4NJ0102A0508 WEST VOLUSIA 4NJ0102A0508 ZALLCALL
DELTONA LOSES 5TH TOP ADMINISTRATOR: FIRE CHIEF LEAVING LOCAL, PAGE 1C
IT’S A SERIES AGAIN
Magic trim playoff deficit
with commanding win
SPORTS, PAGE 1D
www.news-journalonline.com
THE
FAST
LANE
Keeping you on track
for today, tomorrow
Smoking advice:
Use Chantix
to quit despite
safety concerns
The federal government’s
new advice to doctors for
helping smokers quit re-
commends the drug Chan-
tix, which has recently been
linked with depression and
suicidal behavior.
WARNING? The new
guidelines mention the psy-
chiatric risks but also say
the popular Pfizer Inc. drug
is the most effective at
helping people get off ciga-
rettes. The guidelines men-
tion other options, too, and
recommend combining
counseling and medication.
CONFLICT? An issue with the
quit-smoking guidelines, re-
leased this week by the U.S.
Public Health Service, is the
lead author’s past connec-
tions with Pfizer. Dr. Mi-
chael Fiore, an expert on
smoking and health issues,
was a consultant to the
maker of Chantix. But he
said he cut those ties in
2005.
RESEARCH: The guideline
authors analyzed 83 stud-
ies and found that Chantix
helped 33 percent stay off
tobacco for six months af-
ter quitting, compared with
a nearly 14 percent absti-
nence rate for dummy pills.
— Associated Press
Too much,
too little sleep
tied to ill health
People who sleep fewer
than six hours a night — or
more than nine — are more
likely to be obese, according
to a new government study
that is one of the largest to
show a link between irregu-
lar sleep and big bellies.
LIGHT SLEEPERS: The study
also linked people who
sleep less to higher smok-
ing rates, less physical acti-
vity and more alcohol use.
SURVEY: The study by the
CDC released Wednesday
is based on door-to-door
surveys of 87,000 U.S.
adults from 2004-06.
HEAVY SLEEPERS: In another
measure, nearly half of
those who slept nine hours
or more each night were
physically inactive in their
leisure time, which was
even worse than the light-
est sleepers.
— Associated Press
Vol. LXXXV
No. 129
7 Sections
© WV 2008
News-Journal
Corporation
With money tighter, more
people turn to pawnshops
THE SELLER: A customer at LaBosco’s Jewelry Castle in Port Orange brings in her unwanted gold to
pawn. Gold prices have gone up, and owner Lynda LaBosco said, because of the current economic
climate, more people have been coming to have their gold appraised and purchased.
Tough times force many to part with
necessities, memories out of desperation
By SETH ROBBINS
STAFF WRITER
J
oe Thomas puttered
past the front door
of Love’s Gun and
Pawn in a red
metallic scooter. He
parked it in the shed
next door and then made
his way into the shop —
this was the second time
he had hocked the
electric scooter to the
pawnshop on South
Woodland Boulevard in
DeLand.
Inside the main store,
which is more like a
series of curio cabinets
than a pawnshop, he
waited for the curly-
haired manager, Betty Jo
Manno, to return. She
was still helping another
customer.
‘‘Did you leave the
charger thing?’’ she
asked, as she took up her
post behind the counter.
Thomas nodded. She
then laid out $100.
‘‘Sorry for the wait,
honey,’’ she said.
‘‘It don’t matter,’’ he
replied ‘‘All I got is
time.’’
Thomas, 56, was
More Inside: Page 8A
LOTS OF LOVE: A
pawnshop owner is
known as ‘‘the Rip-
ley’s of DeLand’’
because of his pen-
chant for acquiring
curious objects.
Meet him and
some of the more
unusual items in
his emporium.
Stones ‘Shine’
in Scorsese
documentary
ACCENT, PAGE 1E
15 23:13:01 05/07/08 B
News-
Journal
THE INDEPENDENT VOICE OF VOLUSIA & FLAGLER COUNTIES
WEST VOLUSIA EDITION
THE BUYER: Daniel Murray, an assistant manager
at LaBosco’s, examines a person’s gold jewelry
before making an offer. The tougher economy,
with prices rising, has brought new faces into
businesses like LaBosco’s.
diagnosed with an aorta
dissection — a rare heart
condition that nearly
killed him twice and is
the same disease that
took the life of actor John
Ritter. Since then, he has
not been able to work;
even walking can be
difficult, which is why he
uses the scooter. But
News-Journal/PETER BAUER
Ex-Guantanamo
prisoner carries out
suicide attack
WAR IN IRAQ, PAGE 4A
Magenta
The Daytona Beach
News-Journal photos/JUSTIN YURKANIN
now, having pawned it,
he will have to walk
several blocks home.
