Janet Kennedy was active in politics, so she was well aware of the great divide between Democrats and Republicans, not only locally, but throughout this country, and was concerned about how quickly that chasm was growing.
But, it wasn’t until the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol that Kennedy, a Grand Hampton resident and chair of field organizing for the Hillsborough Democratic Party, felt the full force of how dire the situation had become.
“It was really after Jan. 6,” Kennedy says. “I was glued to the television set that day, as many people were. I guess I was fundamentally shaken that the political discourse in this country had devolved into an attack on the Capitol.”
First, Kennedy assessed her role, as someone who had been heavily involved in partisan politics. It made her feel a little bit guilty about contributing to the divide.
So, she looked for ways to work towards healing that division and founded a local chapter of Braver Angels, a national group that was created in December 2016.
How Braver Angels Got Started
At that time, with passions still high following Donald Trump’s victory over Hillary Clinton — and likely in the wake of contentious Thanksgiving dinners between families across the U.S. — the now-national group assembled 10 Trump supporters and 11 Clinton supporters in South Lebanon, Ohio, with one goal: “To see if Americans could still disagree respectfully — and just maybe, find common ground.”
The group’s conclusion was yes, and the Braver Angels organization has continued to grow ever since, with Alliances (or chapters) in 48 states numbering more than 50,000 members.
Kennedy’s goal is to start a Tampa Bay Alliance. She has started that long process with a few Zoom meetings, and says she has about 45 people — most of them from New Tampa — interested.
Unfortunately, only a few are Republicans, likely not enough if any headway is going to be made at bridging any divides.
“It’s going to be a slow build,” Kennedy admits. “I think people are worn out and exhausted and fearful that, if I go to a meeting like this, someone will try to change my mind or talk me out of my opinion or I’ll be made to feel stupid. But, that’s not what we’re about. We’re here to listen.”
Kennedy has organized workshops and a debate so far in three meetings, with much of the conversations focused on not letting politics come between family members.
She says she took some of the lessons from those meetings and used them to have a discussion with her cousin, who is on the opposite side of the abortion debate.
It went surprisingly well, she says.
“We were able to reach an agreement on some points,” Kennedy says, “and I understand better where she is coming from and she understands a bit better where I’m coming from.”
Kennedy would like it to work like that on other issues that divide the two ends of the political spectrum. She is looking for volunteers to help her get the local Alliance of Braver Angels moving forward.
Although the political landscape, and the chance of both sides working together, seems fairly bleak right now, Kennedy says she would like to think she can make a difference.
“I just know I need to try,” she says.
For more information, visit BraverAngels.org, or to help with the local Alliance, email Janet Kennedy at thejanetkennedy@gmail.com.
It may look like a tunnel for an MRI, but at Life Guard Imaging on Rocky Point, you slide through the Philips Brilliance CT Scanner, which scans your body from your shoulders to the base of your torso. (Photos by Charmaine George)
Beating cancer or heart disease can be an uphill battle.
However, Frankie Maldonado says he can help give you a fighting chance.
The solution, he says — don’t wait until the hill is too large to climb.
At Life Guard Imaging, where Maldonado is the director of operations, you can get out in front of deadly cancers and other diseases by having a body scan that can identify potential problems with your heart, as well as identify early stages of many different cancers that may be lurking.
The upscale facility, located on Rocky Point Dr. in Tampa, specializes in preventive screening in order to find heart disease or cancer early enough that patients and their physicians can take steps to correct it. Otherwise, most find out the hard and sudden way — with a heart attack that can be deadly or with symptoms that may not present themselves until late-stage cancer.
“United States healthcare is set up to be reactionary,” says Maldonado, who opened Life Guard Imaging in August. “We are taught from the time we are (little) to tell me when you have a symptom, and we’ll treat the symptom. That’s bad enough when it’s a cold, the flu or a virus. But, when it’s heart disease or cancer? That’s deadly.”
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. The scans also can serve as a virtual colonoscopy that Life Guard Imaging says is more thorough (and less invasive) than a traditional colonoscopy, although most doctors still recommend traditional colonoscopies, even with the scan.
Author’s note: I received a scan — super easy by the way, it only takes five minutes — and while happy it detected no cancer, it did confirm other issues I’ll need to take care of as well as providing a coronary calcium score (almost identical to the one I received from my cardiologist).
Maldonado says your first scan serves as your base, and yearly scans can reveal any dangerous changes (although you’re welcome to come in for just one scan if you choose).
Life Guard Imaging is one of only five places nationwide that offer this type of program, where you can receive a full body scan every year.
