Ryan, Debi, and Toren Cragun's Blog

Here are the other two interviews I did that landed me on local TV.

The first is from the day of the raid – May 20th.  I happened to have students coming over for dinner that night (from a small May class I taught).  A reporter from Fox 13 stopped by before my students did and asked me if I’d walk down the street around 9:00 and do an interview that would air at 10:00.  Since my students were still around, they walked down with me and got to watch to the interview from the Fox 13 news van:

This second video is from a few days later (May 24th). A different news program, NewsChannel 8, contacted me for an interview. I did this one in our backyard:

I mention something in this video only briefly that I didn’t mention in the others – an assault I witnessed. This was also mentioned in the St. Petersburg Times article. Here’s the long version of that encounter:

The day before the raid (May 19th), Leonora LaPeter Anton, the reporter from The St. Petersburg Times, and Stephen J. Coddington, a photographer for The St. Petersburg Times, came over.  I’d already spoken with Leonora at length about the clinic, but she wanted to talk some more and check the place out.  She and Stephen arrived around 4:00.  We chatted for a bit, then walked around my neighbor’s house and into the alley behind my house where I showed them the rear door to the Tampa Bay Wellness Centre, when it was behind my house.  I walked them around the front so they could see the front as well.  We then walked down the street about a block to the new location, 2137 W Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd.  It was about 4:45 or so at this point, and the clinic was still humming with activity.  There were probably 75 to 100 people waiting around in the parking lot for their prescriptions.  Leonora, Stephen, and I stood out front on the sidewalk, talking, taking notes, and taking pictures.  Leonora approached one person who looked like he worked there, but he basically wouldn’t say anything.  Several people stared at us, including one young guy who was probably in his early to mid-twenties.  He was standing directly in front of the building (we were a little to the west of it at this point).  He was wearing a baggy yellow outfit and looked like a gang banger.  He had a solid gold grill.  I’ve generally tried to be nice to the people at the clinic, but this guy looked and acted like a thug.  Ergo, he is the “yellow-shirt thug.”

One of the things we were doing while standing there was noticing license plates.  At least 70% of the cars were from out of state, and we were wondering just how far out of state they were.  So, when we saw one from far away (e.g., Nebraska), we’d mention it.  Stephen thought he saw a unique license place, so he stepped off the sidewalk toward the fence surrounding the parking area to get a better look.  As soon as he did, yellow-shirt thug came running at him/us.  He started cursing and yelling at us, “Get the f*ck out of here!  What are you trying to do?  Ruin people’s lives by putting them on the news?”  (etc. etc.).  He got right up into our faces and feinted several times as though he was going to attack us.  I noted for him that we had no obligation to leave that spot as we were on a sidewalk, which is public property.  He said he didn’t care.  He then threatened Stephen by saying, “If you take another f*cking picture I’ll smash your camera.”  I told him he’d go to jail for that.  He said a few more choice words, postured a bit more, then walked away.

After we calmed down a bit, we decided we’d cross the street to see if we could talk to the owners of the pharmacy and daycare that were directly across MLK from the pain clinic.  We crossed over to the pharmacy, David’s Pharmacy, and eventually got the owner’s wife to talk to us.  The people at the pharmacy were very nice and we ended up talking to them at length (they were mentioned in the St. Petersburg Times article).

Just as we were finishing up the interview with the pharmacy owners, we started to notice something weird was going on.  Yellow-shirt thug, and a similarly dressed green-shirted thug, were slinking around the west side of the daycare headed north, toward the pain clinic.  You can see everything in this map:

Leonora, Stephen and I were standing were you see the blue smiley face.  We were looking east (to the right of the photo) and watched yellow- and green-shirt thugs slink along the red line, from behind the daycare (past the fenced in play area), along the side of the daycare on the daycare’s property, across MLK and into the pain clinic parking lot.  I saw them slink past and thought it was weird, but didn’t really pay much attention to it as we were still talking to the owner of the pharmacy.  It was about 5:30 at this point and the daycare’s parking lot was full of parents picking up their children.  The traffic along MLK was also crazy busy.

