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Serving Pasco since 1981/Serving Lutz since 1964

Lynn Tepper

Symposium seeks addiction recovery solutions

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A symposium is scheduled for later this month that will seek to create a blueprint for improving long-term substance abuse recovery efforts in Pasco County.

The Recover Out Loud Pasco Symposium is set for Sept. 28 from 9:30 a.m. to 2 p.m., at Calvary Chapel Worship Center, 6825 Trouble Creek Road in New Port Richey.

Admission is free.

The symposium is being organized by Recovery Epicenter Foundation, a newly licensed and accredited recovery community organization operating out of Trinity.

The symposium will seek to engage individuals, stakeholders and community leaders in an effort “to grow community-oriented initiatives, cultivate community allies, and develop recovery peer-based programs,” according to the event’s flyer.

Its keynote speaker is Dona Dmitrovic, executive director of Las Vegas-based Foundation for Recovery and former National Director of Consumer Affairs for Substance Use Disorders at Optum, United Health Group.

Other noted speakers include:

  • Tina Levene, motivational speaker and published author on abuse and addictions
  • Pasco Sheriff’s Office Lt. Toni Roach, who heads the agency’s Crisis Intervention Training (CIT) and Mental Health and Threat Assessment (MHAT) teams
  • Sara Mollo, Sixth Judicial Circuit chief assistant public defender
  • Former Sixth Judicial Circuit Court Judge Lynn Tepper
  • Sarah Cobelli, Baycare Behavioral Health program manager
  • Ginny LaRue, Florida Alcohol & Drug Abuse Foundation recovery project director

Additionally, the symposium will feature interactive café conversations about which recovery-related services are working in the community and what needs more support, along with a series of panel discussions from people in recovery and existing recovery community organizations throughout Florida.

Thoughts and input gathered from the symposium will be incorporated into the Recovery Epicenter Foundation’s visioning process in November to better define action steps for recovery-based programming, said Recovery Epicenter Foundation RCO director Rachel Starostin.

“The whole thing is we want to get the community together,” said Starostin, who expects anywhere from 200 to 300 attendees at the symposium. “The community benefits when we all collaborate together.”

Trinity-based Recovery Epicenter Foundation is hosting a symposium to help find ways to improve long-term substance abuse recovery efforts in Pasco County. The Recover Out Loud Pasco Symposium is set for Sept. 28. (Courtesy of Recovery Epicenter Foundation)

Starostin said the Recovery Epicenter Foundation’s “ultimate goal” is to build a peer-run, recovery-oriented community center to facilitate programs in the way of employment assistance, transportation, health and wellness, recreational opportunities, independent support groups and so on.

“We’re like building a shell out of something that needs to exist. We’re building something out of nothing,” she said.

“It’s kind of an abstract concept, when you don’t have a building and trying to plan out the future,” she said.

Starostin emphasized the need for such a recovery facility to help people “rebuild their lives” once they get out of addiction treatment. That assistance may initially include assisting them with “locatable, tangible resources,” such as basic medical care, living shelters, food stamps and more.

Starostin put it like this: “As a general rule, until you meet somebody’s basic needs, they’re not really receptive to listen. Like, how well do you focus when you’re hungry and you haven’t eaten in two days?”

Meanwhile, Starostin said the upstart recovery community organization is looking to mobilize more peer specialists to help with implementing various recovery programs. Peer specialists, or peer coaches, are people who have been successful in the recovery process who help others battling addiction through shared experience, understanding, respect and mutual empowerment.

Said Starostin, “There’s something magical when one peer who’s suffered from substance use works with another. You identify with them, you trust them, and it’s not like a 12-step program, you help somebody kind of come up with their own plan.”

Recovery Epicenter Foundation’s recovery community organization operates as an independent, nonprofit entity — led and governed by representatives of local communities of recovery.

Its mission is to support recovery through advocacy, education and peer-to-peer support services, to improve outcomes for persons seeking drugs and alcohol addictions.

