Melissa Caraway
Lakeview Center has named Melissa Caraway, a component director for its Special Populations Network, its Team Member of the Year for 2023. Caraway has worked at Lakeview Center for 30 years, focusing on serving intellectually disabled individuals in her community. She often encounters people who have no one to turn to for help. Her official role as a supervisor could easily be a hands-off position. However, Caraway likes being in touch with the clients. She loves watching them achieve something they’ve never done before.
Stéphano Candreva
Ballet Pensacola recently announced Candreva has joined the organization as the new artistic director. Born and raised in Brazil, he received his foundational training at the
esteemed Studio de Dança Com-Passos. He later graduated from the Escola de Dança Alice Arja in Rio de Janeiro. His artistry has consistently enthralled audiences from his tenure with Smuin Contemporary Ballet to his roles with Atlanta Ballet and The Suzanne Farrell Ballet. Candreva represented Brazil at the Seminario Internacional de Danca de Brasilia, where he earned a silver medal. He was also a semifinalist at the 2006 Prix de Lausanne Argentinian.
Ring of Fire The Ring of Fire (ROF), originally established as a weekly syndicated radio show in 2004 with a mission to shed light on Wall Street misconduct, environmental abuses, media shortcomings, and lesser-known political narratives, has reached a significant milestone—more than 1 billion views. Led by hosts Levin Papantonio Rafferty attorney Mike Papantonio and Farron Cousins, ROF consistently delivers a diverse range of content, including broadcasts, news segments and video features.
Pensacola Children’s Chorus The American Choral Directors Association invited the Pensacola Children’s Chorus (PCC) to present a solo concert at its conference in Louisville, Kentucky. Few choirs are honored with this distinction, and the invitation is the result of a rigorous and blind selection process that reviews multiple years of concert recordings. Of the 75 choirs that participated in the selection process, only 15 were selected to perform—including PCC’s high school-aged choir.
Losers
Joseph Ladapo Florida’s surgeon general again has put politics above medical science. Manatee Bay Elementary School outside of Fort Lauderdale has had an outbreak of measles. The school has a low vaccination rate, and local media reported more than 200 students had missed school. Because measles is highly contagious, most doctors recommend unvaccinated children stay home until the end of the infectious period, which is estimated to be March 7. However, Dr. Ladapo wrote the parents that the health department was “deferring to parents or guardians to make decisions about school attendance.” He cited the community’s high immunity rate, the burden of staying home on the family, and the educational costs of healthy students missing school. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, one in 20 infected children develop pneumonia, and up to three in 1,000 children die of the infection.
Mike Lindell In 2021, the My Pillow CEO issued the “Prove Mike Wrong” challenge, promising to pay $5 million to anyone who debunked his claims that foreign actors interfered in the 2020 election. Lindell released data he said proved the results were illegitimate. A Nevada forensics expert, Robert Zeidman, proved the data did not mention the election. When Lindell refused to pay up, Ziedman won a private arbitration in 2023. The My Pillow CEO appealed and lost that hearing, too. On Wednesday, Feb. 21, a federal judge in Minnesota upheld the $5 million arbitration award.
Primary Runoffs Florida voters last saw election primary runoffs in 2002. Since then, over a dozen Escambia County races would’ve had primary runoffs under the old law. The closest one was the District 4 county commission race in 2018, when Robert Bender won a six-person Republican primary with 27% of the votes. Last week, House Speaker Paul Renner declared a bill that would have resurrected the runoffs dead for the session after strong opposition from Republicans, including our Congressman Matt Gaetz, who argued it would hurt more conservative candidates.