A couple minutes after the two thugs headed north across MLK, we then saw yellow- and green-shirt thugs come running with an elderly guy chasing them right back along the red path.  The elderly guy was carrying four large pieces of concrete in his hands and had blood dripping from his mouth and down his chin.  The two thugs ran right along the red path and disappeared behind the daycare.  At this point, chaos was breaking out at the daycare.  A parent, holding his young daughter, saw a marked police car in the traffic on MLK and flagged it down.  It pulled into the parking lot and two non-uniformed police officers jumped out and chased down the elderly guy, forcing him to drop the rocks and pinning his arms behind his back.  The owner of the daycare was out of the daycare at this point trying to figure out what was going on.

Eventually a woman dressed in scrubs crossed the street from the pain clinic to see how the elderly guy was doing and explained what happened.  Here’s the story as she told it to us.  Yellow- and green-shirt thugs were “patients” at the clinic, not employees.  The elderly guy was the janitor at the clinic.  Yellow-shirt thug parked his vehicle in such a fashion that other “patients” weren’t able to get out of the clinic.  So, the people inside the clinic told the elderly guy to tell yellow-shirt thug to move his vehicle.  The elderly guy approached yellow-shirt thug, who quickly escalated the request into a shouting match.  He was clearly looking for a fight.  While yellow-shirt thug and the elderly guy were yelling at each other, green-shirt thug snuck up behind the elderly guy and suckered punched him, breaking his jaw!  The two thugs then jumped into their vehicle and drove off. However, the didn’t really leave; they just pulled up behind the daycare.  They were clearly itching for more fighting.  When we saw them slink past the daycare, they were headed back to the clinic to finish off the job they started.  When they got there, the elderly guy’s nephew was with him, so they started in on him.  That’s when the elderly guy picked up the concrete chunks and started chasing them.  We saw what happened after that.

Once all this came out, the police called an ambulance for the elderly guy, who left in it to have his jaw repaired.  Unfortunately, the thugs got away.  Argh!

Anyway, that’s the long version of the story.  Great place to have in your neighborhood, huh?!?  This is precisely why I’ve been saying I’m ecstatic to see the place gone.  Most of the “patients” at the clinic weren’t really in need of pain medication.  They were addicts or dealers getting drugs.   Good riddance!

Over the last few weeks I’ve been talking with Leonora LaPeter Anton at the St. Petersburg Times about the pill mill/pain management center that was behind my house.  Her story hit the paper today: Pill mill’s demise brings relief to neighbors.  Here’s the picture from that story:

me in the St. Petersburg Times

Apparently my picture is in the print edition as well.

Oh, and Channel 8 here locally interviewed me for a brief story as well that aired on the 24th.

I’ve had several people jokingly tell me I’m famous from all the attention this has been getting.  I blew it off as I highly doubted anyone would really think of me as famous.  Friday kind of drove home how widespread the attention has been.  I was walking Toren over to a nearby Chinese restaurant to pick up some take out food for dinner.  As I was leaving the restaurant, a car pulled up to a stop sign as we were crossing the street.  The driver was probably in his late 60s.  He rolled down his window and said, “Hey, are you the guy from TV?”  Stunned, I sputtered out, “Yeah, I guess.”  He then said, “That is so awesome!  I’m so happy you did what you did.  I live around here and hated that place.  I’m so glad to see they’re gone.  Thank you!  Oh, and your son is really adorable.”  He then drove off.

I’ve had a number of people from work mention they saw the news coverage and even had a nurse at the ENT place where I get my allergy shots thank me for standing up to this place.  Apparently people do watch the news!

Despite the attention, I’m reminded of a line from one of my favorite documentaries, The UP Series, which is a multi-part documentary that tracks the lives of 10 or so British kids, starting when they were 7 in 1964, all the way through today.  In that series, one of the people who is tracked becomes a college professor.  And in one of the later episodes, he says, “My goal in life is to be more famous for my research than for being in this film.”  That’s exactly how I feel about this pain management clinic.  Yes, I’m glad it was shut down, but I never wanted that to be my claim to fame.  Hopefully my research will eventually get more press than this.

