Sam Hall collects monikers: Olympic athlete, captured spy, condo king, and, more recently, kitten rescuer. Why put himself in harm's way? He says it's for selfish reasons.
By KELLEY BENHAM
Published September 19, 2004
[Times photos: Jamie Francis]
In the wake of Hurricane Charley, Red Cross volunteer Sam Hall leaves a notice for homeowners in Punta Gorda. The note informs them that Hall has been inside to check on their pets. Hall of Belleair Shore is a successful condo developer whose colorful life has included being imprisoned in Nicaragua.
Sam Hall comforts a cat that appeared to be abandoned in a Punta Gorda home. Hall gets attached to the animals he rescues, often paying for their care. He left a notice for the cat’s owners, then returned days later with an animal control officer and took the kitten to a shelter.
“I’m convinced God has written a play for me,” Hall says of his volunteer work, “and I’m just following the script.”
[Times photo: Carrie Pratt]
[Photo courtesy of Sam Hall]
Sam Hall after rescuing a fawn from a forest fire in Idaho last year. He says he found the fawn in shock, without its mother, and picked it up like a puppy. “I wanted to take it home,” he said. Another fawn he saw in the fire did not survive.
Sam Hall paces around the new clubhouse at his latest condo development like something in a cage. He's getting an award today. A plaque of some kind. One of those honors that business people bestow on other business people. He and his wife, Melinda, have accumulated a crateload of them.
"Do you know what this award is about?" he calls to his wife.
"Honey," she says, "I don't have a clue."
"This is a $155-million project you're sitting on," he says, with a sweep of his arm, surveying the golf courses and quiet waters and six-story buildings at East Bay Country Club in Largo, where his condos are rising and his wife and grown children are buzzing around running things, earning the money.
"This bores the living sh- out of me," he says.
If you've heard of Sam Hall, it's either because of the condos or because of the spy thing. In December 1986 he was captured at a Nicaraguan military base with a map in his left sock.
As great a story as that was, it has already been told, in this newspaper and in most other major newspapers and on 60 Minutes, where Mike Wallace made Sam look, by Sam's own estimation, like a "looney stumble bum." So we won't retell the story here, but it's a good one if you ever want to check it out. He wrote a book about it, called Counter Terrorist, in which he is shot, bayonetted, divorced three times and born again. The book covers his 1960 silver medal in the Rome Olympics and his "mostly boring" term in the Ohio House of Representatives. He then rescues 19 children from terrorists in Angola, leads rebel forces into Nicaragua and ultimately spends 47 days in an underground Sandinista prison with fat cockroaches, open sores on his scalp, and a skiiny mattress he called "Maggie."
He was nearly 50 then. Now he is 67. Just another retiree in Belleair Shore.
He fidgets through the luncheon where his name is called, his hand is shaken and his picture is taken. He's grumbling that his assistant, a sweet woman named Normajeanne, roped him into this. He's twitching to get on the road. It turns out the commando is not so retired, really, just reincarnated. His bags are packed to complete another rescue mission.
This time it's a kitten.
Andrew was the first
Days earlier, when Hurricane Charley hit, he had automatically pointed his car toward Punta Gorda. His wife, Melinda, who knows the routine, helped him pack. He pocketed a couple of thousand dollars in cash, and she urged him to take some checks this time, too, because she knows he's going to give away their money but they probably won't run out.
Driving south, he tried to remember how many times he'd done this. Andrew was the first.
That was 1992, when he and Melinda were building Ship Watch Yacht & Tennis Club in Largo. He'd retired from the covert freelance military stuff, but he says he'd been doing some other secret things on the side, which we can't tell you about because they're secret. Let's just say it was dangerous, dark-room-type stuff. Look for it in his next book.
He'd always had good intentions, but he'd let his bravado get the best of him until he started to wonder if he was taking risks for risk's sake. He was feeling less like a good guy. He wanted a change, but he just isn't suited for the Elks Club and the golf course.
That's when Hurricane Andrew started churning. He'd loved storms since he was a kid. He liked to stand in the wind and let it pound him like a Weather Channel anchor. So he went to Miami just to be in the middle of it, which if you knew him, would not sound strange.
"I felt like a sleeping wasp," he said. "I asked, I prayed, "Tell me Lord, what do you want me to do?' He never talked to me. It was like, somebody nudged me."
The next day, back in St. Petersburg, he drove to the Red Cross office in Clearwater and signed up for duty. Because of his construction experience, they made him a building inspector, condemning or condoning homes in Homestead. The first day, he opened his wallet and gave $300 to a family who had lost their house. That's how it started.
"It just blew the crap out of my life," Sam says.
