree saplings to cookies to Christmas trinkets to — you guessed it — bracelets.

“It has really grown,” says Cannon, who has poured thousands of dollars of her own money into her nonprofit fair where all the business owners are kids, ages 6-16. “Literally, the only limitation is finding places to hold it,” Cannon says.

The KRATE was generous enough to provide the space for free, although Cannon says other locations have charged as much as $1,500 to host a fair.

Cannon’s first event late last year attracted about 20 kids. The final event of this year, held at the Temple Terrace Recreation Center on Dec. 11, featured a whopping 75 tables and more than 100 Kidpreneurs.

“We would have had more but there was no more room,” Cannon says.

It was the fifth business fair of the year, and some of the young business owners — like New Tampa sisters Alghaliah (13-years-old), Layal (11) and Nouf Rizq (6) — have sold their wares at all of them.

The sisters, who all attend Turner-Bartels K-8 School, sell a variety of different necklaces and bracelets, including ones with clay beads displaying positive messages like “Kind,” “Cute,” “Love” and “Shine.”

At the KRATE fair, the trio’s Queen of Hearts business displayed an expanded product line to include pens and PopSockets (to help you hold your cell phone) and, at the Temple Terrace fair, they unveiled jewelry boxes made of resin.

“You can add colors to them,” Alghaliah says. “It looks really cool.”

The sisters have made more than $400 at the fairs. They say they wanted to learn more about entrepreneurship and the process has helped them become more confident.

“It’s been fun,” Layal says.

Cannon says the Rizqs are some of her best Kidpreneurs, even winning “Best Presentation” honors at one of the fairs. Typically, Cannon has local business owners help her choose the booths that have the “Best Presentation,” “Most Creative Business Idea” and “Highest Business Potential.”

*Wesley Chapel resident Gabrielle Thompson shows off her wares at the recent Tampa Children’s Business Fair held at the KRATE at the Grove. (Photos: Charmaine George).*

Gabrielle Thompson, a 15-year-old sophomore at Wesley Chapel High, was one of the “Kidpreneurs” selling blinged- out tumblers and other items from her business, jets_customs. She also does custom items if you’re looking to put a name or saying on a 12- or 20-ounce tumbler.

Gabrielle has been doing pop-ups for a few years now and was excited to join the TCBF event, and hopes to continue to do so in the future.

“It’s taught me patience and organization,” Gabrielle says. “And, money management, too, of course.”

The Tampa Children’s Business Fair encourages children to embrace all the tenets of entrepreneurship — developing a product and a brand, building a marketing strategy, setting prices and selling to customers.

Booths cost $25, but Cannon tries to return $5 to each business owner so they can walk around and network and buy things from their fellow Kidpreneurs.

Cannon hopes one day to not have to charge at all. She is hoping to land some sponsors to help cover some of the costs of running the quarterly fairs moving forward; those costs also include things like insurance and sometimes having to hire off-duty law enforcement officers, a requirement for some of the sites.

“I’m way over full-time hours working on this, but I know once people know about this they are going to love it,” Cannon says. “This is awesome, I love doing it, and the kids love it.”

For more information about the Tampa Children’s Business Fair and future fairs, visit TampaCBF.org.

Kid fair

New Coach, Same Old Wildcats

If you were wondering if things would be any different for the Wharton High basketball team playing under a new coach for the first time in two decades, you can stop wondering.

In this year’s first game at home under new coach Shawn Vanzant, the Wildcats used an aggressive attacking defense that produced a slew of steals that they turned into a withering onslaught of three-pointers and transition buckets to open up a 28-7 lead en route to a 73-40 win over Steinbrenner High.

“Not much has changed,” says junior point guard Lucean Milligan, who had three steals and 10 points in the first quarter.

Indeed. The Wildcats were off to a 10-1 start heading into the Christmas break.

Wharton made a winner of Vanzant, who was making his home debut as the Wildcats’ new head basketball coach after taking over for Tommy Tonelli, Hillsborough County’s all-time winningest coach.

In a gym where Vanzant once starred as arguably the program’s greatest player ever, it felt as if he, or even Tonelli, had never left.

“Easy transition; I think it’s the best option we could have had,” says senior forward Chandler Davis. “He played here, and he played at a high level at Butler (University in Indianapolis, IN).”

