Modern day crusaders
BY ROGER WILLIAMS rwilliams@florida-weekly.com
"Sometimes it's not enough to do our best," explained Winston Churchill. "Sometimes, we must do what is required."

Anthony Thomas One man who demands the Fort Myers Police be held accountable- and not only to themselves.

That notion more than others, perhaps, explains the natures of crusaders - those who devote extraordinary personal effort to achieve kilter in institutions all of us rely on, and which they perceive as off-kilter.

Hospital fees wrongly accounted and billed, and untaxed. A police department not accountable to the public. Women and children who can be snatched from under our very eyes, placed far outside the reach of help or law, and used mercilessly for sex and work. A city government that charges its residents more for basic services than almost any other, by significant degree, potentially forcing some people out of their homes.

While many of us may vaguely and momentarily recognize such injustices, or their possibility - a whiff of unpleasantness in the paper, a faint echo of injustice in a television or radio report - we tend to carry on with our lives by remaining oblivious. It's more comfortable that way.

John Sullivan Was hit hard by Cape Coral's crushing utility costs and has come back swinging.

But a few refuse to remain oblivious. Here are the short profiles of four crusaders living and working in Southwest Florida for our own good, and often with little notice. They have taken on huge and costly problems by themselves; they even show some chance of righting them, or at least making them known.

Unquestionably, their concerns are arguable, and even litigious - accountants and corporate leaders defending a long-established hospital billing system will not admit wrongdoing unless a judge requires them to, and that's far from certain. Human traffickers will simply try to pretend that what they do is known as employment, not slavery. A police department fighting increasing crime on a tight budget will not bend over backwards to let civilians express their concerns, and then insist they be addressed. And a city government that can charge its residents two or three times as much for water and sewer connections as many other cities, without mass refusal to pay, won't change that income opportunity unless pointed pressure is brought to bear.

Meidinger Roy Refuses to ignore the tricky relationship between hospitals and insurance companies.

This story does not aim to weigh the merits of their cases; that will be for other stories. Here, we aim only to describe individuals who try to do what is required of them when they perceive a wrong: the crusaders.

Although their origins are as different as, say, the origins of the earth and sky, they have something in common. They're the little people - the old guy next door, the part-time student down the block, the mom with four kids. None are wealthy, famous or powerful. They're compelled only by temperament, instinct and a sense of justice. Quixotically, they'll tilt at the windmill come hell or high water, and that might ultimately do the rest of us some good.

So we call them crusaders. Many others, no doubt, will use such acronyms as gadfly or whistleblower (to name the more benign), or loudmouth, troublemaker, or S.O.B.

Anna Rodriguez Standing tall, face to face with the modern day slave trade in Southwest Florida.

Whatever people may think of their efforts, one thing is undeniable: Each crusader insists only on the proper conduct of the law. Each insists only on a single principle: that all of us deserve a fair shake and equal treatment, even if we're not equal in capacity, origin, bank account or lifestyle, let alone race, sex, age or religion.

And that may be as mainstream a notion as Americans have.

Roy Meidinger

Born and raised in New York City, Roy Meidinger, 68, is not the first person ever to notice that health care costs are massively confusing when insurance companies and hospitals do extended billing for complex medical services.

Married to his sweetheart, Judy Ann, from John Adams High School in Queens, and the father three children, Meidinger spent 28 years with AT & T, where he was trained and assigned as a systems analyst for Bell Labs.

Roy Meidinger

He had arrived in Lee County, built a home and begun to take care of his parents there in the 1990s - by working through and paying their medical bills with Blue Cross/Blue Shield insurance. Then, he recalls, he began to recognize (among other disparities) that what hospitals bill, and what insurance companies pay, are two different numbers.

So with a tenacity that seems extraordinary now, he began to research the problem.

Not only do hospitals and insurance companies comfortably collude in this billing disparity, he discovered, but the uninsured pay a great deal more (or taxpayers paying for them pay a great deal more) than the insured - different costs for the same services. They pay the full bill that insurance companies don't. And not only that, but the difference between what hospitals bill and insurance companies pay - that huge offthe books sum - is a kick-back of sorts to insurance companies, in the form of a forgiven debt (the term of art is fee splitting). The response of insurance companies, says Meidinger, is to funnel patients back into the hospital, rewarding it with paying customers who have to rely on doctors working through that hospital - or pay a significant amount more for going outside of the system, which suffocates competition.