Guidance and technical assistance on the Recovery Epicenter Foundation recovery community organization’s development process is coming from the Florida Recovery Project/Faces & Voices of Recovery, with collaboration from Florida Alcohol & Drug Abuse Foundation, Florida Department of Children and Families, and Peer Support Coalition of Florida.

An initial community listening session for the recovery community organization was held in February at the Land O’ Lakes Community Center, followed by a symposium planning session.

The sessions have already brought together dozens of stakeholders, including persons in recovery and professionals in health care, criminal justice, faith-based organizations and others.

“When we started this process, there wasn’t a whole lot of momentum behind it, but we’re getting it; people are getting involved and they’re starting to understand,” Starostin said.

To register for the symposium, visit tinyurl.com/yygu9e3s.

For information, contact Rachel Starostin at or (727) 255-2036.

Published September 11, 2019

Nurturing quilts uplift spirits in the courtroom

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When children enter Judge Lynn Tepper’s family courtroom in Dade City, they’re often welcomed with healthy snacks, stuffed animals, and lots and lots of books.

Another staple in Tepper’s courtroom of late: Dozens of homemade quilts, stitched with an assortment of bright colors, shapes and other unique designs.

The quilts are given to adoptive parents and caregivers of infants and young children, to help form a nurturing bond for families navigating custody cases.

Members of the Rotary Club of San Antonio donated a batch of handmade quilts to Judge Tepper’s courtroom. The quilts are given to adoptive parents and caregivers of infants and young children, to help form a nurturing bond for families navigating custody cases. (Kevin Weiss)

They’re made and donated by members of the Rotary Club of San Antonio, as part of one of its many community service projects.

Creations range from small baby quilts to full-size bed quilts. Handbags have even been designed for older children.

“The quilts have been amazing,” said Tepper, who oversees dependency, delinquency and domestic violence cases for the 6th Judicial Circuit Court of Florida.

“It’s a positive thing for (parents) to wrap around the baby or when the baby is now starting to come home with them. It’s just such a positive — the expression is so positive that they’re coming here, giving them something.”

For Tepper, the quilts are part of a broader theme of facilitating positive, impactful relationships for youth in her courtroom, many of which have experienced adverse childhood experiences, such as abuse and neglect.

“It is a buffering relationship that makes the difference,” said Tepper, who’s served on the bench for 34 years. “You should see the look on the parents’ faces. …They just get such a kick out of them. My bailiff loves to give them away.”

Rotary club members last week handed off another batch of quilts to Tepper, who was the featured guest speaker at the organization’s monthly dinner meeting at the Tampa Bay Golf & Country Club.

Her talk centered on trauma-informed care and the importance of getting to the root of societal problems through rehabilitation, as opposed to outright punishment.

“She likes to take care of the children,” San Antonio rotary club member and past president Winnie Burke says of Tepper. “It’s good when they come in, for them to have something to be happy…”

Fellow Rotarian Betty Burke earlier this year came up with the idea of donating quilts to Tepper, after she picked up the craft.

“I have a great time (quilting),” Burke said. “I just started doing it, but I’m having a wonderful time, enjoying it.”

Burke enjoys it even more knowing the creations are being put to good use — uplifting the spirits of children going through challenging circumstances.

She explained: “You know, these kids come to court, sometimes they have nothing. If they’re abused and taken out of the homes in the middle of the night, they might not have any clothes but what’s on their backs, so we thought, ‘Well, if they get a quilt, this is theirs (and) something that belongs to them.”

Burke has also enlisted the help of a few quilting friends, like Darlene Kirkpatrick, who work together on producing creative, thematic patterns.

“I just love creating things,” said Kirkpatrick, who’s been quilting for over 20 years using scraps of materials from yard sales. “And then when you get a quilt, (it’s fun) trying to decide what kind of pattern to put on. Some have flowers, others have Xs. You just kind of look at the quilt for awhile and try to decide what you’re going to do.”

About 40 quilts have been donated to Tepper already this year.

Many feature squares with vibrant colors. Others have more unique patterns much like the American Flag or Christmas designs. Some are designed with characters, like Snoopy.