While I’m a major geek and I love technology, I’m also cheap.  Ergo, we’ve had the same cell phones for three years: HTC 8125s.  They’ve been good phones, but they ran a very outdated Windows Mobile operating system with limited functionality.  I eventually convinced Debi that it was time to upgrade to new smart/app phones (to pay the difference in our monthly bill we dropped cable, which isn’t a big deal since we rarely watch TV these days anyway).  As Linux users, we obviously were not interested in buying phones with the new Windows 7 Mobile operating system on it.  We also didn’t want iPhones, which would force us to run Windows or Mac OSX in order to get iTunes.  And, I’ve been hearing great things about Android (which is now more widespread than the iPhone in the cell market), so we went with the new Verizon Droid Incredible Android phone:

Droid Incredible

The specs are pretty impressive, but really I’m just very, very impressed with the basic functionality of the operating system and phone.  Phone operating systems have come a long way since we bought our HTC 8125s with Windows Mobile 5.  It’s quite literally a smart phone as the following feature illustrates: the screen goes blank when you put the phone up to your ear to talk and comes back on when you pull it away from your ear.  That simple feature is genius for two reasons: (1) You can’t push any buttons with your face when you’re talking, which Debi loves, and  (2) you don’t have to hit a button to bring the screen back up to hang up when you’re done as it automatically comes back up for you (our old phones had both of these problems).  Genius.  Google Maps and Navigation are super slick – so long dedicated GPS.  You can pull up Google Maps, search for something, find it, then click on it and select navigate and the phone instantly converts into a GPS unit with audio directions that include street names.  Also, the map is scrollable while you navigate.  It’s super slick!  Of course, there are lots of apps, but I find that I don’t really use most of the apps, just some of the basic stuff – like Gmail, Google Reader, the internet, and Google Maps.  Oh, and the phone integrates perfectly with your Google Contacts and Calendar, making it super easy to schedule appointments and update contact information on the go.  You can also use Google Chat on the phone as well, which is even better than text messaging for instant communication (Debi and I have used it already).  Oh, and if you have a Google Voice account (which I do), the integration is superb!  It manages all of your voice and text messages in a fashion that is really quite remarkable.

I was a little wary about the lack of a slide out keyboard, but once I found out that the phone has the ability to transcribe voice (and it’s pretty reliable), I figured it was unnecessary.  Plus, the horizontal on-screen keyboard is just as good as a slide out keyboard as far as I’m concerned.  So, at this point, I don’t have any complaints.  It’s a remarkably slick, sleek, useful device.  Oh, and as an added bonus, there is a free Tricorder app for Android that actually works, generating pretty interesting information, including compass directions, wireless networks, signal strengths, and solar activity:

Tricorder App for Android

Now I can walk around with my phone and say, “Let me check my Tricorder.”  Geek heaven!

Debi’s great aunt, Verna Probst, passed away on April 25th. Verna was a lot like a grandmother to Debi and the rest of her family and was very close to Debi’s parents.  Debi and Toren flew out for the funeral at the end of April (while they were sick, unfortunately).  Here’s the obituary from the Salt Lake Tribune:

a younger Verna

Verna Probst

Verna Berg Probst 1912 ~ 2010 The Best Ever! Verna was the best sister, aunt, grandmother and friend. She passed away peacefully on April 25, 2010 at her apartment surrounded by some of her family. She was born February 23, 1912 to Hans Peter Arnold Berg and Harriet Rosalia Sanders Berg. Verna was a lifetime member of the LDS Church and held many callings including teacher in MIA and Relief Society, counselor and drama director in MIA, and as teacher development leader. She also worked on German name extraction. Verna graduated from Murray High School in 1930, where she received the Scholarship and Activity Award. She participated in drama and debate. Despite the great depression Verna went on to college and graduated from the University of Utah with a two year normal certificate in 1932, her Bachelor of Science Degree in Education with honors in 1947, and her Master’s Degree in Education in 1966. She loved teaching and taught in the public schools in Roosevelt, Midway and Murray, Utah. She was the president and member of the Midway Garden Club, regional director of the Utah Associated Garden Clubs, a member of the Historical Society of Midway and the Utah Historical Society. She was a member of The Daughters of the Utah Pioneers where she taught lessons on Pioneers. She married Clarence Henry Probst on June 8, 1973 in the Provo LDS Temple. He died Jan. 8, 1991. She was preceded in death by all of her brothers and sisters except her youngest sister Dorothy Roark (Bountiful). She also has one remaining sister-in-law Bonnie Berg (Salt Lake City). She leaves behind many grandchildren, great-grandchildren and numerous nieces, nephews and friends. She loved us all. We have been greatly blessed by her life and her love. Funeral services will be held at 12:00 Noon, Saturday, May 1, 2010, at the Little Cottonwood 6th Ward, 6410 South 725 East, Murray, Utah. The viewings will also be at the church where friends may call Friday April 30, 2010 from 6:00-7:30 p.m. and Saturday from 11:00-11:45 a.m.

