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Pet cemetery in Clearwater is Bruiser’s final resting place

Bruiser the German Shepherd did not have what you may think of as an auspicious beginning. His first owner got rid of him because he bit somebody.

A dog who bites people would probably not be accepted today as a good police dog candidate.  But back in the early 1970s, things may have been a bit looser. The St. Petersburg Police Department wanted to start a canine unit, and Bruiser was available. So that’s what happened – Bruiser became the city’s very first canine officer in the early 1970s.

Officer Bill Trappman became Bruiser’s handler, partner and friend. Together, they rescued a little girl in what was one of the decade’s biggest local crime stories.

In June of 1972, Trappman and Bruiser were called to a home near Booker Creek. An hysterical woman told Trappman that a man had broken into her home and kidnapped her two-year-old daughter.

Bruiser immediately picked up the trail, even though a recent rain had made tracking very difficult. In just a few minutes, Bruiser led Trappman to nearby Booker Creek, and Trappman’s flashlight beam picked up the sight of a man who was slamming the little girl against a tree trunk.

The man tossed the little girl in the creek and then jumped in himself. Trappman went after the girl, while Bruiser pursued the man. The girl survived the incident, and the man, a former convict who had recently been released from prison, went back to jail.
 
Trappman gave all the credit to Bruiser.

“He was everything,” Trappman said later in the St. Petersburg TIMES about his canine partner. “I was just the dummy on the end of the leash. He was the best partner I ever had and the best cop I ever knew.”

Bruiser was eight years old when all that happened. Four years later, when he was 12, the pain in his legs and hips got so bad that Trappman realized the time had come. He carried Bruiser to the vet’s, and he was put to sleep.

According to Trappman, Bruiser sniffed out more than 14,000 pounds of narcotics during his career, and helped send 127 criminals to prison.

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On the day after Christmas, we decided to tour Green Mounds Pet Cemetery, a nearly forgotten pet cemetery behind Fletcher’s Harley-Davidson on US19 in Clearwater. The Fletcher family now owns and cares for the cemetery, having taken title to it when they bought a large tract of land behind their motorcycle dealership.

On the farthest corner of the cemetery, in the shade of a tree, we saw a statue of what looked like a German Shepherd dog. As we approached and then scraped the dirt from the closest grave marker, we saw the name “Bruiser.” Another line said, “St. Pete Canine Police.”

Bruiser’s grave is surrounded by a number of other St. Pete Police canines, perhaps 10 or so. They watch over a peaceful and well-cared-for tract that is the final resting place of several hundreds of pets, mostly dogs and cats but also a pony named Twinkles, who has her own fenced plot.

Tags: canine police, Clearwater, St. Petersburg

Finding, buying and fixing up the perfect Pinellas County home

(A couple of weeks ago I posted a story by my friend, Stephanie Henningsen, who described her plans for buying (and renovating) her first home, using financing provided through the neighborhood Assistance Program of America. In this installment, Steph talks about the process of finding the right house, buying it and beginning the remodeling process.)

By STEPHANIE HENNINGSEN

I completed all the steps that NACA requested – I had a set amount in my bank account, my credit report had been checked (all was well), and I supplied them with several months of pay stubs and bank statements.

Now came the fun part – looking for my house.

Over the course of a few weeks, I drove around various neighborhoods to look for just the right place, within the right budget. NACA had agreed to loan me only about 80 percent of what I could afford for a home to make sure I didn’t suffer from payment shock, which could cause me to fall behind on the mortgage.

The trick was to find a house low enough in price so I would have enough money left in my mortgage package to fix it up.

One day I stopped at an old purple house that looked deserted. I happened to see one of the neighbors outside and began asking questions about it. He told me that the lady who lived in it had died and that her daughter now owned the place. However, he was unable to tell me the woman’s name or exactly where she lived.

So I went to the Web site of the Pinellas County Property Appraisers’ Office and typed in the address. After getting the owner’s name from the site, I called the office, got his phone number, and learned that the house was for sale (it turns out he was a home investor who had only purchased the house five months earlier). Within days I had a meeting with his agent to view the house.

Once inside the house, I fell in love. It had high ceilings, wood floors, a fireplace – everything I wanted in a home. The best part was that the price of the home was low enough so that I could afford the remodeling of it as well.

During this process, NACA provided me with a Realtor, who helped me with the home buying process, as well as helped me find the contractor who fixed up the house.

I closed on the house in June. In August, the remodeling process began, with my contractor adding an upstairs bathroom, rewiring the electrical system (it still had the knob and tube wiring from the 20s), adding central heat and air, completely remodeling the kitchen, and painting the home inside and out.

By December I moved into my newly remodeled home.

Tags: home renovation, Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America, pinellas county, St. Petersburg

Finding — and financing — the perfect Pinellas County home

Stephanie Henningsen

I met Stephanie a while back, and she told me a story about how she was able to buy her own home, even though she was a single woman at the time living on one paycheck.  Not only was she able to buy the home, but she was also able to finance an extensive renovation that brought back a fine old home in St. Petersburg that deserved to be saved. I asked her if she would describe the process for my blog. Here is the first installment — there will be more coming.

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By STEPHANIE HENNINGSEN

I’ve always been attracted to older homes, the homes you find in historical neighborhoods immediately outside the downtown areas of municipalities around the country. It’s the details that draw me in – lots of windows, high ceilings, wood floors, crown molding.

Many of these remodeled homes come with a price tag that is way out of my range. However, I found a way to live in my dream home (complete with wood floors!) without going broke in the process.

A friend told me about the Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America (NACA), an advocacy program designed to help:

• Homeowners refinance mortgages
• Low-income families find an affordable home
• Turn over neighborhoods by offering mortgages that allow homeowners who make above a certain income to buy a run-down home and remodel it.

NACA helps potential buyers through the following steps to prepare them for homeownership.

Once I had completed these steps, I was ready for the next adventure – finding my dream home.

Tags: first time homebuyer, pinellas county, real estate, St. Petersburg

No tax cut in St. Pete?

If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you’ve seen several stories about how rising property valuations have increased property taxes, and how some counties and municipalities have been at least thinking about cutting the mill rate to provide some property tax relief.

Of course, the trouble is that cuts in the mill rate are seldom (never?) substantial enough to get property taxes down to where they were before the property values began to rise. Some government jurisdictions find the prospect of “found money” just too tempting to ignore. It’s like getting a substantial tax increase without having to actually vote on raising taxes.

The latest story appeared today in the St. Petersburg TIMES, headlined “Rising fees may cancel tax cut.” St. Petersburg recently announced a 5 percent tax cut for 2007. But now the city is saying that increases in water, sewer and trash pickup fees will go up an average of $4.15 per month, and that will effectively wipe out any of the tax cut benefits.

The St. Petersburg City Council will consider the fee increases during their two meetings in September.

This has been a tough year for homeowners and prospective homeowners in Florida. As I write this, the latest tropical storm/hurricane (Ernesto) is heading our way, and all the hurricanes of the past couple of years has driven home insurance rates way up. Also, the hot real estate market of the past two years has pushed up property values, and that has led to great increases in property taxes.

Counties and municipalities need to have the political will to return a portion of that new-found money to the taxpayers. I read recently that Pinellas County will enjoy an additional $140+ million this year just because of new tax revenue resulting from higher property values.

I realize that the cost of running government goes up, and that someone has to pay for the services that we demand. Still, county and municipal commissioners shouldn’t look at all this additional revenue as “found money.” The people who pay these taxes are in serious need of some relief, and our elected officials need to deliver it.

Tags: St. Petersburg, taxes