With his heart condition,
it will feel more like a
sprint to the other side of
town.
What will he use the
money for?
‘‘I need to fill two
prescriptions at
Worth its Weight
With tougher economic times, more people are selling
gold as its per ounce value increases:
1975 ........................$160.86
1980.......................$460.00
1985 ........................$317.00
1990........................$383.51
1995 ........................$384.18
2000 ........................$279.11
2005 ...................... $444.74
APRIL 2008.............$931.20
SOURCE: National Mining Association
Abby 4E
Classified 1F
Comics 5E
Deaths 2C
Horoscope 3F
Letters 6A
Walgreens,’’ he said. ‘‘I
have about $2 worth of
gas in my car, and then I
will buy a few of those
NutriSlim drinks. I get
those when I can’t afford
full meals.’’
Thomas, like many
pawnshop customers, is
on a fixed income — he
receives $1,200 each
month for his disability.
His funds dwindle near
the end of the month, and
that’s usually when he
parks his scooter in the
cavernous shed
brimming with gas
masks, a china cabinet,
bicycles, even a child’s
red wagon.
With the high price of
gas and groceries, more
people are turning to
pawnshops for a quick
loan.
Owners of LaBosco’s
Jewelry Castle in Port
Orange said they have
seen a 55 percent
increase in loans since
November.
SEE PAWNSHOPS, PAGE 8A
seth.robbins
@news-jrnl.com
Movies 4E
Puzzles 4E, 3F
Records 4C
Score & More 1G
Television 2E
Your Money 1B
Cyan Yellow Black
THURSDAY
MAY 8, 2008
TODAY’S FORECAST
Abracadabra! Presto! Magical weather.
High: Upper 80s. Low: Around 70. PAGE 6C
CAMPAIGN 2008
Clinton says she’s
staying in the race
NATION, PAGE 3A
Official:
Cyclone
toll to top
100,000
Myanmar government
keeps country isolated
By CARLEY PETESCH
and LILY HINDY
ASSOCIATED PRESS
YANGON, Myanmar — Hun-
gry people swarmed the few
open shops and fistfights
broke out over food and wa-
ter in Myanmar’s swamped
Irrawaddy delta Wednes-
day as a top U.S. diplomat
warned that the death toll
from a devastating cyclone
could top 100,000.
The minutes of a U.N. aid
meeting obtained by The
Associated Press, mean-
while, revealed the military
junta’s visa restrictions
were hampering interna-
tional relief efforts.
Only a handful of U.N. aid
workers had been let into
the impoverished South-
east Asia country, which
the government has kept
isolated for five decades to
SEE CYCLONE, PAGE 5A
News-Journal/MARK I. JOHNSON
Deltona boy area’s
11th shark bite victim
By MARK I. JOHNSON
STAFF WRITER
NEW SMYRNA BEACH — Six-
year-old Zane Atcha walked
out the front door of Bert
Fish Medical Center’s
emergency department
Wednesday afternoon to
face a different kind of feed-
ing frenzy.
The Deltona boy and his
mom, Jennifer Nelms, were
confronted by a wall of tele-
vision cameras and report-
ers all wanting to know
what it was like being Volu-
sia County’s 11th shark bite
victim of 2008.
‘‘This is pretty weird,’’
MORE ONLINE: Read about other shark bites on Volusia
County beaches. news-journalonline.com
Coming
Friday:
‘Speed Racer’
GO! Movies
|| 50 cents
Want to Help?
Here is a partial list of aid
agencies accepting
contributions to help those in
Myanmar. For the full list, go
to interaction.org.