The last month or so around our house hasn’t been the greatest. Debi came down with an ear infection. Toren likely had one at the same time, but we didn’t realize it right away. Eventually they were both on antibiotics and each of them tried multiple antibiotics before they found anything that seemed to work. Of course, the antibiotics aren’t particularly friendly on the digestive tract. Both Debi and Toren had side effects, primarily diarrhea (yeah, I know, not ideal blog talk). The illnesses coincided with the passing of Debi’s great aunt and finals (more on the funeral soon).

This leads me to my story… Last Wednesday (the 5th) I stayed home with Toren most of the day as he couldn’t go to daycare. This whole time he was having explosive diarrhea, requiring diaper changes pretty much every hour. I put him down for a nap, and when he woke up, I put him on my lap.  He usually takes a few minutes to really wake up and want to do something, so I figured he could just cuddle with me while he really woke up. After a few minutes I noticed a smell and realized he had pooped again. It was powerful enough that it leaked out and onto my shorts. If parenthood teaches you anything, it’s to not freak out around feces (hooray for parenthood!). I wasn’t particularly worried about his diaper or the feces on my shorts, but he needed to be changed. So I took him to the changing table, set him down, and began changing him. Lately, Toren hasn’t wanted to sit still on the changing table. Instead, he immediately turns onto his stomach, then pulls himself up to look out the window by the changing table. Sometimes it’s not worth fighting him while he does this as he really freaks out. So, after getting the poopy diaper off and wiping him clean, I let him stand up. I was just about ready to put the clean diaper on when… Woosh!  Out comes a fresh batch of diarrhea, right onto the changing table.  It was green, gooey, and all in a big puddle.  Leave it to an 11-month old inquisitive child to look down at this point, see something that he doesn’t typically see on the changing table, and think it might be fun to play in it.  So, what does he do?  Before I could start wiping it up, he started stomping in his puddle of diarrhea!  Yep, stomping in diarrhea.  If you had asked me a year ago if I was ever going to write that sentence on my blog, I would have reconsidered the whole kid thing…

Anyway, the stomping is just the start.  Our changing table has, of course, a slick, wipeable surface, for obvious reasons.  Once Toren’s feet were coated in the diarrhea, he couldn’t stand up… Woosh!  He slipped into the diarrhea as his feet slipped from underneath him, coating his front side in his diarrhea.  Mind you, it’s not like I’m a passive observer during this – I’m trying my best to sop up the diarrhea with clean diapers and wipes, but Toren was moving so fast that I couldn’t get to it all before he had covered himself, chest to toe, in his own diarrhea.  At this point, I picked him up, let him stop dripping for a second, and carried him into the bathroom.  I promptly deposited him into the sink, turned on the water, and gave him an impromptu bath.  It took another 30 minutes or so to get him rediapered and the diarrhea cleaned up.  It was, um, well, everywhere.  And for the sake of anyone planning on visiting, I did a really good job cleaning it up, so you don’t have to worry about it being around when you get here.  But it was everywhere.

Oh, and it’s only in the last day or so that Debi has finally started to feel better.  After her multiple rounds with antibiotics, she ended up wiping out all of her intestinal flora, leaving her vulnerable to atypical bacteria, like clostridium dificile.  We think she ended up with a c. dificile infection, which is really, really nasty (what that means, symptoms wise, you really, really don’t want to know).  Suffice it to say, she seems to be on the mend, though she has lost a lot of weight over the last month and it will probably take her months to fully recover.  But we’re doing better now and everyone seems to be getting better, even if we’re not all perfectly healthy.