“One scan is invaluable,” Maldonado says, “but multiple scans are the ones capturing things (as they change).”
Why does a yearly scan make sense? Maldonado says it is an effective way to detect new diseases.
“It’s just like having a mammogram scan every year,” he says. “The single-most diagnosed cancer in America is breast cancer. And yet, and most people don’t know this, the single most-survived cancer in American is breast cancer. That’s not a coincidence — it’s because of early detection scans, before symptoms appear, before any lump gets massive. It’s about catching it early.”
Frank Maldonado (Director of Operations) and Amy Maldonado (Administrative Director)
Maldonado has spent most of his career in the travel industry, but when a friend introduced him to a job opening at a facility in Atlanta that used the same body scanning technology, he was eager to make the jump.
A Personal Connection
For Maldonado, it also was personal.
His father, Dr. Benjamin J. Maldonado, Jr., was a prominent surgeon in Maryland. In January 1998, he felt there was something wrong in his stomach. He was scanned, but the technology then had gaps in the scans. In one of those gaps, on the backside tail of his pancreas, cancer had settled in.
“They missed it,” Maldonado says, and 10 months later his father was diagnosed with Stage 4 pancreatic cancer. Just six weeks and a few days after that, he passed away.
“It devastated me,” Maldonado says. “He was my hero.”
Dr. Maldonado’s portrait hangs in the lobby of Life Guard Imaging, a daily reminder to his son that early detection can save lives, as well a world of sadness for those left behind.
While Frankie Maldonado has no medical training himself — he graduated from the University of Maryland in College Park with a degree in television broadcasting — the chance to help save lives and honor his dad’s memory made taking the job at the independent imaging facility in Atlanta in 2017 an easy choice.
“It was the biggest no-brainer of my life, he says. “I said, ‘I want to be a part of this.’ What we were doing in Atlanta literally had to do with how my father lost his life.”
In fact, Maldonado says that, in 2018, one of the patients scanned at the facility was discovered to have early-stage pancreatic cancer, the same cancer that killed his father, but she was able to be saved. In Atlanta, he says he saw thousands of lives that were saved, and he decided to start Life Guard Imaging and bring it to Tampa. He plans to open 1-3 new facilities in Florida and around the country every single year.
“I thought that more people need to know about this,” he says. He is spreading the word through advertising, an appearance on the BloomTV show on WFLA, and we met him at Life Guard Imaging’s booth at a health fair at the Tampa Premium Outlets.
Since Life Guard Imaging opened in August, more than 330 scans have been conducted. Maldonado tells the story of one man who came in with his wife and mother-in-law, who were worried about heart disease in their family. They wanted scans; he did not. However, Maldonado talked him into getting one, and while the ladies each scored a perfect zero on their coronary calcium scan, which measures how much calcified plaque may be in your heart’s arteries, the gentleman’s number was alarmingly high and he was able to get to the doctor to have it checked in time.
Another man, Maldonado says, came in with his wife and his test revealed a calcium score of 900 (anything over 300 is considered high).
The next day, he saw a cardiologist, and discovered that three of his four main arteries had 90-percent blockage. Two weeks ago, he had triple bypass surgery.
“He told us we saved his life,” Maldonado says.
While health insurance doesn’t cover the cost of a scan — which can be pricey if you receive just one but are much cheaper if you choose to receive them yearly — Maldonado hopes to get that changed. He has collected enough data that shows how many lives have been potentially saved and is ready to fight in the hopes that he can change the health narrative and mindset from reactionary to preventive.
“Healthcare is probably never going to switch over but we are going to try,” he says. “This works. It’s an awesome thing, and I’m proud of it.”
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 free heart scan and coronary calcium score.
Linda Adum (far left) and her daughter Amie Adum MacLauchlan stand next to the nearly 5,200 pounds of food donated at Chiles Elementary. (Photo courtey of Amie Adum MacLauchlan).
The holidays had always been a special time for New Tampa’s Ken Adum. A long-time educator and member of St. James United Methodist Church in Tampa Palms, Adum had devoted much of the holiday season for nearly two decades to playing an integral role in his church’s annual holiday food drive, which was held in partnership with Metropolitan Ministries.
The effort was Adum’s passion. He helped rally local schools when it came to organizing food drives, and also served as the St. James tent coordinator the past few years. He was often busy in the weeks before Thanksgiving hooking the trailer containing all of the donated goods to his Ford F-150 truck and delivering them every few days to the Metropolitan Ministries main tent on N. Rome Ave.
