Obituary

Voucher advocate dies after surgery

Angel Rocker, who co-owned six schools primarily for voucher students, is found unconscious in her home.

©Associated Press
February 27, 2003

NAVARRE BEACH -- Angel Rocker, co-owner of six schools across Florida that cater primarily to voucher students, died Tuesday from a pulmonary embolism a week after undergoing cosmetic surgery.

A nurse found Rocker, 39, unconscious at her home in this Florida Panhandle community, said the Rev. Willie Demps, a family friend. She was pronounced dead at a Gulf Breeze hospital.

Rocker, one of Florida's leading school choice advocates, sought the GOP presidential nomination in 1999 although she was black and lacked political experience, name recognition or money.

She and husband Art Rocker opened the schools primarily to serve disabled students on state vouchers.

Medical examiner's investigator Mark Burke said an autopsy showed she died of a massive embolism, or blood clot. Such a clot can enter the blood stream and block the supply of blood to the heart.

"Most of the time, we see it after someone has surgery or an accident," Burke said.

The Rockers' schools were the focus of an investigation by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement after some parents and teachers complained that the couple misused voucher funds.

"All of it panned out to be nothing," said Demps, a board member at S.L. Jones Academy, a Pensacola school once operated by the Rockers. "Everything was legal."

At one time the Rockers operated a management company that ran two private schools in the Tampa Bay area: one in Tampa and one in St. Petersburg that generated controversy in 2001.

While they were managing the Bethel Metropolitan Christian School in St. Petersburg, several parents claimed that their children had no books and wondered where the scholarship money from the state was going. The Florida Department of Education then tightened its policies for spending the scholarship money.

The school later seemed to right itself, but at the end of the school year in 2002, the Bethel Metropolitan school ended its relationship with the Rockers.

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