| In an Ocean View neighborhood with basketball hoops in driveways and American flags hanging from front porches, a vacant piece of land sandwiched between homes quietly exchanged hands five times between 2017 and 2020. The property â a string of four parcels totaling a third of an acre â is in a marshy, overgrown thicket that recedes into a low-lying swamp, and stands in stark contrast to the manicured lawns across the street. Despite developers buying the land on two separate occasions, nothing has ever been built there. The city seized the land in 2017 for delinquent real estate taxes and auctioned it off. Read more in the Sunday Main News section
New expedited training academies will be used to entice out-of-state officers to Hampton Roads police departments in 2023 as cities struggle to staff area police departments. The Virginia Beach and Chesapeake police departments are among those gearing up to offer incoming transfers a condensed training course in 2023 following Gov. Glenn Youngkinâs October announcement of a $30 million nationwide law enforcement recruitment campaign. As part of Youngkinâs plan, dubbed âOperation Bold Blue Line,â the state will allow departments to offer shortened âOption 5â³ training academies. Option 5 expedites certification for lateral transfers down to 8 weeks. The condensed training is meant to alleviate Hampton Roadsâ thinning blue line as police staffing shortages hit historic highs, with more vacancies expected in some departments through the end of the fiscal year. Read more in the Sunday Main News section Ghosts, demons or psychotic killers, it doesnât matter. Virginia Beach native Scott Hansen is a horror buff who loves watching spooky flicks in his time off and now makes them as part of his job. One of his favorites: Stanley Kubrickâs 1980 âThe Shining,â starring Jack Nicholson. So when Hansen, now an Atlanta-based film producer, needed an actress for his upcoming horror movie, he started daydreaming about Shelley Duvall. Duvall co-starred with Nicholson as the terrified wife, Wendy, in âThe Shining.â Hansen knew he wanted to cast Duvall but he also knew sheâd retired from acting in 2002 and would be impossible to get. Still, he made âhundreds and hundreds of callsâ â and succeeded. Duvall is returning to the big screen after 20 years. Read more in the Sunday Break section One morning, in the winter of 1992, Richard Stengel found that his rented home in a Johannesburg suburb had been robbed. The television was missing. The stereo, too. Worse, his recorder was gone, and with it, three hours of interviews with Nelson Mandela, in service of what would become Mandelaâs memoir, âLong Walk to Freedom.â (Stengel, then a 37-year-old freelance journalist, had been hired as a ghostwriter,) The project was a secret, and Stengel feared that the exposure of the tapes could derail it. The cop assigned to the robbery reassured him. âAw, man,â the officer told him, âthey have music taped on those tapes already.â There were more tapes, though, ultimately 70 hours of them. The transcripts, plus a manuscript that Mandela had written during his 27 years in prison, became, in Stengelâs hands, the memoir that helped to cement Mandelaâs international reputation. Read more in the Sunday Break section For the past 33 years, Michele Andersonâs life and career have focused on bringing people and resources together to strengthen the Hampton Roads community. Soon, the United Way of South Hampton Roads president and CEO will take her time, talent and experience to another city and state almost 1,500 miles away. She plans to work as president and CEO of the Austin Habitat for Humanity in Texas. In November, Anderson notified the organizationâs board of directors that she will leave right after the new year. A Norfolk native, Anderson said her heart is in Hampton Roads, but she feels called to help strengthen another community. Read more in the Sunday Work & Money section
Catherine Zeta-Jones | 