7NJ0100A1112 FINAL 7NJ0100A1112 ZALLCALL 15 00:10:52 11/12/06 B

News-
UF CLOSES IN The Daytona Beach
Gators survive
close call in
SUNDAY
Spurrier’s
EDITION
Journal
return to the
Swamp to NOVEMBER 12, 2006
stay in
national Chris
Leak
10 sections; 160 pages
title race Steve
Spurrier TODAY’S FORECAST
Also, Seminoles shut out in Wake Forest matchup Day gets stamp of approval.
SPORTS, PAGE 1D THE INDEPENDENT VOICE OF VOLUSIA & FLAGLER COUNTIES High: Mid-70s. Low: Near 50. PAGE 8C

www.news-journalonline.com FINAL EDITION $1.25

THE WAR IN IRAQ

A serial killer’s stomping grounds

THE CITY YOU’VE

Envelope
may have
$200,000
rare stamp
ASSOCIATED PRESS
FORT LAUDERDALE — An ab-
sentee ballot was mailed
with what may have been a
rare stamp worth as much
as $200,000 — the famous
Inverted Jenny — but the
envelope is in a box that by
law can’t be opened.
Broward County Com-
missioner John Rodstrom
discovered the stamp while
reviewing absentee ballots.
There was no name on the
envelope, so the vote didn’t
count.
What looked like a small
stamp collection on one en-
velope caught Rodstrom’s
eye at about 8 p.m. Tuesday.
At least one was from 1936,
Rodstrom said. Then he no-
ticed one had an upside-
down World War I-era air-
plane — the hallmark of an
Inverted Jenny.
‘‘I was a stamp collector
when I was little,’’ Rods-
trom told The Miami Her-
ald. ‘‘I recognized it.’’
Rodstrom discussed the
stamp with other members
of the canvassing board,
and a stamp-collecting Bro-
ward County sheriff’s dep-
uty overheard them talking
about the possible Jenny.
He said the stamp would
be very valuable if it was
real. But it was too late.
NEVER KNOWN Course
change
Behind the Faces
Meet Tara, the crack-addicted prostitute
coming
soon
Options abound —
but all have issues
By BOB DEANS
COX NEWS SERVICE
WASHINGTON — The Bush administration
will chart a new course in Iraq after Demo-
cratic gains in Tuesday’s midterm elec-
tions, widely viewed as a repudiation of
current war policy.
President Bush huddles this week with
former Secretary of State James Baker and
former House International Relations
Committee Chairman Lee Hamilton to dis-
cuss options for ending the war in Iraq. As
co-chairmen of the independent Iraq Study
Group, Baker and Hamilton lead a team
that has studied the issue since last March.
One of the group’s most active members is
Robert Gates, tapped by Bush to be the next
secretary of defense, replacing Donald H.
Rumsfeld, the chief architect of the war.
While no formal report is expected this
week, a range of options already is taking
shape. Whatever the study group recom-
mends, Gates will soon be in a position to
implement its key features.
‘‘He’s going to be a willing accomplice,’’
said retired Army Gen. Lawrence Wilker-
News-Journal/JI-EUN LEE
son. ‘‘From the perspective of the Depart-
Tara Price is different from most prostitutes who walk North Ridgewood Avenue: She dresses up every time she heads out. Tara ment of Defense, that’s half the battle.’’
lives close to the sidewalks where she strolls and scores crack. It is in this neighborhood where she has learned how to survive.
MORE INSIDE
By SETH ROBBINS
P What do these options mean for our
STAFF WRITER
Ball

.
Ave troops in Iraq?
oug

SEE STAMP, PAGE 18A son

D
N. B

Ma
h Rd

AYTONA BEACH — She sits on a park bench, gobbling a A. Stay the Course
eac

B. Maintain the Goal, Shift Tactics

hS

burrito and sipping tequila, things she hasn’t had in Daytona

C. Increase U.S. Troop Levels
t.

Beach
a while. A small roll of belly fat hangs between Tara D. Withdraw U.S. Forces Within Year
THE Price’s faded purple tank top and jeans. Under the orange E. Bring Troops Home Immediately
N. R

ve.
wA
rvie F. Partition
Sp

idg

haze of a streetlight, her dark roots show. The month she was Fai

FAST LANE
ruc

ewo

P What will the Iraq Study Group

eS

in jail, she couldn’t dye her hair.

od

recommend?
t.