He hasn't missed a hurricane since. Charley was his 10th.
Call him Officer 706 1/2
When he arrived in Punta Gorda just after the storm, he took his photos and his Red Cross credentials to Charlotte County Animal Services.
They paired him with Kerri Hostetter, a 27-year-old animal control officer who looks somewhat like an action figure in her uniform. Sam thought she was cute. Kerri is known as Officer 706, so Sam insisted he be called 7061/2.
Together they checked on all the registered venomous snakes in the area and rounded up lost cattle into a baseball diamond. He caught a ferocious dog named Snowflake who turned out not to be ferocious at all. He told Kerri some of his stories and showed her his pictures, and she wondered whether he was exaggerating.
He found the kitten while looking for a wounded dog. A deputy mistakenly shot the dog, thinking it had bitten somebody. This upset Sam, not just because the deputy shot the wrong dog, but because he didn't have the sense to shoot it in the head. "Never a body shot," Sam says. "Always a head shot."
They found the wounded dog with two other dogs inside a dilapidated trailer down a dirt road, in a living room the dogs had been using as a toilet for quite some time. Sam was nervous but he didn't want 706 to know it, so he caught the wounded dog, named it Black Beauty, and pretty soon was hugging the smelly thing and tearing up and telling it to be brave.
Later, Sam told the vet that he was loaded with cash and wanted the best for Black Beauty. He returned to the trailer to take pictures for evidence. That's where Sam found the kitten.
He had to leave the kitten so he could get back home to watch the Olympics. He hates to miss the Olympics, especially the diving. There were no working televisions in Punta Gorda, and anyway, he hadn't showered in four days. So he left water and food, gave Kerri several hundred dollars for the animals' care, and headed back to Belleair Shore to survey his condos and accept his award.
As good as silver
Sam watched from his house in Belleair Shore as the United States failed to win a diving medal for the first time in 92 years. It saddened him to see it.
Even in a good year, he can't watch a medal ceremony without choking up. "I know what that person's feeling," he said. "I know he's probably got diarrhea. I know what's going to happen after the event. The big letdown. I know how the silver medal feels when he didn't get gold."
When he won silver in the 3-meter springboard in Rome, Americans dominated the sport. Sam was the NCAA champion and the favorite, but his feet brushed the board on his last dive.
When he was a kid, his father made him stand on the diving board for 41/2 hours because he was scared to jump. Ever since, he'd been trying to make his father proud. His dad built an Olympic-sized pool in their yard so Sam could train. He hired the best coach. When Sam trailed in the NCAA Championships, Dad yelled at him to show some guts.
After his last Olympic dive, Sam waited for his father at the pool, afraid of what he would say. His dad hugged him and said he was proud. That meant more to Sam than the medal did. He has been trying to get back to that high place ever since.
Sam's father, Dave Hall, was the mayor of Dayton, Ohio. His brother, former U.S. Rep. Tony Hall, is the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Agencies for Food and Agriculture in Rome. His other brother, Mike, is a retired school principal in Dayton. Between them, his brothers share six doctorates, Sam says. Tony was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize three times.
Sam calls himself the black sheep of the family. But he has the best stories.
His daughter Kelly remembers always knowing that her dad was not like the other dads. "He'd call from Mozambique," she said, "to ask how we were doing in soccer."
Between hurricanes, he fights forest fires out West and helps with animal rescues. He says he picked up shuttle debris after the Columbia explosion. He volunteered as a digger in the rubble of the World Trade Center. He searched for bodies but found only parts.
Last Christmas, Kelly cried because he went to Iraq with the Salvation Army World Service Organization to help build schools and roads. One of his projects involved working at a leper colony. Kelly doesn't scare easily, but the leper colony was more than she could take. Sam, with his mix of compassion and crudeness, promised not to french kiss anyone with a dripping nose.
He says he was nearly kidnapped on the way from Basra to Kuwait City, as two guys with AK-47s fired at their three-car caravan. Shortly after Christmas, when an earthquake leveled Bam, Iran, he volunteered to help take in supplies and says he watched, detached and listless, as workers dug mass graves.
When he gets back home, he putters around the office or hits golf balls in the back yard, often into the pool. He gets up before dawn to work out and maintain his diving weight of 155 pounds. He chain smokes and works on the second volume of his autobiography, titled Danger's Disciple. His wife jokes about who would play him in the movie. Her vote would be Clint Eastwood.
It never lasts long before he's scanning the newscasts and the Internet for new disasters. He was home barely a week before he returned to Punta Gorda to find the kitten.
Sam knows suffering
Back with Officer 706, Sam peppers her with questions about what he missed while he was glued to the Olympics.