And the kick back, a massive sum which ought to be reported to the IRS and taxed, is not.

Many hospitals may conduct business this way; in a letter to the IRS 13 months ago, he listed 2,786 hospitals and insurance companies in the U.S. that "have been evading paying taxes" (see it at a Charlotte Sun-Herald website, www. sun-herald,com/newfeatures/ meidinger/treasury.doc).

Meanwhile, Meidinger has focused on the Lee Memorial Health System of five hospitals.

Four times, on his own, he sued Lee Memorial, and four times the lawsuit was thrown out by a judge. But last month, Judge John Steele of the U.S. Middle District court in Fort Myers ruled that the Quintan suit (a "whistleblower" lawsuit) alleging that the hospital submitted fraudulent claims for pay to the government, has merit, and should go forward. A court date is scheduled for March, 2009.

Anthony Thomas, Jr.

"In the last seven years, Lee Memorial has given to insurance companies $873 million in kickbacks," Meidinger says.

Price discrimination is illegal, he insists. Charges that appear on the bills of patients with Medicare or Medicaid should represent the actual amount collected for the services. There should be no split fee arrangements or kickbacks. And hospitals or insurance companies should pay taxes on all their income, and declare it all, including forgiven income.

"The goal of all this," Meidinger says, "is to get us back to a point in time where we are paying a fair amount for the services being rendered. This is going to help everybody except the health care industry." Especially businesses and individuals overwhelmed by the cost of health insurance.

Why he has shouldered this fight, pro bono, goes back for a time. "Remember Cathy Genovese, March 13, 1964, running through the streets in Queens and screaming for help?" Meidinger asks. "I was living in Queens at the time. Three times she was attacked, there were 34 people who had heard her, and they did nothing. They all assumed, since there were so many people who heard, that somebody else would investigate.

"After that, I just never wanted to be one of those who does nothing."

Anthony Thomas, Jr.

Anthony Thomas, 24, was born and raised in the Dunbar section of Fort Myers, where he graduated from Fort Myers High School. One night when he was 16 years old, his 25-year-old brother, Henry Shackleford, was killed at a local nightclub by a 17-year-old.

"That person probably should not even have been there," Thomas recalled of the murderer. "After that happened, I appeared before the city council to speak in favor of a curfew for young people."

It was a case of political activism under duress, and he's never stopped since.

Now Thomas heads the Citizens For A Better Fort Myers Government, which is working with the ACLU of Florida (the American Civil Liberties Union) to create a citizen review board for the Fort Myers Police Department.

John Sullivan

Many people both in and out of the Dunbar neighborhood of Fort Myers are unwilling to talk to the police about issues in the neighborhood, Thomas figures, partly because they don't think the police listen to their concerns, or behave with simple politeness and respect toward them.

"I think at first the police were shy about the idea of a citizen board looking at them, and now? I'd say they're openly hostile," he says, describing the department as "mostly white, mostly male, and one that does not reflect the significant populations of African Americans and Hispanics in this town."

In the view of Thomas, "When you have unsolved crimes, you need to have the citizenry involved. Without us, they can't solve the crimes, and without them, we can't be safe, so that's been my driving force."

Criticism of the police department, though, is not his goal.

"Some people try to marginalize you, make it appear you're some kind of troublemaker, or that you're against police. I am neither of those things. It's hard being a police officer.

Anna Rodriguez

"Or they might make it seem like oversight means you don't have confidence in the police. That isn't true, either.

But no occupation is so honorable that it shouldn't be held accountable."

To hold police accountable, he's leading the effort to raise 2,500 verifiable signatures, so the issue can go on a ballot, and Fort Myers can join the 21st century, Thomas says. That isn't as easy as it sounds - a lot of residents are afraid to sign, or don't want to get involved, he says. But it's got to be done.