American Jewish World Service, 45
W. 36th St., 11th Floor, New
York, NY 10016; 800-889-7146
AmeriCares, 88 Hamilton Ave.,
Stamford, CT 06902;
800-486-4357
Food for the Hungry, 1224 East
Washington St., Phoenix, AZ
85034; 800-248-6437
Lutheran World Relief, P.O. Box
17061, Baltimore, MD
21298-9832; 800-597-5972
Project HOPE, 255 Carter Hall
Lane, Millwood, VA 22646;
800-544-4673
Save the Children USA, 54 Wilton
Road, Westport, CT 06880;
800-728-3843
U.S. Fund for UNICEF, 125 Maiden
Lane, 11th Floor, New York, NY
10038; 800-4UNICEF
Zane Atcha, 6,
of Deltona was
nipped by a
shark on the
lower left leg in
about 18 inch-
es of water off
the 27th Ave-
nue beach
park in New
Smryna
Beach. He said
he’ll be doing
his swimming
in the pool for
the time being.
Zane said of all the atten-
tion, but he added it was
‘‘kinda’’ worth getting bit-
ten to be on television.
A couple of hours earlier,
the youngster was walking
in about 18 inches of water
off the 27th Avenue beach
park in New Smyrna Beach
with classmates attending a
kindergarten graduation
party from Casa Montesso-
ri School in DeLand, when
‘‘something bumped me on
SEE SHARK, PAGE 5A
mark.johnson
@news-jrnl.com
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4NJ0802A0508 NEWS-JOURNALÀ 4NJ0802A0508 ZALLCALL 15 21:52:23 05/07/08 B

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8A Thursday, May 8, 2008 CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1A The Daytona Beach News-Journal

PAWNSHOPS
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1A
Pete Bozniak is one such customer, having re-
cently pawned items such as fishing equipment
and an Xbox for his 31-year-old son who has epi-
lepsy.
‘‘He gets $42 a month from food stamps,’’ said
Bozniak, a retired veteran in Edgewater. ‘‘But he
eats more than $10 a week. It’s hard on him, but
he’s not the only one.’’
Yet this economic downturn is not the boon for
local pawnshops you might think because people
are not returning for their pawned stuff. With
sales down, items such as power drills and other
tools have piled up on store shelves.
Pawnshops, however, are some of the first busi-
nesses to notice when the economy dips because
new faces enter.
‘‘I have been here 22 years and I have never
seen it this bad,’’ Manno said. ‘‘They stand up
here and cry, and I’ll cry with them. It’s worse
than being a bartender.’’
The way a pawnshop works is you bring in an
item and that object is used as collateral for a
short-term loan of about $30 to $100.
‘‘If you think they’re coming back, you give
them more money,’’ said store owner Chuck
Love. ‘‘If you don’t, then you lowball ‘em.’’
At Love’s, there is 25 percent interest on the
loans, and if you pay back the loan with the inter-
est, you get your stuff back. If you don’t, then the
store can sell the item after two months.
On a recent Friday, a man who cares for his el-
derly parents pawned a drill for the second time
to buy gas; a woman tried to sell some silver,
which turned out to be just metal, to buy milk for
her 14-month-old son; and a woman whose boy-
friend was recently laid off pawned her mother’s
diamond ring to pay for groceries
‘‘I just hate to do it,’’ she said as she brought the
ring to the counter. ‘‘I just got to this one time. She
would kill me if she knew.’’
Pawnshops are no longer the dusty and dim
stores thought to be a haven for burglars. New
computer tracking programs, such as Leads On-
line used by Daytona Beach police, have made it
more difficult to sell stolen goods. Sgt. Bill Rhodes
estimated police have tracked down about 100 to
150 stolen items with the computer program.
‘‘We don’t recover a lot of stolen property at the
pawnshops,’’ he said. ‘‘It’s very low, about 5 per-
cent.’’
In response, pawnshop owners have scrubbed
their windows and turned on the lights, making
the experience more like walking into a neighbor-
hood Wal-Mart, only haggling is encouraged.
The gleaming LaBosco’s just south of Dunlaw-
ton Avenue on U.S. 1 has the façade of a castle, re-
plete with green spires and a shield pointing out
the loan desk. Owner Lynda LaBosco said the me-
dieval theme has caused more women to enter the
shop, and with the price of gold soaring at nearly
Chuck Love, left, hands a U.S. Marshal badge to Douglas Swank of Mulberry in Love’s shop
on South Woodland Boulevard in DeLand recently. Love has collected a vast assortment of
American memorabilia over the years, stuffing it into his business for display and sale.