Vanzant is a great story that just keeps on getting better. The Wildcats added the latest chapter by beating the Warriors.

“I’m not gonna lie, it was a special moment,” Vanzant said afterwards. “I played four years here, coach Tonelli was like a father figure (to me). It was like a welcome home party.”

*Karmello Branch goes up for two of his 16 points in the home-opening win over Steinbrenner.*

The following night reminded Vanzant there is still work to do. The Wildcats laid an egg against a good Newsome team that returns a lot of size and experience, losing 48-39, but are currently on a seven-game winning streak.

There is no question that Vanzant is the man for the job. Tonelli, it seems, had waited for this moment for a few years, the chance to hand his program off to his star pupil. He wanted someone who could coach, sure, but it was more important to find someone who could lead, which life surely has prepared Vanzant to do.

As a kid, Vanzant’s family fell apart due to a myriad of problems, including his mother’s death right before his second birthday. As a teenager, midway through his high school career, he ran out of living options until New Tampa resident Lisa Litton and her family took him in.

As a high school star, Vanzant led Wharton to a 29-2 record in 2007 and, three years later, he helped Butler get to within two points of the 2010 NCAA Championship, which they were denied 61-59 by Duke University and its legendary coach Mike Kryzewski.

After a pro career spent mostly overseas, Vanzant turned to coaching and helped turn perennial basketball loser Bloomingdale High into a playoff team.

Now, he’s back home.

Vanzant and the Wildcats, regarded as one of the best teams in the Tampa Bay area, are expected to win many more, as they are coming off a 28-3 season and the program’s second Class 6A State Semifinal appearance.

Although Vanzant has the same distaste for polls as his predecessor — “They don’t mean anything” –—the Wildcats entered this season ranked by various online sites as one of the top-three teams in Tampa Bay.

“We have some things to work on, but if we do that, we’ll be good,” Vanzant said.

Milligan, a slick playmaker who can score in bunches, the 6’-5” Davis, last year’s top postseason scorer, and senior guard Christian Ayala are all key returners from the State Semifinal team.

Senior forward Karmello Branch is another player who played at States last season, but for Class 3A Tampa Catholic. He transferred back to New Tampa.

Sophomore guard Nick Womack played for Vanzant at Bloomingdale last year, and sophomore guard Jayson Montgomery is making the transition to varsity this season look easy after scoring 16 in the home opener.

Vanzant loves what he sees so far, especially the team camaraderie and togetherness.

“Tonelli laid the groundwork, and we have a lot of guys from last year’s Final Four team,” Vanzant says. “All I have to do is come in here and not mess it up.”

Milligan and Davis both say there is no chance of that happening, because if there’s one thing that isn’t different with the change of coaches, it’s the Wildcats’ mindset.

“State championship,” Davis said. “That’s it.”

Shawn Vanzant Wharton

Gadgets Emergency Room Merges With Computer Emergency Room

The Computer Emergency Room team: (l.-r.) Co-owner Jamie Hess, KRATE store manager Josh Hess, co-owner Joe Hess, Bruce B. Downs store manager Alexandra Horne and Mirada store manager Joe Hess III. (Photos: Charmaine George)

The popular Gadgets Emergency Room has expanded to three locations and will soon add a fourth…and has a new name, too.

Brothers and co-owners Jamie Hess and Joe Hess, Jr., have owned a thriving business in upstate New York, called Computer Emergency Room, since 1991. When Jamie — who also owns Treble Makers Dueling Piano Bar & Restaurant — moved to Florida in 2018, the pair bought a local tech repair store in the Shoppes at New Tampa located just south and east of the corner of S.R. 56 and Bruce B. Downs (BBD) Blvd.

Now, they are merging the company’s Tampa-area locations with their New York-based business, bringing it all under one umbrella — as Computer Emergency Room.

“Along with changing our name to Computer Emergency Room, we’re expanding our business-to-business support division, doing network support, computer repair, cloud backup, remote monitoring – essentially all technical support,” Jamie says.

Jamie adds that whether a business is running high-end servers or just needs technical support for an individual workstation, Computer Emergency Room will come out on-site and provide the fix you need.