A bear, Kerri tells him. She got a cool picture of it.
"Oh," Sam says, "that's torture.
"What about Snowflake?"
Snowflake's fine. Owner still missing though.
They're rinsing out a water tank at the Animal Services control center, a makeshift animal shelter and hospital in Punta Gorda. The air smells of goat poop. At least, it could be goat.
The water tank for the horses smells pretty rank, too. Sam sticks his finger in the water and licks it, like Tonto in the Lone Ranger.
Then another volunteer puts a pH test strip into the water. No good.
"Ah," Sam says. "I'll be puking now."
Nearby, a Pomeranian in the same predicament has been throwing up all day.
"I want to find that kitten," Sam says.
They water the horses, which are under quarantine because of the mosquitoes and standing water. That reminds Sam of other bugs, from another time.
"When I came back from Nicaragua - I was in a communist prison - I had all these sores on my head," he says. "I was in an underground cell, 26 feet underground, and bugs and spiders, you know, just name it, everything."
Kerri looks as if she's not sure what to make of this.
"The thought of it was worse than it was," Sam says. "But it was really bad."
Lunch is free Wendy's burgers and Frostys for the volunteers. Kerri has been craving a Frosty, which by then seemed exotic, unattainable.
For Sam it's a familiar feeling. "When I got out of prison," he says. "All I wanted was a McDonald's cheeseburger and a milkshake."
He asks again what happened to Snowflake. Kerri tells him again that Snowflake is fine.
"I hope I don't fall for another dog today," Sam says. "It'll cost me some more money."
Following the script
The thing about the money, Sam says, is that no matter how much he gives away, he keeps making more. He thinks it's some kind of divine retribution beyond his control. He says no matter how much he spends or gives away, he gets paid back tenfold.
He tried to get Melinda to retire, but she enjoys building condos, and he enjoys spending the money. He says he pays his own way on all his adventures, even overseas. He says he paid back the Salvation Army for expenses. He insists that everything he does is actually selfish.
"It makes me feel good," he says. "I'm convinced God has written a play for me, and I'm just following the script."
He'll admit that he's slowed down some, and if you suggest that he's getting up there in years, he will say, "Thanks, bitch."
The cat's meow
The nasty trailer is empty now, except for the kitten.
Sam searches the yard for tracks but finds none. He pushes the door open, and it sags.
The cat is looking at him cautiously. Sam starts to coo.
"Hiiii." There is nothing macho in his voice now, just pure sugar. He opens a can of Friskies and offers it, gently. The cat sniffs. Tiptoes closer. Sniffs. Nibbles.
"Yeaaahhhhh," Sam says. "It's okay."
The cat purrs. Sam scoops it into a cat carrier, tells it this is for its own good.
Looks around. Alarm registers. "Where'd the sh- go? Somebody's been here."
He scans the trailer. Someone has cleaned up, which makes the rescue slightly less satisfying, until Kerri finds some leftover poop in a corner. This pleases Sam.
"Let me see some good dog sh-. Yeah," he says. "I feel at home now. This is why we do this. That makes it all worthwhile, doesn't it?"
The cat is meowing.
As they walk out, a neighbor sticks her head out her door. She says she hasn't seen the cat's owner. "If you see him, tell him he's in trouble," gruff Sam says.
"Don't tell him he's in trouble," Kerri says. "Tell him to contact Animal Control."
"I want to put the fear of God into this pr--," Sam says.
Back in the car, he's cooing again.
"It's okay, you're going to get a new home," he says to the crying kitten. "And you've got somebody that's got deep pockets that's going to take care of you."
He pats Kerri on the shoulder. "She got a couple hundred bucks today. I can let go of it now."
Waiting for Ivan
After Charley came Frances, which Sam confronted somewhere around Boca Raton. But Frances dumped sand in his swimming pool, so he hurried home, where he waited for Ivan. He sat out behind his house and watched the clouds drift across the sky.
His wife accepted another award the other day. Sam couldn't bear to endure the ceremony, so he didn't go. "I don't play by any rules," he said, watching a dark cloud move across the sun. "I believe the rules are written in my heart."
He decided to let Ivan hit where it would. He would wait it out at home, but he was already uneasy with the stillness there. So wherever it went, he would follow.
And after that, well, he ran into a guy in Punta Gorda that he knew in Iraq. He'd already faxed off a couple of letters. They're planning a mission to the Sudan.
In the wake of Hurricane Charley, Red Cross volunteer Sam Hall leaves a notice for homeowners in Punta Gorda. The note informs them that Hall has been inside to check on their pets. Hall of Belleair Shore is a successful condo developer whose colorful life has included being imprisoned in Nicaragua.
