Ryan, Debi, and Toren Cragun's Blog

So, my regular readers may have forgotten, but I posted about the pain management clinic behind my house, along with the pharmacy, a few months ago.  Yesterday they were raided by the DEA and Tampa Police.  This has been all over the news the last day or so and is front page news everywhere here in Tampa.  Here are some sample links, in case you’re interested:

• Tampa police, DEA searching 3 Tampa businesses
• 24 hours of Tampa Bay’s prescription drug epidemic
• Tampa enacts emergency pain clinic ordinance
• No new pain clinics in Hillsborough County
• Families push for pain clinic crackdown
• Who runs these pain clinics?
• Crackdown on pain clinics
• Clinic’s problems painfully obvious, neighbors say

I’ve been contacted by reporters from multiple outlets and was on TV again last night being interviewed about this.  I haven’t been able to find that video online, but I Tivo’d it and will post it when I get a chance.

Anyway, I just wanted to say “boo-yah” to the scumbags running this thing.  I knew they were running a pill mill all along; now everyone else does too.  I wonder how much help my little blog was in all of this…

Oh, and I’ve been doing a little more digging on this…  Look for a follow-up post later today (even though I have real work I should be doing).

The St. Petersburg Times has a good story on the pain management clinic epidemic in Hillsborough County today.  Obviously Tampa Bay Wellness Center is not alone in doling out prescription drugs (in all likelihood to addicts and dealers, though I don’t know that for certain).  The story says the police are finally starting to do something about this – though it takes a drug overdose death every 35 hours in Hillsborough County to make this happen.  Apparently the problem has to do with prescription drug oversight – there is no electronic tracking system in place, so there is no way to know how many drugs are being prescribed by doctors.  Ergo, doctors in Hillsborough County can prescribe thousands and thousands of pills a week and no one will stop by to say anything about it.   Tampa needs a new slogan: Come Visit Tampa, Where Narcotics Are an MRI Away!

I wrote up my experience with the pain management clinic behind my house on my blog a few months ago. Since then, a lot has happened. A bunch of people have emailed me about the clinic; I’ve talked to lawyers and reporters and patients and documentary film makers about this. I’m not sure what will eventually happen to the clinic, but the local Fox News affiliate ran a story on them last night that included an interview with me:

Oh, and all the night footage – I shot that! Doug Smith asked me if I could, so I snuck out there one night around 9:00 pm and shot the people walking around in the middle of the night.

I’ve now been to four Disney parks: Disney Land (California), Disney World Magic Kingdom (Florida), Disney World Epcot Center (Florida), and Disney World Animal Kingdom (Florida). I went to Disney Land when I was younger, though I have some memories of various attractions (the Matterhorn, Swiss Family Robinson House, the Haunted House, and the nightmarish It’s a Small World). Debi and I went to Epcot a few years ago.  Last  weekend I went to the other two while some of Debi’s family was visiting.

If you’ve ever discussed Disney with me, you’ll know that I’m not a fan. I have a lot of reasons why, but here are some of the main ones.