“He loved it,” says his daughter Allison Adum Shaer. “He always looked forward to it.”
In April, Ken, a former teacher, three-time Principal of the Year at Gaither and administrator in a 37-year career with Hillsborough County Public Schools, passed away following a battle with cancer at the age of 74.
Metropolitan Ministries, whose founder Morris Hintzman also was one of the founding pastors of St. James, decided to honor Adum by naming the northern Hillsborough County food drive after him: The Ken Adum Memorial Food & Toy Drive for Metropolitan Ministries.
“He played such a big part in it,” says Dineen Paris who, along with her husband Leonard, are the tent coordinators for the drive this year.
First, A Little History…
In 2003, the Parises, along with Ken and his wife Linda and Joann and Bob Lee, met with Metropolitan Ministries, wanting to expand St. James’ mission of giving back to the community. They formed a partnership that has helped feed thousands of families in the two decades since.
Ken Adum
This year, a record 27,000 pounds of food was collected for Metropolitan Ministries in November at St. James. Ken’s daughters, Amie Adum MacLauchlan and Allison, raised roughly a quarter of that in a friendly competition between the schools where they teach. Allison is a fifth-grade math teacher at Lutz Prep, while Amie is an audiologist at Chiles Elementary.
Allison’s fifth-grade class collected 1,600 pounds of food, while Amie (with help from fifth grade teacher Shannon Simpkins) enlisted the teachers in every grade at Chiles and raised a whopping 5,190 pounds.
“This year was definitely more meaningful,” Amie says. “Education and Metropolitan Ministries were two of my Dad’s passions, so knowing that he was smiling down on us during the whole fall season was wonderful. I really wanted to get our school involved to see if I could inspire everyone to do it in honor of my dad.”
The daughters definitely picked up where Dad left off. It was Adum who added the component of competition between area schools in 2017, hoping to put a charge into the drive and impact the younger generation.
“He loved a good friendly competition,” Allison says.
Amie was amazed by the response at Chiles. Day by day, little by little, the donations began rolling in. The school had never collected more than 1,000 pounds worth of food to donate, but that number was quickly eclipsed this year, as large blue barrels in the front office at Chiles were filled to overflowing.
That amount quickly surged 2,000 lbs.….then 3,000…and more, until the blue barrels were buried by cans and boxes of food.
“First, it was the blue barrels, then you could see that more of the floor was disappearing,” Amie says. “Then, you couldn’t see the rug anymore.”
By the time the food drive ended, in less than two weeks, the families at Chiles had brought in more than two-and-a-half tons of food.
When Amie brought Linda to the school on Nov. 19 to see what Ken had inspired, Linda grew emotional.
“I wanted her to see how much they had brought in in honor of Dad,” Amie says. “It was awe-inspiring. Then, she helped us pack it all up so we could take it to the donation tent. It took us an hour and 40 minutes to pack it up, bag it and load the cars.”
The family also decided to start a new tradition. While everyone had pitched in over the years working the tent at St. James at various times during the drive, this year, the entire Adum family gathered this year to work the tent together — unloading donations, weighing food, separating it into HOPE boxes (containing a variety of items for one full Thanksgiving feast) — followed by a family lunch.
It was a special moment (see photo on the cover) to remember the man who helped start it all.
“Losing Ken was a great loss, but to see everyone’s enthusiasm this year, it wasn’t a sad thing, it was a joyful thing,” Dineen says. “It was wonderful to watch them, their whole family (working) together. Ken would have liked it very much.”
You can still donate food or toys by visiting St. James United Methodist Church at 16202 Bruce B. Downs Blvd., 10 a.m.-3 p.m. daily through Thursday, December 23.
Connor Lyons is a former Wharton High hockey standout and long-time personal trainer who opened his Lyons Den Sports Performance on S.R. 56. in Wesley Chapel to help other young athletes improve enough to reach the next level. (Photos: Charmaine George)
When Connor Lyons realized that his dream of playing professional hockey had reached an end, he decided to do the next best thing:
He wanted to help others try to realize their own dreams.
After nearly a decade of helping train athletes young and old for a number of different businesses, Connor recently opened his own training facility, called Lyons Den Sports Performance, on S.R. 56, between Capital Tacos and Lüfka (see story on pgs. 22-23).
Connor’s latest venture will focus on something he wishes had been around when he was a young athlete — a specialized training facility for middle and high school athletes.
“These didn’t even really exist when I was playing in high school,” says Connor, a 2003 Wharton High graduate and the star of the school’s ice hockey club team. “My goal is to give kids the opportunity I didn’t have growing up.”