Ha
Ave

Finishing her burrito, she belches, some of the tequila re-

lifa

PAGE 19A
.

N. B

xR

1
Keeping you on track turning and burning her throat. She spits. She will avoid
ive
eac

P Gunmen ambush bus convoy, killing

North
r

for today, tomorrow

hS

crack tonight — jail dampened her cravings — but she will Ridgewood 10 and kidnapping dozens.
t.

take a walk around the dark, broken blocks west of the river. area d.
PAGE 20A
Blv
ay
edw
‘‘I feel like getting all dolled up and wearing my red dress nal
Spe
tio
rna
and putting on some makeup,’’ she explains. ‘‘I want to feel Inte
VOLUSIA COUNTY

Airlines
pretty again.’’ Map
Area

***
After finishing the night patrol, Tara’s mother, Valerie
Why here? Why now?

Saluting
our veterans
Joyce, changed from her police sergeant’s uniform and
shuffled past the plaque Tara gave her. It’s inscribed with a
favorite Bible verse: ‘‘For I know the plans I have for you,
The Ridgewood Ave-
nue area in northern Day-
tona Beach is a place
unto itself, a city within a
losing more
Roundup, photos of
events honoring veterans
throughout the region.
says the Lord, . . . to give you a future and a hope.’’
In her daughter’s old bedroom, she grabbed some photo al-
bums, dumping them onto the kitchen table where her four
city that to most people
is just a blur framed by
car windows. Prostitutes,
luggage
day laborers and drug
LOCAL, PAGE 6C children used to gather for dinner. dealers have lived and By JEFF BAILEY
died here in obscurity for NEW YORK TIMES Missing Bags:
SEE BEHIND, PAGE 4A
years, but recently it was ATLANTA — Since By the
Gamers rejoice in the national spotlight. Aug. 10, when a ban Numbers
Last winter, three women on most carry-on li-
Video games just might More Profiles Inside: Page 5A-6A quids sent the amount Since carry-on
be good for you. here were shot by a seri- liquids were
of checked luggage
INNOVATIONS, PAGE 6B al killer whom police still banned, lost
soaring, airlines have
have not found. Over three months, been misplacing bag numbers
Daytona Beach News- from top, Laquetta many more bags, and have risen. For
Bringing back Journal Staff Writers Lyda
Longa and Seth Robbins,
Gunther, Julie Green
and Iwana Patton
the fumbling could Daytona Beach
well escalate during airlines:
the draft along with Staff Photog- were shot to death.
the busy holiday trav-
rapher Ji-Eun Lee, fol-
The women lived
el season. Continental
Breweries and worked the Sept. Sept.
lowed and spent time streets in these The Transportation
tap into 2006 2005
STORE OWNER HOMELESS MAN VICTIM’S FRIEND BEAT COP with some of those who neighborhoods of Department reported
creative that 107,731 more
ways to get You’ll meet people who make their way in live and work in this
neighborhood.
northern Daytona
Beach. fliers had their bags 4.8* 3.6
you to buy The City You’ve Never Known. Get to know go missing in August
beer. Curtis, the half-blind painter who collects cans to than they did a year AirTran
BUSINESS, PAGE 1E raise his daughters; hear from Gene, the The Series at a Glance earlier, a 33 percent Sept.
2006
Sept.
2005
increase. It got worse
homeless 51-year resident who volunteers to feed SATURDAY in September, with
Abby 6G Ideas 1B other homeless people; step up to the counter Ridgewood Avenue as people try to get work in 183,234 more passen- 5.4 2.3
Books 7G Movies 6G the day and do business at night. gers suffering mis-
with Issa, the convenience store owner who may ARTIST United
Business 1E Real Estate 1F handled bags than a
Class. 5E,5F Travel & Arts 1G serve the toughest crowd around; visit TODAY year earlier, up 92 per- Sept. Sept.
Deaths 4C Puzzles are in Jennifer, the worried mom who frets for the kids The survivors on the streets: A prostitute, a cent. 2006 2005
mom, a beat cop, a homeless man, a single- Globally, about 30
Horoscope 7E the Comics on these streets; sit down with Stacey, whose
friend was found shot dead in an alley; and ride
dad artist. million bags are mis- 7.9 3.1
MONDAY handled each year, ac-
Vol. LXXXIII along with Officer Penny, who clocks in each night cording to SITA, a Delta
No. 316, 10 Sections All problems here come back to crack.
for a steady diet of trouble. company that sells Sept. Sept.
© NJ 2006 News-Journal Corp. TUESDAY 2006 2005
software to airlines
This part of town wasn’t always so depressed. and airports for bag-
ONLINE: news-journalonline.com/special/thecity WORRIED MOM Residents say the cycle can be broken. gage and other sys- 9.6 5.1
tems. Airlines spend *Mishandled
baggage per
SEE LUGGAGE, PAGE 18A 1,000 passengers