$900 an ounce, many are cleaning out their jewel-
ry boxes.
‘‘They’re shocked at how much they’re getting
for a small amount of gold,’’ said Natalie LaBosco-
Cappiello, who runs the store with her mother.
‘‘We’ve had people coming in straight from the
dentist with their teeth.’’
In DeLand, Manno has also had a few molar
prospectors, but she will not touch the gold until
it has been removed.
‘‘I hand them a hammer,’’ she said.
Still, the appeal of the pawnshop is people can
get a loan without having a bank account. Even
cash advance lenders can’t offer that.
‘‘We’re feeling the crunch like everybody else,’’
said Bill Schaeffer, owner of several cash advance
stores from New Smyrna Beach to Orlando. ‘‘If
people don’t have jobs, they don’t come in here.’’
Schaeffer also owns two pawnshops, which spe-
cialize in automobiles. He said he has seen more
people trying to borrow on older cars.
Since pawning his scooter, Thomas said he has
spent more time inside at his house.
‘‘I don’t go to the store as much,’’ he said.
He thinks he will be able to retrieve it around
May 25.
‘‘I’ve gotten away with death twice,’’ he said.
‘‘This is more of an inconvenience.’’
Pawnshop truly
labor of Love
By SETH ROBBINS
STAFF WRITER
DELAND — Chuck Love likes weird stuff.
At the bottom of a prized cabinet in his pawn-
shop sits a petrified walrus bone sold to him by an
Eskimo whose ailing mother lived near Love’s
shop. Above it sits a knife with a Nazi insignia, and
on a higher shelf are several glass eyeballs from
the Civil War — blue, brown, and hazel to match
any soldier who may have met the sharp end of a
musket. On a nearby table, a knife is encased in a
box with a letter from a prison doctor asserting it
had been used to kill an inmate at the Oklahoma
State Penitentiary.
Much in his shop is offensive, like a KKK pocket-
knife or Charles Manson’s fingerprints, but Love
does not care.
‘‘He’s the Ripley’s of DeLand,’’ says Fred Kaiser,
who has known Love since before he opened the
store 23 years ago.
Love’s Gun and Pawn sits on South Woodland
Boulevard, across from an ABC Liquor Store and
next to a Dustin’s Barbecue. People often slink in
from the restaurant and then walk across the
street, Love said. And while he likes most of the
customers, it’s the stuff he loves.
‘‘I’ve retired three times,’’ he says. He is 76 and
News-Journal photos/PETER BAUER most days he can still be found at the shop, wear-
ing a flower print shirt and shorts.
Wisps of white hair sit atop his head, but his grip
quickly reminds any visitor that he can still throw
out an unruly customer. He trolls gun shops and
online auctions for any item that piques his inter-
est, and he revels in leading a customer around the
shop, extolling about each of his finds.
‘‘I know this stuff,’’ he says, ‘‘because I am that
old.’’
He leaves most of the day-to-day work to his
longtime manager, Betty Jo Manno, who can re-
store a gun to its original gleam as easily as she
puts on her lavender eyeliner. Having been in the
Marines and served in Korea, Love has a penchant
for military memorabilia with a certain U.S. bra-
vado: A plastic soldier in full Army pack greets
customers, and Love proudly displays a picture of
Gen. George Patton urinating in the Rhine River
in Germany.
There are other items, however, that don’t seem
to fit his jingoism, such as a flag that was used by
the Japanese in World War II. Love said the flag
was draped on Japanese doorways to indicate a
son was serving in the military.
Is there anything he won’t sell?
Working at the Western Union in 1947, Love re-
ceived a telegram for George Herman Ruth.
‘‘He was eating lunch,’’ he says. ‘‘And I went in
and asked for an autograph.’’
Babe Ruth’s signature hangs on the wall.
Alongside it, he points to a chastity belt; the
thick iron undergarment — replete with padlock
and key — looks uncomfortable and impractical.
‘‘The metalwork on this is great,’’ he says. ‘‘You
One of the many display cases at Love’s Gun
just can’t find this stuff anymore.’’
and Pawn in DeLand is filled with an assort-
ment of vintage revolvers. seth.robbins@news-jrnl.com
PDFA-0000724037

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