In today’s world of sports, and with college scholarships at a premium, top-level high school athletes are always looking for that edge — looking to get faster, stronger and better.
Lyons Den offers personal and group training that can help with things not typically taught by youth, middle or high school coaches. In a traditional high school setting, there isn’t time to take most athletes aside and show them how to run faster, jump higher or hit harder; but that’s what Lyons Den is here to provide.
Towards that end, Lyons Den is hosting a Peak Performance group training for high school-aged athletes (Mon., Tues., Thur. & Fri., 4 p.m.-5 p.m.), and a Next Level group training for middle school-aged athletes (Mon., Tues. & Thur., 3 p.m.-4 p.m.).
“I want to give kids the opportunity to get to the next level,” Connor says. “Sometimes they are just lacking the physical side of things. You can have skills, but if you’re not strong enough, resilient enough, powerful enough or fast enough, you won’t get there.”
While undersized when he played high school hockey, Connor turned himself into a physical player good enough to play one season as a third-line center at Division III Nichols College in Dudley, MA.
But, once he realized that hockey wasn’t going to be a career for him, Connor transferred to the University of South Florida and played for the Bulls’ hockey club program while earning a Bachelor of Science degree in Athletic Training from the USF College of Medicine’s Department of Orthopaedics and Sports Medicine.
While he attended USF, graduating in 2011, he worked as a strength trainer with the school’s football team, and has since worked at the former Athletes Compound at Saddlebrook Resort, where he later became the associate director of sports performance, and at the Athletic Edge in Lakewood Ranch and the Applied Sports Performance Institute in South Tampa, where he was director of combine prep.
At each stop, Connor says he was able to work with dozens of Major League Baseball and NFL hopefuls looking to impress at their combines or their pro days. Many, he says, ended up making it to the pros.
In 2017, he returned to his hockey roots as the director of sports performance at AdventHealth Center Ice. At Center Ice, Connor also worked with USA Hockey for two years, and served as the strength and conditioning coach for the women’s national team that won the gold medal in the 2018 Winter Olympics and various other medals during his time there.
In March of 2020, he decided to open his own training business, which Covid-19 delayed until this past August.
“I sat on it for a while,” Connor says. “It was a scary time.”
Now open, Connor says 90 percent of what his gym does will be focused on middle and high school athletes.
Training To Prevent Injuries
Connor says that much of the training at Lyons Den revolves around injury prevention for athletes. He says there has been a positive correlation in soft tissue injuries and the rise of specialized athletic training facilities.
And, he says, he believes that gaining strength and learning things like landing or changing directions correctly helps prevent injuries. In other words, teaching athletes things like proper positioning allows them to give and take force in a way that helps decrease the likelihood of being injured.
Using the proper techniques, he says, when it comes to things like squatting, and properly rotating your hips and teaching the body to decelerate when running (or skating) also helps prevent the kinds of injuries that have become so common.
“Our No. 1 goal with our clientele is injury prevention, and everything else is a byproduct of that,” Connor says. “If I can get you stronger, you’re going to be more resilient on the field. If I can get you faster to help you get in better position, you’re (less likely to) be getting injured on the field and losing time.”
Connor also organizes speed camps and flight “schools,” where athletes can shave seconds from their times and add inches to their vertical jumps.
He also hopes to offer his knowledge to local coaches by hosting clinics showing them how advanced athletic training can be incorporated into practices and offseason workouts.
One of Connor’s students is Nate Hargest, a Tampa hockey prospect.
Nate was recommended to Connor by Tampa Bay Lightning team chiropractic physician Tim Bain, D.C., and has been training with Dr. Bain for six years.
Now 16, Nate gives much of the credit for his success to Connor, who he says helped transform him into a stronger hockey player.
“It’s been incredible in regards to what I’ve been able to do on the ice,” says Nate. “I was definitely not one of the better kids when I started, but over time I’ve become one of them. I’m one of the strongest and fastest players. I don’t weigh that much, I’m not as big, but I’m winning battles and playing as well as the other guys.”
Nate was drafted earlier this year both by the Sioux City Musketeers of the United States Hockey League, and the Mississauga Steelheads of the Ontario Hockey League, two leagues that serve as a minor league system to prepare players for college.
“The results on and off the ice make me want to keep coming back and training harder,” Nate says.
The Lyons Den is located in the Cypress View Square plaza at 27217 S.R. 56. For more information about how to join or register for training, call (813) 361-2966 or visit theldsp.com.