Magenta Cyan Yellow Black

7NJ0400A1112 7NJ0400A1112 ZALLCALL
4A Sunday, November 12, 2006
Tara takes pride
in wearing pretty
shoes. After a
jail stay, she
stumbles in her
stilettos, having
to relearn how
to walk in them.
Plastic pints of
vodka from a
nearby liquor
store help to
quell Tara’s
craving for
crack.
BEHIND
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1A
In one photo, 3-year-old Tara pouted
sweetly, her mouth pinched down-
ward at the corners like an open um-
brella.
‘‘I’m glad I took those pictures,’’ Va-
lerie said, her voice quivering. ‘‘I nev-
er knew how much they would be
cherished.’’
She lies awake some nights, trying
to pinpoint the moment when every-
thing went off track. ‘‘What did I do?
What didn’t I do?’’ she wondered.
‘‘What happened when she got clean?
Why couldn’t she be happy?’’
***
Days before the July races, Tara
sips vodka from a Sprite bottle, her
favorite red velvet dress hugging
her hips. She twitches as though
dancing to a song no one else can
hear. Her mood is upbeat: She
hasn’t been arrested for some time.
Normally, Tara tries to stay away
from the streets.
‘‘You take a chance each time you
get into a car,’’ she says.
She has a few regulars who call
her when they’re looking for sex or
to get high, or both. She also works
part time for an escort service. But
business has slowed to a crawl to-
night, and her crack supply has
dwindled to two rocks.
She takes another sip.
‘‘I’ve got to get some sort of buzz,’’
she says, ‘‘to be with a man.’’
Standing under a streetlight, Tara
tosses the bottle away and glances
in the side-view mirror of a parked
car. She smiles. She is proud she
still has all her teeth. She rifles
through her purse, a ruse to ward
off cops.
‘‘I was just looking for my
phone,’’ she’ll tell any officer who
stops.
From her bag, she grabs a clip,
pulling back her bleached locks.
Tara sizes up vehicles and their
drivers fast, setting her price ac-
cording to the car. Her ideal is an
older married man in a Cadillac.
A white pickup and an old brown
van circle but do not stop. Tara ab-
sorbs the drivers’ furtive glances.
With no one picking her up, she
stalls for time, again sifting through
her purse. From the mess of cosmet-
ics, racing knickknacks and con-
doms — which Tara says she
always uses — she plucks a silk
rose and places it over her ear.
A train whistles in the distance. It
reminds Tara of her last night in a
North Street crack house when she
awoke from a cocaine-induced sei-
zure — which she frequently suffers
— to find a man having sex with
her. ‘‘That was the scariest feeling
in the whole world,’’ she says. ‘‘I
was yelling and crying.’’
Tara escaped, chasing the man
away with a broken bottle. Running
from the crack house, she heard the
15 21:01:24 11/11/06 B
Meet Tara:
Prostitute &
Cop’s Daughter
train whistle. She wanted to jump in
front. But her tiny feet, blistered and
scraped from running barefoot,
couldn’t churn fast enough to get her
there.
‘‘It’s those times that I’m glad I’m
not (living) near the railroad tracks
anymore,’’ she says.
***
As her mother flipped through
hundreds of photos, Tara’s childish
pout abruptly changed into the inso-
lent stare of a 15-year-old dressed for
the prom, sick of her mother snap-
ping away.
As a student at New Smyrna
Beach High School, Tara desperately
wanted to be a cheerleader. She
wanted to watch ‘‘Beverly Hills
90210’’ too. Valerie, a Jehovah’s Wit-
ness at the time, wouldn’t let her do
