The Miami Herald from Miami, Florida • 99

BUSINESS 6B DEATHS 3B FLORIDA NEWS 5B V- xf JU TV anchor to plead no contest to DUI 7 didn want to have to go through a trial and have all these negative stories in the media By doing this I eliminate the circus LIZ BALMASEDA for what is happening to me is The former police reporter who earned his reputation televising other crimes wanted to avoid a highly publicized trial His competitors he said dying to cover my trial because burying them in the ratings want to have to go through a trial and have all these negative stories in the media By doing this I eliminate the In fact Sanchez postponed pleading no contest last Thursday because WTVJ-Chan-nel 4 heard about it and set up a camera inside Dade Circuit Judge Marc courtroom was hoping the media find RICK SANCHEZ WSVN-Channel 7 anchorman By DON VAN NATTAJr Herald Staff Writer Television anchorman Rick Sanchez will plead no contest Thursday to a drunk driving charge saying he wants to avoid a DUI trial that his TV news competitors would turn into a Sanchez the 33-year-old top-rated anchorman for WSVN-Channel 7 told The Herald Tuesday that he will enter the plea to avoid a jail sentence for driving while intoxicated on Dec 10 after leaving Joe Robbie Stadium following a Miami Dolphins football game That night 1991 Volvo struck and critically injured a man who ran into a two-lane road and in front of car A blood test showed Sanchez had a blood alcohol level of 15 percent In Florida a driver with a 10 percent blood alcohol level is considered drunk Under the terms of the plea bargain Sanchez will accept: Six months probation Six months suspension of his driver license A $250 fine plus $100 court costs A 15-hour course for drunk drivers Fifty hours of community service feel horrible about what has happened and willing to accept the Sanchez said only person responsible PLEASE SEE SANCHEZ 4B Yurre forced into ranoff Plummer takes easy win in Miami commission race some ass in the next few days You just have seven opponents blasting you on a daily basis and come out with 50 percent on the first In another Miami race Commissioner JL Plummer romped to victory with almost a 4-1 edge over two opponents It was largest margin in 21 years on the commission lose a precinct from what been Plummer said got to be elated with De Yurre ran stronger among blacks than Hispanics The Hispanic community is where Bared a former assistant Miami police chief By CARL GOLDFARB And JOSEPH TANFANI Herald Staff Writers Miami Commissioner Victor De Yurre battered by a barrage of radio spots attacking his relationship with a drug dealer was forced into a runoff Tuesday with challenger Alfredo Bared De Yurre topped a field of eight candidates but drew less than half the vote Bared who blistered De urre in the closing days of the campaign will go head to head with the commissioner next Tuesday be all said De Yurre who denied any impropriety in his legal work for a housing developer convicted of smuggling just have to go out and kick PLEASE SEE MIAMI 2B Martinez critics top Hialeah runoff list that high with the third largest number of votes either reward or punish you for what you said is an answer to the administration and what it is The other survivors are incumbents Roberto Ruiz and Evelio Medina both Martinez supporters machine shop owner Raymundo Barrios who says he is neutral in the city hall battle and lunch truck owner Angel Fajardo a Martinez critic Martinez who took the top job in By AMINDA MARQUES GONZALEZ Herald Staff Writer In an ominous sign for Hialeah Acting Mayor Julio Martinez his critics dominated the eight candidates who survived primary and will go on to next runoff Three of the acting critics incumbent Salvatore community resource coordinator Isis Garcia-Martinez and former Crime Watch coordinator Carmen Caldwell ended in the top four slots Only one Martinez supporter incumbent Paulino Nuilez made it Volunteers can reach kids when the system It is an unlikely study place a hidden spot on the stage of the Coral Reef Elementary cafeteria Tucked behind the curtains is the makeshift office a desk buried among storage boxes Here as her schoolmates munch on peanut butter sandwiches and frolic in the lunchroom below a first-grader named Octavia is learning to read has a nap on his The tutor appears truly amazed Then Elaine Seliger grandmother retired restaurateur tireless volunteer applauds her pupil pick your star sweetie she tells Octavia handing her a sheet of colorful foil stickers Small victories lasting results On this morning there is good reason for a shiny green star Octavia has been working on this very sentence for two weeks When she first faced the exercise she could not even recognize the word But now she can read the sentence Now she can put the cards each bearing a word of the sentence in perfect order Having accomplished that Octavia presses the star onto her shirt She comes to this learning place three times a week and practices basic reading and word recognition Today she works on As the tutor flashes picture cards before her Octavia says what they are: Curtains There is no magic here A child learns to read not by machine nor medical potion In this nook success is measured in small careful deliberate steps But the most crucial element of all is the tutor Elaine Seliger belongs to One to One Volunteer Tutors a group that has been teaching Dade County schoolchildren to read for 22 years She comes to Coral Reef every day from 9 am to 1 pm tutoring 17 students for a half-hour at a time This is no improvised operation She is one of more than 50 tutors who volunteer in Dade schools There has been no time more crucial than this for their kind of work As Dade schools brace for a budget slash that will further cramp overcrowded classrooms individual attention becomes a chapter for the history books Though there are programs for children with severe learning disabilities those with marginal difficulties fall into a dangerous area never quite catching up with the class mainstream yet still not qualifying for special classes For those there are volunteers like Elaine Seliger Where the classrooms leave off During private sessions children cover ground they miss in hectic classrooms But more than that their self-esteem gets a boost Last year Seliger worked at a table outside a classroom braving rain heat and mosquitoes This year she says lucky to have a tight spot indoors She keeps a folder and a plastic index