"My argument has always been, that what we're doing is going back to our founding fathers. Civilian oversight over the military or quasi-military institutions, like police, is important. That's why we have a president and secretary of defense. So having oversight is historic. And every major city in America already has either a citizen review board or citizen overseer of the police."

A student in political science at Edison College, Thomas aspires to go to law school eventually, and on into public life.

"I see myself as a citizen for all the people, not just black people or white people or rich people or poor people. I'm for everybody, for the interests of all of us," he insists.

"So, I think police discourtesy or disrespect, or getting a citizen review board, or changing the form of government to get a city manager, or term limits - the issues I want to take on - they affect everybody."

John Sullivan

John Sullivan, 64, hails from the Windy City, Chicago, where he grew up working class, the son of a postal worker who was "a tough guy - I wish I was as tough as my father." His mother, at 101, still lives on her own, and he takes his inspiration from both of them.

Sullivan himself had two careers before moving to Cape Coral and buying a house, in 2005: first as a broker and trader who switched from stocks and bonds into commodities and ran two floor operations for the Chicago Board of Trade (for 25 years); and then as a mainframe computer programmer who did work for McDonald's, he says.

Now, for the first time in his life, he finds himself an activist, heading an organization of his own making called the Minutemen (www.ccminutemen.org, or e-mail, info@ccminutemen.org).

Here's how it happened.

"When I first moved here and bought the house, I was aware there was a sewer and water project - I was told it would be $12,000 or $15,000 to hook up water and sewer services. I was willing to accept that. Then all of a sudden we get an assessment, and between the assessment and impact fee, that cost us more like $27,000, which is a long way from $12,000.

"So I decided that, 'Hey, there's something wrong here.' I dug into it more, and the more I looked, the worse it looked. Now I spend 12 to 14 hours a day working on it."

For one thing, other cities, with rare exception, bill residents a great deal less for water and sewer connections and fees, he discovered.

"I checked Bonita Springs, they were $6,500. I checked Fort Myers, they said the hook-up was about $8,500. Venice was $12,000 and that included interest if you paid at a rate of $2,000 a year for six years. Port St. Lucie was about $8,100 and Port Charlotte was $10,245. Only Marco Island was higher, and they have special environmental problems."

There was another problem, too, Sullivan concluded: Cape Coral offers not two but three utilities - water, sewer and irrigation water, which is fine with Sullivan - but the irrigation water "is full of PPCPs, that's the acronym for pharmaceutical and personal care products, and CECs, or chemicals of emerging concerns. Other communities put that on golf courses or along roadways, but in the Cape they want you to dump it on lawns."

Which is not fine with Sullivan. Nobody knows what effect that will have on people, he says.

Unfortunately, that's not all. "Then we get into an impact fee - that's another $4,300 plus $300 for the meter. And I'm paying a plumber another $1,400 to do the actual hook-up."

So the cost to Sullivan of getting city services, before interest (which he will accrue if he pays it long-term): $18,900 for pipe installation, $4,600 for impact fee and meter, and $1,400 for the plumber. Total: $24,900 before interest.

But check this out, he says: If you accept the city's option to pay over 20 years by putting the charge on your tax bill, at 7.5 percent interest, you're going to pay a lot more. Or you can get a loan against the bill for three years, at 10.5 percent interest. Or, you can even pay nothing for 20 years, then you pay it off at one time.

"If you do that, your assessment for this is going to be $77,130.90 - that's if you have a two-lot site, the minimum for building a home," Sullivan explains.

"So you have people struggling with the high cost of living, with taxes, with the real estate market - and they get hit. Sometimes they're people who have been taking care of themselves for 50 or 60 years, and they can't do this, and they're embarrassed.

"This goes right against people here in a financial way, because even at $5,000, some people aren't going to make it, and that's just how it is. But at $25,000, a lot more won't. And some people have paid about $45,000." (The city calculates the cost based on square feet of the lot or lots in the homeowner's name.)