either because she thought
cheerleaders to be loose and wild,
the television show amoral.
At 16, Tara met a construction
worker named William Price while
walking to the library. By 17, she
was pregnant, with bruises on her
face where he had broken her jaw in
two places. With the baby on the
way and William Price in jail on do-
mestic violence charges, Tara lived
with her mother.
Tara named her baby Chelsea, and,
after William Price got out of jail,
the couple moved into an Edgewater
motel known to harbor prostitutes
and drug addicts.
‘‘I couldn’t outwardly say that I
knew she was smoking crack,’’ Vale-
rie said. ‘‘I asked a very good friend
in the (Narcotics) Task Force to keep
an eye on her. They caught Tara in
the act.’’
Picked up for prostitution, Tara
rode in the back of a cruiser to the
‘‘The men make me feel pretty, beautiful when I’m feeling lonely.
I put on a pretty dress, makeup, and I can feel pretty again.’’
Magenta
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1A
A serial killer’s stomping grounds
THE CITY YOU’VE
NEVER KNOWN
Volusia County Branch Jail.
‘‘I was grateful something was
going to be done,’’ Valerie said. ‘‘I
was afraid. It was embarrassing.
They (fellow officers) all knew my
kids. They knew Tara as a good
girl.’’
Tara stepped out of the police
cruiser, and the door slammed shut.
She was 19.
***
Now 28, Tara sometimes wonders
how things might have gone differ-
ently if she’d never tried crack co-
caine. She often recalls the first
moment she smoked it.
‘‘I hit that pipe,’’ she says, ‘‘and I
felt so good for a minute. Then, I
wanted more instantly.’’
At night, she’ll shut her cobalt
blue eyes, asking God to erase this
memory. But then a sound will jolt
her back. Jangling keys remind her
of the keys she handed her baby to
quiet her cries while she took her
next hit. How could she forget?
That night she handed over Chel-
sea to her mother and friends of Va-
lerie adopted her. Two more of
Tara’s children are being raised by
adoptive parents.
By then, she had moved to Day-
tona Beach, tired of being picked up
by her mother’s colleagues whose po-
lice department is not named in this
story at Valerie’s request.
Tara walked up and down North
Street, men promising her drugs and
money for sex. They had sex with
her in the bushes and then left her
with nothing.
An older prostitute taught Tara
how to turn tricks. She showed her
how to walk, talk and negotiate,
among other things. Her mentor is
now sick with AIDS.
TARA PRICE
Cyan
News-Journal photos/JI-EUN LEE
‘‘I was a very good-looking girl,’’
Tara said. ‘‘I was a young baby.
Now, it’s me looking at these other
girls on the street. It’s terrible to live
that way.’’
***
As Valerie sifted through more re-
cent family photos, Tara’s face grew
scarce. In one, she held Chelsea. In
the next, the baby girl rested alone
in her crib.
‘‘Where is Tara?’’ Valerie said,
picking up another album. ‘‘I don’t
think she is in here anymore be-
cause she wasn’t clean.’’
There would be stretches of time,
usually before or after giving birth,
when Tara would remain sober.
She’d return home, be a doting
daughter, attend church and talk
about finding a husband. The last
time was two years ago, after Tara
finished a drug-treatment program
with Serenity House. Christmas
morning, all of Valerie’s children
gathered in the kitchen to cook
breakfast. It was the first time they
were all under one roof in years.
That night, however, Tara and her