card box for each student filing the words they need to practice marking their progress with a rudimentary system of check marks and penciled notes Down in the noisy cafeteria a blur of Ninja Turtle T-shirts and lunch boxes The tutor has learned to block out the clamor to engage her students with her storytelling and clearly enunciated questions the name of that letter she asks one kindergarten boy she tutors three times a week replies Chris his Keds flapping under the desk sound does She shows the boy pictures she clipped from magazines and laminated upon flash cards Now he works on "Turtles sound does toast begin is the letter that makes that iij The tutor calls this old ordinary repetition" But much much more than that (New One to One Volunteer Tutors will be trained Nov 12 14 and 19 at the main branch of the Miami-Dade Public Library If interested call Elaine Seliger at 251-3407) MICHELLE PATTERSON Miami Herald BIG VICTORY: Commissioner JL Plummer says elated after winning with the largest margin in 2 1 years on the commission whipping two opponents 4 to 1 PLEASE SEE HIALEAH 2B fINSSD Gelber Kutun in Beach mayor duel Hirschfeld Singer out Resnick Shapiro Kasdin and Eisenberg in Homestead voters returned Mayor Tad DeMilly and four incumbents to the City Council 2B Miami voters rejected two proposed changes in the city charter including one that would have allowed commissioners to delegate subpoena powers to appointed city boards 2B Two television polls of Miami voters show Mayor Xavier Suarez as the favorite in a hypothetical race for mayor against Commissioner Miriam Alonso 2B think the message is clear: I ran and running on the major thesis that Miami Beach has to get its reputation back" said Gelber who led Kutun by five percentage points in voting represents the status Said Kutun: it comes down to the issues about who can clean out City Hall about who can make By BONNIE WESTON Herald Staff Writer Miami Beach voters turned out in force Tuesday to send a mixed message to City Hall booting a commissioner from office but keeping two others on a ruling body that will be dominated by new faces and many hope new directions A fourth commissioner colorful hotelier Abe Hirschfeld was left out of office as voters set up a mayoral showdown between retired judge Seymour Gelber and former state legislator Barry Kutun Exactly one week after the indictment of Mayor Alex Daoud nearly half the registered voters went to the polls comfortably returning Commissioners Abe Resnick and Martin Shapiro to office against relatively unknown opponents Newcomer Neisen Kasdin handily won former commission seat Not as fortunate were Hirschfeld and Bruce Singer Singer ending a decade in office lost by the thinnest of margins to former Commissioner Sy Eisenberg Hirschfeld who forfeited his seat to run for mayor failed to persuade voters to promote him after only one term as a commissioner With the Nov 19 runoff looming mayoral foes Gelber and Kutun will each spend the next two weeks portraying himself as the best hope for change PLEASE SEE MIAMI BEACH 2B Coast Guard interdicts 84 more Haitians at sea 4 charged in prostitution ring Cops: Couple ran business from Lauderdale condo Refugee advocates want the Haitians granted a temporary safe haven here Port-au-Prince in an attempt to determine what would happen to those refugees sent back to Haiti a State Department aide said Tuesday return them if we felt it would be unsafe to do the aide said a sensitive Duke Austin INS spokesman in Washington DC said INS officials have finished their routine interviews with the first 19 interdicted Haitians to determine which ones have valid political asylum claims No details regarding the interviews By LIZETTE ALVAREZ Herald Staff Writer The US government which has been debating for a week what to do with 19 Haitians it picked up at sea got more troubling news Tuesday when the Coast Guard said it had interdicted two more boatloads of refugees near coast The Coast Guard interdicted one 30-foot sailboat with 37 Haitians Tuesday morning and another boatload of 47 Haitians on Monday Last week 19 Haitians the first group picked up at sea since the coup that overthrew the government of Jean-Bertrand Aristide were caught trying to sail their way to South Florida All 103 Haitians are stranded in the middle of the ocean aboard two Coast Guard cutters caught in a web of political wrangling between the State Department and the Immigration and Naturalization Service State Department officials have contacted US embassy officials in By TRISH POWER Herald Staff Writer Law enforcement officials accused a Fort Lauderdale couple Tuesday night of running a $150-an-hour prostitution ring from their Galt Ocean Mile condominium Officials said the escort business which offered the services of 20 to 30 women had been in business for several years under various names and earned hundreds of thousands of dollars a month do anything you want for the said Assistant Statewide Prosecutor Jim Lewis Officials from the Fort Lauderdale Police Department Metro-Dade and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement raided the apartment and seized records from Raul Bisbal 33 and Carolyn Yuchnov-itz 28 shortly after 9:30 pm Tuesday The couple were charged with violating Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organization Act and deriving proceeds from prostitution Police also arrested two escorts and were looking for a third late Tuesday Sharon Barbanell 44 of Lauderdale Lakes and Rose Downey 28 of Coconut Creek were charged with conspiracy to commit RICO and prostitution They said the women who worked for Police made the arrests after setting up appointments with three women kept five or six appointments a night and drew clients many of them tourists from Dade Broward and Palm Beach counties through advertisements in the yellow pages and local newspapers The business used a sophisticated telephone switching operation to route the calls from a commercial location to the condo at 3031 Ocean Blvd police said Police made the arrests after calling the escort service and setting up appointments with three women Undercover officers met the women recorded conversations and arrested them after the money changed hands Because conspiracy to commit RICO is a first-degree felony it will be difficult for the women to quickly get out of jail Lewis said Instead of being released on bond they will have to appear before a judge today PLEASESEE HAITIANS 4B.