1. Disney aggressively protects its copyrights.  In and of itself, protecting copyrights isn’t a terrible thing.  People deserve to make money off their creative works, for a reasonable amount of time.  However, the way Disney has done it is disturbing.  Disney takes public domain works, like The Little Mermaid (written over 100 years ago, ergo, public domain), turns them into copyrighted works like their 1989 film, then aggressively litigates against anyone who mentions the fairytale, despite it technically being a public domain story.  In other words, Disney makes its money off of stealing stories and ideas from the public domain, turning them into corporate property, and fighting anyone who tries to use them.  Additionally, Disney has aggressively fought copyright expiration, leading the charge for the Copyright Term Extension Act, which has extended the length of copyright in the US well beyond what it should be for all practical purposes.  In short, Disney has abused, ruined, and bastardized copyright law in the US.
2. Driving into Disney, you pass through an arch that reads, “Where Dreams Come True.”  If your dream is a completely commercialized, over-priced, jam-packed-with-people theme park, then I could see that being the case.  But I don’t think that is the dream most people have when they go to Disney.  I think the dream they have is that it is “The Happiest Place on Earth.”  Observing people there seems to suggest that isn’t true either – I saw a lot of kids crying (though I also some kids who seemed to really be enjoying themselves).  What really gets me about the whole “Dreams Come True” thing, is that some people actually seem to think Disney means it.  One girl I saw in the Animal Kingdom typified this.  She must have been 11 to 13 years old and was dressed in a fairy princess outfit, walking around with her parents who were probably in their 50s.  I saw a lot of little girls who were dressed as princesses, but most of them were 5 to 6 years old and their parents hadn’t told them yet that it was just a fantasy and not reality.  But when I saw an 11-13 year-old girl still imagining that she was, in fact, a princess, I saw evil.  Unless you happen to be born into a royal family in one of the ridiculous monarchical dynasties that still exist around the world today, you’re not a princess.  Get over it.
3. So, the fact that some people really believe Disney makes dreams come true bothers me.  But what bothers me even more is that Disney takes fantastical ideas and commercializes them.  It’s all about making money.  In short, Disney monetizes fantasy.  Certainly people who create fantasy realms deserve credit for doing so.  But the level of commercialization at Disney is over-the-top.  There is nothing Disney won’t sell you – they even sell seats in their parades, if you pay enough!  In fact, Disney hires scientists to study children and teenagers to figure out how to sell them stuff.  The most amazing part about all of this is that kids think they are engaging their imagination even though Disney does all the imagining and really has an ulterior motive: convince them to buy stuff.  Parents are then roped into the Disney commercial world by their Disney-obsessed kids, and 99% of the people who fall prey to Disney have no idea that Disney executives are only interested in maximizing revenues through pseudo-fantasy, not in actually making anyone’s dreams come true.  It’s quite genius, actually.
4. Another reason I really, really dislike Disney is because they put on a facade of multiculturalism and being welcoming, but it’s lip service to tolerance.  Case in point: It’s A Small World.  The superficial idea behind this very creepy ride is that it introduces people on the ride to various world cultures and then suggests we can all live together.  That sounds nice, but how are the various cultures identified?  Through stereotypes.  For instance, France is typified by a bunch of women doing the CanCan (and not, say, Laicite or the French Revolution).  Holland is represented by blonde-haired people wearing wood shoes (and not, say, for it’s remarkable engineering feats).  Various African nations are represented as being undeveloped and tribal (and not for being the birthplace of humans).  Latin American countries are represented as relatively undeveloped as well.  In short, every world culture is boiled down to one or two stereotypes that do nothing to help people really come to understand other cultures.  While I can’t say with any certainty that It’s A Small World has never led someone to become less ethnocentric, I’m guessing all it has ever really done is reinforce stereotypes.  And, of course, Epcot is basically just the same stereotypes writ large.  If Disney really wanted to reduce prejudice and ethnocentrism, you wouldn’t look at scary little dolls singing some unintelligible song in weirdly high voices but would sit down and have coffee or a drink with someone from another country.  Actual contact with people who are not like you on an even footing is probably the single best way to reduce prejudice.  So, rather than pay lip service to multiculturalism, why not actually do something to reduce prejudice?
5. My last issue is more of an annoyance than a major problem.  If you’ve been to Disney you may remember that employees wave at you all the time.  What is up with that?  I’m wondering if Disney did some research at some point that found that people feel more welcome if someone waves to them.  It actually had the opposite effect on me: it creeped me out.  The fact that random strangers waved to you, usually with no smile and only as a perfunctory part of their job, made me feel uncomfortable.  Maybe waving is a bit too intimate for me; I don’t typically wave at every random stranger.  And maybe that’s the idea – it makes you feel like everyone knows you and cares about you.  But they don’t.  And since I know that they don’t, it creeped me out.  Add to that fact that some of the stuff you see at Disney is creepy in other ways, and you have to wonder why people think it is such an amazing place.  Perhaps it’s just me, but I could imagine that, if hell existed, it would be something akin to going through It’s A Small World for eternity.  These freakish little animated dolls bother me at some fundamental level:
   

   the creepy dolls from It's A Small World

   If you simply change the context, can’t you imagine a horror movie that includes these dolls coming to life and tearing people to shreds?  Or maybe they are secretly possessed by evil spirits – that would make a great independent film: It’s A Small World… And Then You Die!   Yeah, Disney is creepy at some weird level (at least it is to me).