siblings got drunk. Her mother was
angry.
Tara says her mother called her a
‘‘crack whore.’’ Her mother insists
she didn’t.
On Dec. 26, Tara was back in Day-
tona Beach, searching for her next
rock.
***
The family photos give way to ar-
rest reports, mug shots, treatment
program pamphlets. Valerie has kept
everything for Tara’s children.
What can’t be seen in the photos
and pamphlets are sickness — Tara
suffers from bipolar disorder — and
Just a week after getting out
of jail, Tara stands on the
street corner and lights a
cigarette. ‘‘I don’t want to
have sex for money no more,’’
she says. But she needs to pay
rent and owes her neighbors
upstairs. A decade ago, Tara,
below, was getting ready for
her high school prom.
Yellow Black
ï
The Daytona Beach News-Journal
Tara curls her
lashes before
meeting a man.
These days she
keeps company
mostly with
regulars, but in a
diary, she describes
the street game:
‘‘The dark scary
streets, crack
houses, in and out
of men’s cars, no
way, how I ever did
it I don’t know.’’
she comes from generations of abuse.
Valerie watched her own father beat
her mother. Tara saw her stepfather
hit her mother before the couple be-
came born-again Christians.
‘‘She remembers those fights being
real scary,’’ Valerie said. ‘‘I look
back now, and I don’t know how
much it affected her. I grew up with
that.’’
Valerie thought she had broken
the cycle when she had Tara. She re-
membered embracing Tara and talk-
ing to her as she rocked her in her
arms.
‘‘You might not have much,’’ she
told her newborn baby. ‘‘But you
will be loved and never feel alone.’’
Encased in a pink frame molded
into the word ‘‘love’’ is Valerie’s last
photo of her daughter. Tara looks
down, a smile tracing the corners of
her lips. Her mother clings to her
neck.
‘‘That’s the worst part,’’ she said.
‘‘She feels unloved.’’
***
Tara is home in the apartment she
shares with the man she loves.
While he sleeps in the bedroom,
she’s on the phone with her mother
for the first time in months.
She cries in the buttery light of
the apartment, curling on the floor
by the couch where SpongeBob sits
on the arm. Other childhood memen-
tos adorn the walls and shelves:
stuffed giant M&Ms, Garfield and the
entire clan of Simpsons. A vase of
silk roses, a gift from her boyfriend,
sits on the coffee table.
Her cries turn to sobs. She pleads
with her mother to meet her boy-
friend.
‘‘Call me,’’ she says, ‘‘next time
you’re free for lunch. If you ever get
the chance I live right here in Day-
tona Beach. I would love for you to
meet him. He is so sweet.’’
Valerie says no. She refuses to see
Tara or her boyfriend until Tara is
completely clean.
‘‘You don’t understand how impor-
tant it is, Mom,’’ Tara says. ‘‘Please
call me. Please.’’
Valerie insists she must answer
police calls, and Tara’s tirade ends.
‘‘I’m lucky to be alive,’’ she says,
after hanging up. ‘‘I’m trying to hold
on to the man I love. I want her ac-
ceptance.’’
Tara tugs on the straps of her sti-
letto heels. As the apartment grows
darker, she turns on a lamp. She
dabs at her eyes with some toilet pa-
per. In the bathroom, with her boy-
friend still asleep, she begins to put
on makeup. She curls her lashes,
pins her hair up and powders her
nose.
‘‘The men make me feel pretty,
beautiful when I’m feeling lonely,’’
she explains. ‘‘I put on a pretty
dress, makeup, and I can feel pretty
again.’’
Tara is wearing her favorite red
dress. She swigs from a plastic pint
of vodka.
ï