Now Sullivan has a lawsuit against Cape Coral, aimed at changing the way city officials provide utilities, and bringing in outside independent auditors who can scrutinize the city's financial records and those of the contractor for pipes in Cape Coral, MWH. On Monday, Sullivan won a court battle with Cape Coral. Judge Willliam McIver ruled that the lawsuit would proceed over objections of the city who wanted the suit dismissed.

"I'm signed, sealed and delivered - I don't even have a dog in the fight anymore," says Sullivan. "So I have to pay it, myself. But what I can do is fight for somebody else. I just cannot sit by and watch this happen. Besides, as my father used to say, 'The bigger they are, the harder they fall.'"

Anna Rodriguez

"I'm short," announces Anna Rodriguez, 51, affecting an unapologetic, matter of-fact tone, as she describes how a reporter can locate her near the federal courthouse in downtown Fort Myers.

But it's not true. To many, whose lives she's helped save, resurrect, rejuvenate, re-inspire, re-establish or even re-invent as founder of the Florida Coalition Against Human Trafficking in 2004 (www.stophumantrafficking.org), she is probably the tallest person in the world.

A mother of four (the oldest is 29, the youngest is 5) who was raised in Puerto Rico, she married young and happily in Miami, moving her family to Naples in 1991.

That makes it doubly unusual that Rodriguez works to find and salvage some of the most unhappy people - those who have been bought and sold, often from South and Central America or eastern Europe and Russia, into torturous settings in the U.S., where they're raped and abused.

"It was hard at first, coming from a home with no violence, to see what was happening to some women and children," she recalls, describing her first real job helping people in Immokalee, as a volunteer with a women's aid organization. She did so well, the Collier County Sheriff's office hired her, and for almost 10 years, through the 1990s, she worked as a domestic victim's advocate and counselor.

Then one morning in 1999, her life changed. She met a young girl who had been kidnapped by a "coyote" in Guatemala, and moved into a house here to be kept for sex. When the man's wife discovered it, she let the police know, and Rodriguez became involved.

At first, the girl would not talk to her; the man had told her that he had a lock of her hair, and with it, using witchcraft, he would kill her family in Guatemala if she talked to police. But Rodriguez convinced the girl she'd destroyed the spell, a prosecution aided by the F.B.I. and other law enforcement agencies resulted, and the outcome, in U.S. versus Tecum, became a landmark decision.

"It all started because that girl looked at me and said, 'I feel like a slave,'" Rodriguez remembers. And she was a slave, like thousands who enter the U.S. each year now, Rodriguez says.

The man was sentenced to a long prison term he's still serving, and precedent was set for the so-called T-visas now held by about 1,500 people.

"That visa is not easy to get - they have to prove trafficking or slavery, and cooperate with police - but when they get it it allows them to stay in the country for four years, or more if they have to extend, to stabilize their lives," explains Rodriguez.

And besides, "sending them back is death," she says. If they return to their home villages of neighborhoods after talking to U.S. authorities, frequently they'll be killed by the same people or organizations that took them away in the first place.

When Rodriguez left the Sheriff's office to create the coalition, she used money from her own savings, and her husband, a retired banker, gave her a computer, business cards and a small office space.

Now she has offices and employees or volunteers in Bonita Springs (the Coalition's headquarters), Miami, Tampa, Jacksonville, and Shalimar in the panhandle, but the organization, with a $2 million budget to be used over three years, struggles to find money to help victims.

Few immigration lawyers or doctors have offered pro bono help either, something she hopes to change this year. "I have a victim diagnosed with skin cancer right now, but I can't even get an oncologist to treat her," she says.

Rodriguez estimates she's helped about 500 in significant ways now, including almost 350 in the last year or so, most of them women and children.

When Rodriguez helps, it's the real thing. The coalition finds them apartments, provides them with food and comforts, counsels, educates and works with victims to make them feel worthy, and confident enough to live independently.

"They range from young girls to people in their 40s," she says. And her organization does everything it can to encourage victims to help prosecutors and law enforcement agencies run human traffickers to ground, and imprison them.

Rodriguez travels far and wide, too, to educate police and others about the increasing and deadly problem of human trafficking - and she goes into the field herself, to help.

"I tell people, 'If you think you can make a difference sitting behind a desk, it won't happen,'" she says.