In short, Disney is everything that is wrong with corporate America.  It steals from individuals and the public domain, but gives nothing back to the public domain.  It monetizes fantasy.  It pays lip service to tolerance, but in fact reinforces and even sells stereotypes.  And it uses social psychology to try to deceive people into feeling welcome when the real intent is simply to take their money.  Yep, Disney is a pernicious evil.

But this post isn’t quite over.  I have yet to introduce the irony: I’m going back, at least two more times in the next two months.  Why, you ask?  And yes, you should ask that considering what I just wrote.  Well, Disney had a special offer when we bought our tickets for Florida residents – 4 days at any of the 4 parks for $99.00, which is less than you’d pay to go for just 2 days.  Since we were going for 2 days, we figured we should buy the 4 day pass.  And now that we have the passes, I can’t help but think that I should maximize their value to me.  So, I’m going to go back and do some more ethnographic research on Disney.  Maybe I’ll ask some of the employees why they wave all the time.  Maybe I’ll shoot one of the dolls in It’s A Small World for being so creepy.  Maybe I won’t stare during the parade and repeatedly utter under my breath during it “This is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever seen; how could anyone find it interesting.”  Or maybe I’ll just go, try not to be a sociologist, and enjoy myself.

There is another smaller bit of irony.  I enjoyed going to Disney last weekend.  What?!?  Really, what?!?  After that lengthy, mean diatribe you’re telling me you enjoyed it?  Yes, I did.  But not for the reason you think.  I enjoyed it because I got to spend time with my family.  Being at Disney wasn’t the important factor (though I did enjoy the Everest ride in the Animal Kingdom); being with family was.  Would I go back if my extended family wanted to?  Absolutely!  Family comes first!  Family even comes before sociological analysis of the most perniciously evil place on earth – Disney.

I’m not exactly sure when it happened, but in the last few months a new pain management clinic was opened in the strip mall behind our house called Tampa Bay Wellness Centre. For two and a half years, we’ve had no problems with the strip mall that is just over our fence. But in the last few months, that has changed.

On January 31st, a Saturday, Debi and I woke up to the sounds of chainsaws. I didn’t immediately realize from where the sound was coming, but soon realized that someone was cutting down all of the trees on the other side of our fence by the strip mall. No one had approached us about doing this. What’s more, the previous owner of the house who put in our fence, didn’t actually put the fence on our property line, but instead put the fence about 2 to 3 feet away from our property line because he didn’t want to cut down those trees. Ergo, the trees they were cutting down were actually at least partially our trees, on our property. I went out, stuck my head over the fence, and got the attention of the woman who was cutting down the trees. I mentioned to her that the trees were on my property, which immediately gave her pause. She was hired to cut them down and was told that they were on the property of the owner of the strip mall. She immediately went to talk to the person who had hired her to let him know that this was sketchy. He and another business owner then came around to my place where I was out talking with my neighbor, to apologize and try to smooth things over. A little late – the trees were already cut down!

Over the last month, with the trees gone, we’ve had several instances where people have been walking around in the alley behind the strip mall at 11:00 pm talking loudly or yelling. I went out there a couple of weeks ago after a guy had been talking loudly for over an hour at 11:00 pm and popped my head over our fence. I don’t know who he was, but he didn’t wait around – he dropped his phone and ran.

One other time over the past week there have been people talking loudly in the alley at night. But last night, at 11:00 pm, it was really getting on my nerves. Then a car alarm went off, waking up Toren. I’d had enough. I went into our backyard to see what was going on, but by that time no one was back there, despite there still being 6 or 7 cars in the alley. So I decided I’d walk around to the front of the strip mall to see what was going on.

I’m probably too naive to realize that this was very risky, but I was pissed. As I walked around the corner to the strip mall and started to head down the sidewalk, I started noticing a group of people hanging out in front of the Tampa Bay Wellness Centre. As I got closer, I realized these people were not really the kind of people I’d want to run into late at night – they were wearing tattered clothing, looked unkempt, looked to be in relatively poor health, had various scars, and looked, well, mean. Having no experience with drug dealers, I can’t say for certain that’s what they looked like, but that was the initial impression I received – white, scummy, drug dealers. There were about 6 or 7 of them standing in front of the Tampa Bay Wellness Centre. When I got to the door of this “clinic”, I started to ask the people sitting around outside if it was open, but then one of them opened the door and walked in, so I followed him. Inside, at 11:00pm on a Friday night, there were at least another 15 to 20 people sitting around a makeshift clinic, watching TV. They looked just like the people outside.