And, while the name is changing to reflect the emphasis on business services and to merge the brothers’ businesses, Jamie says the retail locations will continue offering the services local customers have come to depend upon.

For anyone who has a laptop that’s unusually slow, a tablet that stops working, or a phone screen that shatters, Computer Emergency Room can offer a quick fix — usually within hours — at a reasonable price.

Over the past year, new locations have opened at the KRATE at The Grove container park in Wesley Chapel and in the growing Mirada development in San Antonio. A fourth location — at the corner of Livingston Rd. and County Line Rd. in Lutz, where a new Publix just opened — is expected to open by the end of this year.

“Nothing will change at our retail locations,” Jamie explains. “All four locations will continue to offer all services.”

Additional technicians are being hired to support the expansion of the number of locations and the business services, and the company has branded vans on the road for technicians who support area businesses.

He says businesses can pay hourly, or sign up for a service contract that offers unlimited support. He says some contracts include weekly preventive maintenance, but most are on call, where businesses dial up Computer Emergency Room whenever they have a problem.

“This is something we’re currently doing,” Jamie says, “and we even go to homes to fix personal computers and connect networks.”

It’s A Family Affair

The family-owned business includes two stores managed by Joe’s sons. Joe Hess III manages the Mirada location, while Josh Hess (photo on next page)manages the KRATE store. Meanwhile, the BBD location is managed by Alex Horne, who has worked there for more than 10 years. While a manager has not yet been hired for the new location on Livingston, the Hesses expect to promote from within the company.

Jamie says they expect to expand to more locations, too, and are looking at opening stores in Tampa, Trinity, and even as far south as Bradenton.

And, while the business branches out, the Hess family remains firmly connected to the New Tampa and Wesley Chapel areas, with Jamie serving on the Board of Directors for the North Tampa Bay Chamber of Commerce, and they’re excited to have a Computer ER location in the trendy KRATE container park.

“We’re getting a lot of traffic at our KRATE location,” says Jamie. “KRATE is doing a nice job with events to get people there.”

In fact, that’s how Rich Bussey was first introduced to Computer Emergency Room.

He and his wife, Jenny, own Boba Macs Tea & Eat, a shop in the KRATEs located directly across from Computer Emergency Room.

“We were in the process of opening and our internet service provider didn’t install the line running into the building correctly,” Rich says. “I spent three weeks trying to get them to fix it, arguing back and forth, and going through a lot of finger pointing.”

Rich said it was a devastating blow. He and Jenny are first-time business owners, and also work full-time at other jobs, so a three-week delay was “crushing.”

Especially after Covid had pushed their dream business opening back, the Busseys were anxious to get up and running, but there was no way to open their store without a point of sale (POS) system, and that couldn’t be installed without internet.

One day in late August, Rich says the techs “across the way” at (then-Gadgets) Emergency Room offered to take a look at the wires Boba Macs’ service provider still hadn’t come out to assess.

“They immediately found the problem, fixed it, and my internet was up and running within minutes,” Rich says. “I was able to have someone come out that same day to set up my POS system that had been sitting there gathering dust for three weeks. I was mind blowing-ly impressed at how proactive they were at finding a solution and providing phenomenal service.”

Rich says that being in the service industry, he often finds himself having casual conversations with people, and occasionally that talk works its way around to someone’s frustrations with their phone, tablet or laptop.

“I always suggest they pop in across the way and let them take a look,” he says. “Those same people usually come back and thank me, saying they previously spent hours on the phone with their tech support and got nowhere, but spent five minutes over there and they fixed it.”

Computer Emergency Room (formerly Gadgets Emergency Room) has four locations. Its original shop, at 1750 Bruce B. Downs Blvd., and newest location at 30925 Mirada Blvd. in San Antonio, are both open Mon.-Fri.,10:30 a.m.-6:30 p.m., and 10 a.m.-3 p.m. on Saturdays. The Computer ER location at KRATE (5854 Goldview Pkwy.), is open Tues.-Fri., 8:30 a.m.-8 p.m., noon-6 p.m. on Saturday and noon-5 p.m. on Sunday. The new store will be opening at the corner of E. County Line Rd. and Livingston Ave. later this year.

For more information about any of the stores, call (813) 939-HELP (4357) or visit ComputerEmergencyRoom.com.

Gadgets krate