The rotary club plans to continue donating quilts “as long as somebody can use ‘em,” Burke said.

“We try to make different ones that appeal to different kids,” Burke said. “I call mine ‘happy quilts’ because they’re bright colors and they make me happy, and they can make somebody happy.”

The Rotary Club of San Antonio was founded in 2005, and is one of eight clubs in east Pasco County.

Rotarians are governed by Rotary International, which has about 1.2 million members in 32,000 clubs in 200 countries and geographic areas, according to the international organization’s website.

Published August 8, 2018

Dade City poised to adopt anti-corruption code

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Dade City is on track to become the first municipality in Pasco County to embed an anti-corruption measure into its city charter.

The Dade City Commission and members of the Charter Review Advisory Committee met Dec. 5 to discuss recommendations on charter revisions.

Plans are to let voters decide on at least some of those recommendations during the April 2018 city elections. Other items might be handled through an ordinance instead.

Details on which charter items to include on the ballot will be determined in coming weeks.

A handful of residents attended the Dec. 5 meeting at City Hall, including members of the nonpartisan citizens’ group, Representing Pasco.

The activists are part of a growing anti-corruption movement in Florida.

Tallahassee and Cocoa Beach have been at the forefront of approving ethical standards for elected officials and government employees.

Locally, Representing Pasco wants the county and other cities in Pasco to follow Dade City’s example.

“We think people are basically protected through ethics provisions (in the charter),” said Land O’ Lakes resident Elyse Mysles.

She told committee members and city commissioners that Representing Pasco plans to actively educate the public about the charter’s ethics measure.

The charter committee has recommended that the city fund its own educational outreach effort.

The citizens’ group also had a request.

“It is our hope you’re including at least one citizen as part of the board to investigate complaints,” Mysles said.

The charter review is routinely completed every 10 years. Committee members began meeting last summer and presented their final report in November.

Committee members were Judge Lynn Tepper, Steve Hickman, Julie Hale, Dr. Bernice Mathis, Pablo Vela-Guerrero, Mattie Jones and Jim Ward.

Marilyn Crotty served as facilitator. She is the director of the Florida Institute of Government at the University of Central Florida.

Crotty said there is an anti-corruption trend statewide. Some cities have ordinances, or they designate someone as an ethics officer who investigates complaints, she said.

However, using a charter to establish ethics standards is rare, she added, and it has more permanency that an ordinance.

The amendment, if adopted, would require a code of ethical standards for elected officials and employees. The city commission would have six months to establish a local ethics code once the amendment passed.

“You can establish how strong you want it to be,” Crotty said.

Other recommendations from the charter review committee include:

  • Banning former city commissioners from doing business with the city for one year
  • Removing a city commissioner from office for a misdemeanor conviction for dishonesty or making a false statement (The current standard is conviction for a felony)
  • Making the finance officer a charter position, which is appointed and removed by a simple majority vote of the City Commission

The charter review committee also discussed some issues that are not included in the charter revisions.

Members suggested an ordinance that would cap local finance campaign contributions at $250 per individual per election.

Crotty said several cities, including Tallahassee and Cocoa Beach, have adopted limitations.

“This would remove the possibility of someone trying to buy a seat,” she said.

However, Dade City Commissioner Nicole Deese Newlon wondered how that would work in races where one candidate could afford to fund his or her own campaign. The cap didn’t seem to address that, she said.

“I feel like that hurts the candidate who is not, as an individual, as well-funded,” Newlon said.

Committee members also didn’t include a recommendation that the city manager live within city limits. Some favored that, but there wasn’t a consensus.

“I do feel he or she should be fully invested in the city and its goings on,” said Hale.

Others said there should be some flexibility, and it should be an issue addressed in contract negotiations.

There also were differences on whether hiring or firing a city manager should require a super majority vote, rather than the simple majority required now.

“When you have a super majority, it does give job security,” said Dade City Commissioner Scott Black, who favors the switch. With a simple majority, he said, a qualified candidate might hesitate to apply.

Tepper observed: “Making it stable should be the goal.”

Published December 13, 2017