People Profiles

Jamie Katz knows what it feels like to be frantic over the loss of a pet. When she was a child, her beloved cat Blackjack escaped from her home near Boston. Katz rode her bike across town for days but came up empty-handed. Blackjack was gone. The feelings of helplessness that follow the realization that

Even as a youngster growing up in Houston, I knew I wanted to be a professional athlete. I didn’t know what avenue it was going take, but that was my goal. Never in a million years did I think it would be in professional wrestling. The overall confidence that I’ve always had came from playing

Jane Bark Barrellier is living proof that the world is becoming smaller—figuratively speaking, anyway. Born to an American-Lebanese mother and a Danish-German father, she lived in Paris, where she was born, for 35 years and visited her godmother in Pinecrest during the summers. Bark Barrellier’s job gave her even more exposure to world cultures. In

A stack of 100 T-shirts sits on a shelf inside Nicole Markus’ bedroom. The Miami Palmetto Senior High School student, who is starting her sophomore year, has collected colorful tees for as long as she can remember. Some have humorous slogans, and others were given as keepsakes from school clubs and summer camps. “It’s funny,

Though tutor Marcus Sousa has helped hundreds of students achieve academic success, few stand out in his mind as much as the fifth-grader he helped about a year ago. The boy was crying and his mother, close to tears herself, asked Sousa for help. “She said, ‘Marcus, I don’t know what to do with my

If you live within a few miles of Tradewinds Park in Coconut Creek, and you have a backyard garden, you might have noticed your tomatoes are heartier. Or that the plants on your deck that once wouldn’t thrive are now flourishing. Thank your new neighbors—the honeybees of the Micro-Apiary at Tradewinds Park & Stables. At

Although Tammy Freeman is a language arts teacher at Monarch High School, her teaching style prompts many of her freshman students to ask her why she didn’t become an actress. To keep learning fun, Freeman acts out vocabulary words for her students and invites them to join in. To teach them the word “brigand,” she

After scratching his itch to experience the West, Mitchell Kaplan found himself at a crossroads. “Like a lot of other English majors, you graduate and you panic a little bit, which is what I did,” says the Miami-born Kaplan about what he felt after attending the University of Colorado. “I ended up going to law

A Pinecrest dietitian teaches her clients—including the Miami Marlins—to eat and live well Miami-based dietitian Monica Auslander follows one rule: Eat when you’re hungry, and stop when you’re full. The 28-year-old Pinecrest native is the founder of Essence Nutrition, which provides nutritional services for individuals, groups, businesses and restaurants. “I’m always the 28th dietitian that

My spiritual journey into health and wellness began 20 years ago with the birth of my daughter. She and I both almost died during the delivery. After about two weeks, I was able to bring my daughter home with the help of a nurse. Five days later, my dad died. I began to feel anxious,

I grew up watching World War II movies with my dad—like John Wayne in “Sands of Iwo Jima.” It’s not necessarily the glamour; it was the cause that attracted me. Fighting Hitler in Germany. Defending the country after being sucker-punched at Pearl Harbor. I did 10 years of active duty in the Navy, and then,

Lesley Visser had her armband. It was Jan. 1, 1980, the dawn of a new decade and, so it seemed, a new era. After being denied postgame access to locker rooms for player interviews early in her career as a sports writer for The Boston Globe, the armband meant that Visser—already the first woman to