The Hillsborough County champs: (Front row, l.-r.:) Sharuya Kataria, Devin Etienne, Druve Kulkarni, Nikhil Katiyar, Kamal Abutaha; (middle row, l.-r.:) Layth Yassin, Gregory Morris, Arman Razavi, Nithin Sivamoorthy; (back row, l.-r.:) Tristan Wilhoyt, Owen Brown, Grayson Gonzalez, Dillon Hand, Sully Al Qadheeb, Rithik Borra, Karl Rix. Coaches (bottom right, left to right:) Austin Hand, Karen Burchfield & Chris Ellis.
The Benito Middle School boys volleyball team had been 9-0 before. It had been dominant in previous years. It had won its cluster, or league, multiple times.
However, the Cougars had never won a Hillsborough County championship.
This year, however, was different.
This year, they just happened to have a Hand up on the opposition.
Rolling behind the best player the school has ever had, 8th grader Dillon Hand, the Cougars dropped only one set all season and captured the school’s first-ever boys volleyball county championship.
Benito defeated Roland Park 25-9, 25-12 last month to take home the school’s first-ever County title.
“We went into the season thinking we had a really good shot,” says coach Chris Ellis. “They practiced like all-stars, but sometimes got into games and were tight. We were winning by five points against teams we should have been blowing out.”
If there were any doubts about the Cougars rising to the challenge, they answered it in the first game of the playoffs against defending County Champion Tomlin Middle School, which many saw as the real county championship game.
After splitting the first two sets, the match went to a decisive 15-point third set. Tomlin raced to a 6-0 lead, and then the lead was 11-5. Time was running out.
“I called a timeout and just tried to relax everyone,” Ellis said. “I told them that this was going to be the greatest story in 40 minutes, that they would be in their cars on the way home just going crazy that they came back and won the county championship. So, just relax and let’s take this thing over.”
The Cougars responded with nearly flawless play, scoring 10 of the final 12 points for a 15-13 win, and coasted to wins in the semifinals and final the next two days.
“We were getting pounded, and then they started making mistakes and we didn’t,” said assistant coach Karen Burchfield. “We just got on a roll.”
Burchfield also coaches the Benito girls volleyball team (with Ellis assisting), which was 9-1 this season. She won a county title in 2013, with star Kathryn Attar, who also was a standout at Wharton and is currently an All-Ivy League Conference performer at Yale University.
The 6’-2” Hand has drawn comparisons to Attar, for his dominance and leadership in a championship season. Ellis says Hand is arguably the best eighth-grader in the state, able to control the action at the net as well as possessing a major league jump serve.
Hand’s brother Austin was on the first-ever boys volleyball team at Benito in 2017 and helped as an assistant coach on the team this year.
Ellis says the team’s one play this season was setting Hand for the kill, but the rest of the Cougars definitely helped make that possible.
Owen Brown (far left) delivers a header for a point on what Ellis calls Benito’s Play of the Year.
Setter Arman Razavi, also an eighth-grader, was the only Cougar with prior experience other than Hand. His ability to get the ball to Hand was the team’s primary source of offense, but he also served out the last four points of the Tomlin match when there was no room for error.
Libero Kamal Abutaha was a rarity — a sixth-grader who started at one of the sport’s toughest positions. He managed, however, to dig enough balls to Razavi to keep the offense humming, even in the county semifinals, when he had to wear his sister’s Vans because he forgot his shoes.
Sully Al-Qadheeb was the emotional leader on the team, who received a tryout — after the team had already been selected — at the recommendation of track/football coach Rodney Sharpe.
“Coach, I know you already announced the team, but this kid can jump out of the gym,” he told Ellis. “You should give him a look.”
Ellis says five minutes into his tryout, and despite zero volleyball experience, Sully was a starter. He made a number of big plays during the season, including a tip in the third set against Tomlin that tied the score at 12 and swung the momentum in Benito’s favor for good.
Eighth-grader and co-captain Nikhil Katiyar put off soccer to commit to the volleyball team, and always seemed to be in the right place at the right time. Owen Brown — also an eighth-grade co-captain — was consistent at the net but will probably be remembered most for heading the ball during the second set of the championship game, which scored a point and fired up the team so much they had to make a TikTok video of the feat.
Another eighth-grader, Boden Houck, earned his way into the rotation because of his serve, and he led the team off with his serve in every match, and Druve Kulkarni also chipped in with some big serves during the playoffs.
“Dillon was very good, obviously,” Ellis said. “He was ridiculous this season. But, this was a great team. Everyone had a role, and they played it perfectly.”