Cut into one wall was a window where I assumed the staff were. I waited while the guy who entered before me asked if he was up yet. Then it was my turn. In the little, unfinished, and really scary looking office, there were three people I could see – a young woman, a young man, and Gloria, a middle-aged woman. I started right in on them, complaining about the noise and wanting to know what was going on. Gloria was the one who piped up and denied that it was them, claiming that they didn’t let anyone back in the alley. BS! I mentioned the car alarm and told them I have an 8-month old son. She apologized, then said that they were going to be leaving in a week. When I asked why, the young man said, “Does it matter? You don’t want us to leave?” To which I responded, “No, you leaving would be great, but it just looks funny for you to set up shop for a month or two then leave.” Anyway, I ended up getting the card of the Doctor who supposedly runs the clinic and Gloria’s name, then warned her that I would start phoning in noise complaints to the police every time I heard them from now on. At this, one of the patrons said, “If you have a problem with this place, you can go talk to the police officer who is watching it from his cruiser in the parking lot over.” I told him I just might.

I walked out to glares from some of the patrons, then headed back the way I came. I did notice as I walked that there was a Tampa Police cruiser in the parking lot opposite the clinic as the patron said, so I went over to the cruiser to see what was going on. I think he was a bit wary at first, but when I introduced myself and explained what I was doing, he relaxed and we started to chat. He was, in fact, observing this “clinic” because the police are fairly confident that what is happening is that the doctor is simply writing whatever patients walk in prescriptions for narcotics and painkillers. My neighbor and I had guessed this was what was happening, but to hear the police confirm that it was the suspicion was surprising, especially because the officer said there was nothing they could do at this point. That annoyed me because the local police recently busted a bunch of people in the Tampa area doing just this. As we talked, the officer was amazed to hear that I had gone into the clinic. He was also amazed that it was open at 11:00pm on a Friday night. He kept saying, “I don’t know of any doctor’s offices that are open that late at night.” Anyway, the officer was nice and did confirm that I could call in noise complaints after 11:00 whenever they occurred. So, I’ll be doing that.

But I also decided to look into things a bit more this morning. Here’s what my internet sleuthing has discovered:

Ronald J. Heromin

Ronald J. Heromin is the doctor who is running the Tampa Bay Wellness Centre. He is licensed in Florida. However, he was been disciplined by the Florida Board of Medicine, on April 4, 2009, for beginning to operate on a patient’s wrong leg. (You can see a copy of the discipline decision here as well.) Unfortunately that only ended in a $5,000 fine. Dr. Heromin has also recently filed for bankruptcy with close to $150,000 in debt. This sounds like the perfect recipe for a doctor to start slumming it, doling out prescriptions for narcotics. I, of course, cannot say that Dr. Heromin is doing that, but his clinic is certainly sketchy. The clientèle were sketchy. And staying open late at night on a Friday doling out prescriptions in a clinic that, from my quick purview, doesn’t even have a room to see patients seems really, really sketchy. So, I don’t know what Dr. Heromin is doing, but it’s not above reproach.

Because I don’t want to keep the card I took that night any longer, I’m posting all of the information it included here:

Tampa Bay Wellness Centre
Office of Ronald J. Heromin, M.D.
1943 W. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd, Tampa, FL 33607
Phone: (813) 374-8950
Fax: (813) 374-8949

Ettinberg Properties, LLC & Haim Goldenberg

The owner of the strip mall where Tampa Bay Wellness Centre is located is Haim Goldenberg, the registered agent of Ettinberg Properties, LLC. Here’s the property tax information on the property, which says it is worth $1.4 million. And here’s the corporate information on Ettinberg Properties, LLC. Apparently he’s living quite well – here’s a picture of his home courtesy of Google Maps. It’s 2009 market value is $688,764.00. He’s also the registered agent of Universal Auto Leasing Inc. at 8542 N Dale Mabry Hwy, Tampa, FL 33614, which looks like some strange car rental or leasing location. I’d laugh if this also happens to be Haim Goldenberg, the famed Israeli mentalist, but I doubt it.